The Jewish Guilt Trip

Surely it’s happened to you before. You visit a city in a country where a million plus of your nation were murdered in genocide within the past century, and you find yourself quickly, unhappily, liking it. I’m in Warsaw at an IB workshop this weekend, and, well… it would be silly to compare Warsaw to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. It’s a hundred times more beautiful, cleaner, more intelligently designed… if only, in the words of an Israeli woman I met here, it wasn’t a giant graveyard for our people.

One in five people who board the bus here trip as they do so because they have a book held in front of their faces. I want to press their hands in comradeship, to memorize the way their knuckles grasp the dust jackets. After three months of Israelis and their smartphones, it feeds something hungry inside of me. In fact, I scan the streets to realize that there’s a conspicuous lack of smartphones out. In both countries the youth rise for elders on the bus, though.

The sky is a marbled, pastel wonder—I appreciate it all the more after the flat dangerous white light of the Israeli sun. I consciously crunch leaves beneath my feet, aware that the sensation is one I must treasure against the gritty sand of Tel Aviv streets. In Łazienki Park, I want to mimic the dogs and roll in the fabulous fall foliage. I’m equipped to: for the first time in two months I’m wearing proper clothing, boots and jeans and hooded jacket and scarf, instead of the sweaty loose outfits which barely hide the fact that I’d rather go naked through Israeli heat. And this is no Gan Sacher or Gan HaYarkon; here I could find myself a private space and roll to my heart’s delight, and there would be nobody to see. I don’t need to stake out a few cubic feet of my own. I have an entire forest clearing to myself. I compromise by lying on my back to watch the sky through the branches and occasionally taste the raindrops on my face. The ducks watch me for awhile, then go about their business.

The city is a wonder of wide boulevards. It mixes periods well. I tramp upon cobblestones past skyscrapers, and bemusedly enjoy the monstrous Communist architecture rearing up near the Old Town’s quaint painted castles. At no point do I need to weave through the drippings of air conditioners, nor avert my gaze from Bauhaus architecture. Fluffy red squirrels scamper happily beside me along the paths planted with trees. There are no rodent-like cats.

The people are interestingly ugly. None of the silky bronzed unapproachable beauty of Tel Avivis. Only the sexy mystery of plain faces, made alluring by their expressions and simple similarity to my own. And by the way they wear their winter gear; toggled wool coats, well-wrapped scarves, and heeled boots are so much more attractive than clinging minis and undershirts. Their language beckons. I could learn Polish. I already joyously recognize many words: billet, and kontor, and skrive. They are just like in Norwegian.

Warsaw smells incredible. It is washed clean by regular wind and rain. On Nowy Swiat, the scents of bakeries and chocolateries and Italian pizzerias drift into the street, and sometimes the illicit smell of sausage tickles my nose. The rest of the city smells of autumn leaves, and by the Vistula, of the river. I am amazed at how clean the streets are, and remind myself that just because people live somewhere, does not mean they must contaminate it with their trash like Israelis do.

In the Old Town, a group of Israeli men surprise me. I hear them debating about where the ghetto wall was, and draw near. As they bicker about it, one of them glances at me.

 

 .תשאל אותה. בטח שהיא יודעת ושומעת עלינו

Caught. I grin and look at the map.

אני לא בטוחה, אבל נראה לי שזה בכיוון הזה... 

We were off. They insisted I join them on their tour, and told me all sorts of lies: they’re looking for jobs here, they’re a soccer team here for a game… turns out they all grew up together and came to Warsaw on holiday. We had a boisterous time through the Old Town. Finally I insisted that I had to leave. I had a pilgrimage to make. They couldn’t believe I was going, and wouldn’t let me go without shaking each of their hands: shalom, Nissim, shalom, Avi, shalom, Itzik v’Gadi, shalom, all the rest of you quintessentially Israeli guys.

 "!שבת שלום, ובהצלחה, מותק" rang in my ears as I caught my bus.

The Zydowski Cemetery is an eerie place. It's one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. I’ve been there once before, with a trip from my midrasha while on gap year in Israel. Then I was mostly irked at being surrounded by sem girls and the “isha tznuah” descriptions on so many of the women’s tombstones. Now, I pushed open the gate hesitantly, and emerged into a world in which pre-war Judaism merged with memorials for the many killed in the shoah. It was so easy to forget cheerful, bustling, beautiful Warsaw, and sink into the twisted shadows of the trees. Tombstones tumbled across tombstones in a nightmare of mossy, mulchy death. I stopped to consult a map of the enormous cemetery.

 

“Excuse me, you know where is the monument of Janusz Korczak?” Two clearly Israeli women approached me.

 "לא, אבל אני גם רוצה למצוא המצבה שלו," I answered, and that was it. They adopted me. Together we ranged through the cemetery’s section by the gate, identifying the mass graves for the Warsaw Ghetto dead, and Korczak’s monument, while one told me their family’s history of escape from the Holocaust.

 "את יודעת איפה הבית כנסת בוורסה? את שומרת כשרות?" they wanted to know, and then apologized for not being themselves. Finally I shook them off, and headed deep, deep, deep into the cemetery on my own. Twenty minutes' tramp in, far beyond the area where most tourists visit, a white sign nailed to a tree told me to turn right into the depths of the forest. I stumbled along the overgrown path. As all sound grew muted around me, and the smell of wet earth overpowered me, I found the place I sought: the ohel of the Netziv and Rav Chaim Soloveitchik.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do there. Perhaps to atone for enjoying Warsaw so much. Perhaps to leave a pebble to mark their greatness, or to remind myself that an entire civilization had been wiped out here. I’m not the type to pray at a tzaddik’s kever, but I wanted to visit. Within seconds, the smell of wet decay, and the eerie green light of the forest, was too much for me. I retreated. Not until I was back in my hotel could I shake off the sense of malevolent magic, the knowledge that once there had been thousands of people here, a thriving civilization who may have enjoyed Warsaw as much as me, and they had mostly been murdered. I showered, set out the food I'd brought from Israel, and lit shabbat candles semi-defiantly. Something about davening kabbalat shabbat in Warsaw seemed a proper retort to the shoah.

At the first day of the IB conference, I explained to many different people, who understood to various degrees, that I couldn’t write today, or eat any of the food that was so nicely prepared, or carry the workbook back to the hotel. I heard two Americans speaking, and felt moved to approach them to talk, but didn't spend long with them. They weren't Israeli and family, just American and friendly. And unlike the woman from Skagerak, I couldn't practice my Norwegian on them, an opportunity which tremendously excited me.

It’s all right, I think, for me to enjoy some things about Warsaw. The cringing that I feel when I see tiny statues of Hassidic Jews grasping a coin in souvenir shops, and the sense of alienation that accompanies a stroll down the sentrum, past where the ghetto walls stood, punches me in the face enough to send me back to Israel. I was born in chutz la’aretz, and will always have an affinity for rainy afternoons, autumn foliage, and the crisp clean smell of approaching winter.

And yet, over the past weeks, I’ve found a beauty in Israel. It’s not in the countryside—that’s as scrubby as ever. But in the urban parks, where joggers thread between playing children, and in the wide boulevards lined with palm trees, and the chic coffee shops at every corner, and the numerous squares that dot Tel Aviv with cultural meaning… Tel Aviv is a beautiful city, which lights up at night and turns pastel over the sea at sunset. And whatever Warsaw may have that Tel Aviv lacks, Tel Aviv has the people… the keen people that so urgently claim me as their own. Perhaps, over time, its place will have the same hold on me that a cool, rainy fall day has now.