I’ve spent 20 years learning from leaders of other faith traditions, but until I accompanied a group of evangelical Christian leaders on an interfaith mission to Poland last month, I never fully appreciated the profound role these friendships could have in Jewish life.
The group was organized by Rabbi Yehiel Poupko, a rabbinic scholar of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, and Dr. Philip Ryken, president of Wheaton College, who brought 25 Christian and six Jewish leaders on this journey to Poland to learn about Jewish history, antisemitism, and the Holocaust. Together, we learned about the Polish-Jewish population, which now numbers less than 5,000, reduced from a pre-war total of 3.3 million due to mass murder – and later, pogroms, purges, and systemic discrimination in the Soviet system. Together, we visited Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka.
Pausing by the destroyed gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I held onto a Christian colleague as he broke down in tears. The rest of our group had gone on ahead to see other sites in what was once the vast expanse of death and torment, but he stayed behind, reading aloud the names of some who had passed, perhaps at that very spot. He then knelt and kissed the ground.
I switched into my pastoral mode as a rabbi, treating him not as a stranger but as a member of our people in distress. We both returned changed from that emotional and spiritual encounter with death.
Perhaps, we as Jews are less alone in our grief than we may fear. And I learned, in that moment, that there are other rituals that may not be Jewish but are nevertheless powerful ways to approach painful places where events took place that exceed human understanding.
The trip showed us how much we stand to gain through mutual understanding and friendship across religious differences.
Apart from recognizing a shared support for Israel, American Jews have frequently looked with suspicion upon evangelical Christians, whose worldviews and theologies differ from our own. Their massive numbers – perhaps 80 million strong – occlude their internal diversity and breadth of perspectives. But our journey to Poland taught me that many evangelical Christians can not only be our genuine allies in fighting antisemitism or supporting Israel but also our friends. Many are not seeking to use the Jewish community for messianic ends or for proselytizing, but to understand the roots of their tradition; and to inspire one another in our respective paths of faith.
"Never Again"
For Jewish participants, being with Christian leaders at the site of atrocities against our people was a source of comfort. Unlike 85 years ago, we had friends with us to bear witness and utter in earnest the words inscribed on the memorial at Treblinka: “Never Again.”
After trips to sites of massacres in the woods and then to the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz, Christian participants – including college presidents, foundation heads, pastors, and nonprofit leaders – related how much worse the Holocaust was than they could have imagined. Many fell silent in their painful or prayerful thoughts at the nearly intact gas chambers at Majdanek and the guard tower overlooking the sprawling death camp of Birkenau. These sites of death resonated personally and theologically – and called Christian participants to learn more about Judaism.
In addition to death camps, ghettos, and places of atrocity, we visited sites of Jewish communal growth. In Lublin, we learned of the growth of the yeshiva as a central institution and saw the work of Rabbi Meir Shapiro to create a larger-scale house of study, where students could live full-time while immersed in their learning.
In Warsaw, we learned about the invitation of Jews into the region 500 years ago and the evolution of kingdoms, societies, and ways of life. We studied the distinctions in scholarship and custom between Lithuania and Poland – and how those differences are mirrored in the sweetness (or lack thereof) of their cuisine. We visited beautiful synagogues in small towns, such as the one used on Shabbat in Ticocin, in Poland’s northeast.
Rabbi Poupko told the evangelical leaders, “We want you to see us as we see ourselves” – by bearing witness not only to the horrors of the Holocaust and the death camps that dot the Polish countryside but also to the fullness of Jewish life, which thrived in Poland for nearly eight centuries.
For Dr. Ryken – who had personally invited the leaders of four additional Christian colleges and universities, public intellectuals, foundation officers, and thought leaders on this journey – this was both a learning opportunity and a call to action for his fellow evangelicals as allies of the Jewish community. Indeed, many felt called to understand why antisemitism could persist, even within a country that has but a few thousand Jews left.
Walking the path of Jewish life and death in Poland with these newfound friends gave me hope and reason to believe that the future is bright. But it also affirmed the extent to which it can only thrive if we reach beyond the bounds of our own community to forge deep understandings and a sense of common cause with other faiths.
Even as there is much for us to teach, there is also much for us to learn as we continue to forge meaningful friendships across faiths. Poland was but the start of our journeys together.
The writer, a rabbi, is associate vice president of the Jewish Federations of North America, where he oversees interfaith and intergroup initiatives.