by RabbiOlivier | Nov 20, 2016 | Adult Learning, Greater Community, Interfatith, Israel, Torah Reflections
How do we heal our world? How do we move past what divides us to create, together, a tomorrow that will be richer because of the pain of yesterday? How do we stand strong for what we believe in without demonizing those others who stand strong for what they believe in?...
by RabbiOlivier | Nov 17, 2016 | Adult Learning, General, Greater Community, Interfatith, Israel, Torah Reflections
Tel Aviv, Israel; November 17, 2016 What a miracle! I am re-reading these first few words—the date and the place where I am writing from—and I am moved by a sense of awe. Don’t get me wrong, my zealous Zionist years are far behind me. As an Israeli citizen, I have...
by RabbiOlivier | May 24, 2015 | Adult Learning, Community, Greater Community, Holocaust, Poland, Prague, Shoah
Treblinka is an impossibly beautiful memorial. Absolutely nothing is left of the camp that once stood there. It is hard to imagine it being the case, but we have to remember that the Nazis were masters of deception and made a point of dismantling these camps to allow...
by RabbiOlivier | May 22, 2015 | Adult Learning, Community, General, Greater Community, Holocaust, Poland, Prague, Shoah
Warsaw is a city straddling several worlds and several eras. It encompasses, displayed in its make-up, the whole history of Europe. What is striking about its architecture is the mix of century old buildings (some original to their era, some rebuilt), communist era...
by RabbiOlivier | May 21, 2015 | Adult Learning, Community, Greater Community, Holocaust, Poland, Prague, Shoah
Krakow is a gorgeous city, especially the old-city and—as a separated quarter within it—the district of Kazimierz where the Jews lived from the middle-ages. This is the region of Galicia in Poland, the birth place of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Chasidism in the...
by RabbiOlivier | May 17, 2015 | Adult Learning, Community, Events, General, Greater Community, Holocaust, Poland, Prague, Shoah
I have been sitting in front of my keyboard for a while now, starting and erasing, starting and erasing whatever I begin to write. How can one summarize visiting a place like Terezin, a concentration camp where thousands of Jews died and from which tens of thousands...
