I felt many of those feelings on a trip to Krakow, Poland. Friends who knew my love for Prague had assured me that I would just adore old Krakow. But what I saw there was a rather cynical exploitation of the destroyed Jewish community. Throughout the small area of Kazimierz (the old Jewish district named after the king Kasimir the Great who in the 13th century welcomed Jews into Poland), there were Jewish restaurants touting the food of "your grandparents" and featuring Klezmer bands to make the experience authentically Jewish. Menus featured gefilte fish, kreplach, knishes and matzo ball soup. The musicians sang in phonetic Yiddish and offered some empathy for the poets and musicians who had crafted the original lyrics and melodies and been massacred in the Holocaust. But there was not a Jew among them. The audience included German high school students who had made the trip to Auschwitz and were now "learning" more about Jewish culture in a place devoid of Jews.
But then the owner of the Israel Bookstore in the district leaned closer over the tourist map of Kazimierz that we were purchasing. He said sotto voce that we must visit the Tempel Synagogue, a few streets outside the old district. "Everyone visits these old places," he said, waving his hand over the map. "Few visit the other place. Please don't miss it."
So we walked over, following the arrows he had so carefully drawn on the map. At the Tempel Synagogue, we were greeted by a sign proclaiming "There is a Jewish community alive in Krakow!" More a cultural and education center than a religious center, it runs a nursery school and hosts events to bring authentic Jewish culture back to Krakow. It has a small but growing congregation of Jews from Israel and other parts of the former Soviet bloc nations. And it connects some Krakow citizens to their almost-forgotten Jewish roots.
One woman pronounced the synagogue "beautiful." She explained that she was now interested in the Jewish side of her family and loved the feeling that she could connect to a living community, not just the gravestones and ashes left by the devastation of the Holocaust. Her sincerity sweetened the visit, leaving a hopeful taste after so much bitterness over the demise of a once-thriving center of Jewish life.