Congregation Shaara Tfille hosts “The What’s Up Band” at Jewish Cultural Festival

The community is invited to join Congregation Sharra Tfille as they host “The What’s Up Band” on Sunday, August 2, 2015 at 7 p.m. Performing original and traditional Jewish/American rock, “The What’s Up Band” offers a captivating concert for all ages. This event is part of the Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival and will be held at Congregation Sharra Tfille at 84 Weibel Avenue in Saratoga Springs. Tickets are $8, including refreshments.

The “What’s Up Band” has combined their talents and experience to present an incredible performance group rich in dynamic musical and theatrical know-how that will put the audience at ease with their understanding of just what it takes to make a performance exciting, powerful and memorable.

Conquering Challenges at Vacation Bible School at St. Paul’s Church

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church on Lake Avenue in Saratoga Springs held Vacation Bible School from July 6 through July 10 for students ages 3 through Grade 5. One hundred and seventy-five children were in attendance from the church and from the community. Pictured are the volunteers and workers that made this fantastic event possible. Eleventh graders are considered apprentice helpers and they did a wonderful job making sure the week ran like clockwork. 

Maureen Reichard, Lisa Sommerer and Marianne Wiegand worked all year preparing for this one week extravaganza. The artwork was created primarily by the Mother/Daughter Team of Maureen and Rebecca Reichard.

Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival:  H. I. Jew Positive

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Every day a number of Catholic Poles discover that their parents kept their true identity hidden from them and that, in fact, they are Jewish - second and third generation to Holocaust survivors. It happens to people of all ages in all socio-economic status, in villages, and in big cities. These are The New Jews of Poland. 

H. I. Jew Positive, by Israeli filmmaker Ronit Kertsner, is a follow-up up to her 2000 documentary called Secret, which chronicles initial discoveries by 15 Jews of their hidden Jewish heritage.  

The film screens on Sunday, August 16 at 7 p.m. at Temple Sinai as part of the 2015 Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival.

This story updates these stories about their search of identity, a journey that began in Warsaw, moved to Israel and back to Poland….a voyage of people whose identity had been shattered.  This film was released in concert with the opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. 

For the past 25 years since the fall of Communism, Poles have been discovering unknown Jewish roots.  Some Polish citizens have found official papers affirming their Jewish identity. For others, all they have to go on is a relative’s deathbed confession, or a hunch that rumors about their family’s Jewish past could be true.

Not all so-called “hidden Jews” decide to pursue the implications of these revelations.  Only some decide to learn more about Judaism or assume a Jewish identity and become active in Poland’s revived Jewish community. In many cases, it is the youngest members of a family, the furthest removed from the traumas of the Holocaust and Communism, who have the curiosity and courage to dig into the past.  

However, those who do choose to become Jewish, do so in a country with an anti-Semitic reputation, a country that has long been thought of by world Jewry as a massive Jewish graveyard.  This poses unique challenges, but also unique opportunities, including a chance to rebuild, both solemnly and joyfully, a Jewish community that most doubted would ever recover from the ravages of the Holocaust.  

Three and a half million Jews lived in Poland before the Holocaust.  By late 1944, ninety percent of them had been killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.  The 350,000 Jews who remained in Poland after WWII either left the country (mainly to the United States or Israel), or went underground during the Communist era.  Those who stayed buried deeply their Jewish identity, hiding it from their neighbors, their children, and even from themselves. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 initially triggered revelations that many individuals had hidden Jewish backgrounds.  Interested in supporting a possible rebirth of Polish Jewry, American Jewish philanthropists like Ronald S. Sauder and Tad Taube began building communal Jewish institutions to support daily Jewish life and ritual, as well as Jewish education.

Today, there are viable Jewish communities, with synagogues, mikvehs, schools, and other community institutions in Warsaw, Krakow, and Lodz.  Today, there are believed to be some 25,000 Jews in Poland out of a population of 38.5 million.  However, some unconfirmed estimates suggest that the number is much larger. 

Warsaw and Krakow have their own American-style Jewish community centers and there are smaller functioning Jewish communities around the country that can sustain regular prayer minyans and educational programming. 

The efforts of Jews who lived without knowledge of their Judaism to recapture their Jewish legacy is a blessing to some, a curiosity to others, and unfathomable to the rest. Says one individual interviewed by Kertsner, “Once you decide to be a Jew in Poland, it’s your full-time responsibility. I think once you take on an identity of a minority, that kind of takes over your life a little bit.” Why are Jews freed of their painful history drawn back to the Jewish roots of their forefathers?  This is the question we ponder in trying to understand who and why we are and have been for thousands of years.

“Many Jews in the United States experience their own ambiguity of identity rooted in the freedoms available in our current society and absent the extremes of antisemitism experienced by Jews in other times and settings,” says Festival Coordinator Phyllis Wang.  “This ambiguity is frequently wrought by an increasingly secular and assimilated society and fed by vast opportunities to participate in things not discreetly Jewish and absent the traumatic experience of the Holocaust or Communism.” 

H.I. Jew Positive at Temple Sinai is part of the Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival, Sunday, August 16, 2015, at 7 p.m. Panel discussion and dessert reception to follow. For reservations, call 518-584-8730 x2. A $5 donation is requested.  For other activities, see www.saratogajewishculturalfestival.org or visit and like the cultural festival on Facebook.