13 February 2007
Hundreds of Jews in the eastern Polish city of Lublin were jubilant as they opened a restored Jewish school, which also houses a synagogue. Chief rabbi Michael Schudrich unveiled the first restoration work at what was once a famed center of religious learning – an emotional moment in the revival of Poland's small but growing Jewish community. To the music of a Chassidic march, rabbi Schudrich and two other Jewish leaders were lifted high into the air by a crane Sunday to unveil the name of the school, Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin. The inscription, in Polish and Hebrew letters, and the elegant columned yellow building stand as a testament to the Jewish life and learning that flourished in the eastern Polish city before it was destroyed by the Holocaust.
The school was returned to Warsaw's Jewish community thanks to a 1997 law restituting Jewish communal property to the country's Orthodox community. Leaders stressed that the renovation of the yeshiva marked the first time since the war that the community had been able to restore one of its former properties from its own resources, rather than depending on donations from abroad. Before World War II, the Lublin yeshiva and its synagogue were considered one of the world's most prestigious Jewish rabbinical schools.
