As Jewry reemerges in Poland, the Jewish Alliance is helping build community

How do you build a community where none has existed for more than a generation? Patrycja Dołowy, the CEO of the Jewish Community Center Warsaw, has learned firsthand.

“There are still people who are learning that they are Jewish in their grandparents’ last breath,” Dołowy said in a recent Zoom interview conducted in English. “In many Polish families, there was absolute silence.”

Dołowy’s own family history provides a snapshot of Jews’ experiences in Poland since World War II. As she puts it, Polish Jews “are children of people who, for some reason, decided to stay.”

After a crackdown in 1968, her parents lost their jobs because they were Jewish.

“For two generations, it was a very difficult life for Jews here. We were living in a hideout,” Dolowy said.

After the Holocaust, all three of her grandmother’s surviving sisters decided to leave the country – one went to Canada, one to the United States, and one to Israel – leaving her grandmother alone, without family.

And yet, as the Cold War ended, Poland’s Jewish community reemerged from its “hideout.” Soon, American rabbis and international nonprofits came to the country to help people reconnect with their Jewish heritage.

“All of them were from outside, trying to renew Jewish life here. It was very special,” Dołowy said.

In particular, camps and programs organized by the JDC (Joint Distribution Committee), a Jewish humanitarian organization, became the nucleus of new gathering spaces for Warsaw Jews.

Among the supporters of JDC’s Jewish Renewal program in those early days was the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, which maintains an active relationship with JCC Warsaw. (More on that later.)

“Around 12 years ago, we realized that we were already a community .... We started to think about our Jewish identity. We started to ask how we’d like to raise our children,” Dołowy said.

The result was a new Jewish Community Center, initially under JDC auspices but eventually run independently.

The JCC Warsaw would have to meet the unique challenges of serving Polish Jewry.

“We are diverse. There are many faces of Jewishness, and there aren’t many of us. We need a place of inclusiveness to gather,” Dołowy says.

With so many people who did not know that they are Jewish, the JCC cultivated an attitude of openness. This was especially important for people rediscovering their heritage.

“A synagogue is a strange, scary place” for a beginner, Dołowy said, but a secular, welcoming JCC “is an open space.”

The JCC Warsaw is also a place where non-Jews can educate themselves about Judaism in a society still struggling with antisemitism.

“This is the first time, as a minority, that we’ve been able to host them, to help them get to know us,” Dołowy said.

A major part of that effort is the JCC Warsaw’s Boker Tov Sunday brunches, which offer a “come as you are” environment.

The last few years have provided “two [new] reasons to build this program,” according to Dołowy. First, the aftermath of the pandemic increased the importance of in-person gatherings, to lure people out of their homes. Perhaps more importantly, Poland has been one of the main destinations for Ukrainian refugees, many of whom are Jewish.

“At first, they needed support,” Dołowy said. Now that many are a bit more settled, the new challenge is integration. Polish and Ukrainian Jews needed “the opportunity to be together in a situation that’s not so serious,” she said.

JCC Warsaw has also found itself on the front lines of the humanitarian crisis, helping resettle about 150 Ukrainian families. Many are led by mothers whose husbands have stayed in Ukraine. In just three weeks, the JCC transformed its daycare to include a special program for their children.

The Jewish Alliance is among the contributors to the effort, and Alliance CEO Adam Greenman visited in July 2022. He wrote that “camp has been a respite for the 85 campers (mostly Jewish, but also some non-Jews). Like J-Camp at the Alliance’s Dwares JCC, it infuses Jewish values and customs, focusing on helping all the children to have fun while learning about Jewish culture. Mostly, it offers normalcy to these children.”

Indeed, the crown jewel of JCC Warsaw has long been its camp program, “inherited” from the JDC.

“We are the only organization in Poland that is running Jewish camps for people across Poland. In the small towns, it is still very difficult to be Jewish. For many [children, camp] is their one taste of Jewishness each year,” Dołowy said.

She added that it also has been personally rewarding for her to watch a new generation of Jews grow.

“I knew many of these madrichim (teenaged leaders) as children,” she said, visibly lost in her memories.

JCC Warsaw also hosts popular clubs for children and teens that explore Jewish traditions around the world.

Camp also offers opportunities for collaboration with the Alliance’s Dwares Jewish Community Center, in Providence, as part of the Alliance’s international partnerships program, which facilitates cross-programming between Rhode Island-based and international Jewish institutions.

“I’m excited to see where the opportunities lie,” said Michelle Cicchitelli, the Alliance’s chief program officer.

Before the war in Ukraine upended camp at the JCC Warsaw, the two community centers had discussed collaborative programming for their children.

“It could lead down such a nice path to learn more about Poland, about Jews across the world. Ultimately, it could even land in something like an exchange camper program, which would be incredible,” Cicchitelli said.

Other opportunities for teamwork between the two JCCs might include history and Holocaust education, holiday programming, or even language classes.

As Greenman reflected on his visit, he found many similarities that bind the two communities together.

“I was transported back to our JCC in Providence, because [their] programming could have been our programming,” he said.

Want to get involved with the Alliance’s overseas or local allocation committees? Know of an organization that might benefit from the Alliance’s global reach? Contact Jennifer Zwirn at jzwirn@jewishallianceri.org. To donate to the Alliance’s work in Poland or in other partnership regions, go to https://www.jewishallianceri.org/support-us/featured/donate-now. Thanks to an anonymous donor, all new or increased gifts to the 2024 Jewish Alliance Annual Community Campaign will now be matched dollar for dollar up to $50,000.

TUVYA BERGSON-MICHELSON is a senior at Brown University and an intern at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.