25 February 2008
For the first time since the 1930s, Poland's rabbis are represented by a single organization, following the re-launch of the Rabbinical Association of Poland at a special ceremony in Lodz. The event was attended by Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yona Metzger, who signed a special scroll together with Polish chief rabbi Michael Schudrich and all of the community rabbis currently serving in Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz and Wroclaw, declaring the formal re-establishment of the association. "It's a historic event," Symcha Keller, head of the Jewish community in Lodz, said, adding: "The creation of the council marks the return to the good old ways of governing the Jewish community in Poland.”
The original Rabbinical Association of Poland existed up until the outbreak of the Second World War and included all of the country's rabbis. The Lodz ceremony took place as part of Shavei Israel's annual conference for ‘Hidden Jews’, which brought together 150 participants from across Poland, many of whom only recently learned that they have Jewish roots. According to various estimates, between 5,000 and 15,000 Jews live in Poland today. Before the Holocaust, the country was home to around 3.5 million Jews, representing around 10 percent of the country's population and Europe's largest Jewish community.
