Monday, Warsaw

Here we are! Tim, Doreen, Mom (Estelle) and I arrived safely this afternoon to Warsaw, to beautiful weather...followed hours later by a huge and exciting thunderstorm--feels like home! We learned on the bus transfer to the hotel that there are 2 million residents of Warsaw and 750,000 in Krakow, and that Warsaw, pre-WWII, was 30% Jewish. All gone now. Tomorrow we will visit several memorial sites. I am sure this part of the trip will prove quite sobering.
We are in a part of the city that is completely brand new post-War, having been so heavily bombed.
There is an opeining ceremony this evening at the Noszyk Synagogue...I myself am staying back in my hotel to work on music for our show at the Yiddish Theatre on Wednesday morning. I arrived to the hotel only to drop my bags and go straight to rehearsal for a couple of hours. This is a bit of a nail-biter, all new music. It WILL go well come Wednesday! What an honor it is to be able to perform here in yiddish.

on our way...

Many of you have been asking, "Who is going on this trip?" Please allow me to introduce the cast of characters: there's me, of course, your friendly Cantor, Julie McCoy...and my mom, Estelle Shammash (stay tuned to find out how we fare as roommates for two weeks! I am bringing earplugs, for starters); Jeff and Barbara Katzman of King of Prussia, who have spent this week in Budapest and Prague prior to meeting up in Warsaw tomorrow--we hope to hear more about that (Prague being one of the greatest cities ever); Paula Goldberg of Norristown and her sister, Chana, who have visited their hometown of Lodz this week, and I cannot wait to find out about that piece of their journey. Paula might be one of the most interesting people you could ever meet, ps--if you do not know her, you should make it a point to find her at TBI and ask her about her rich life! ; and Tim and Doreen Linehan of Chalfont, who are taking their first trip to Israel and are very excited about that!

Tim, Doreen and I are on a 10:55 pm flight out of JFK tonight. I think it might be sort of like "Cantor Camp," as many of my colleagues are on this flight--it makes me wonder if anyone will get any sleep. I am most excited to meet up with Cantor Debbie Bletstein, who is my best friend from JTS and makes her home now in Des Moines. Unfortunately, we have barely had time to catch up since last year's convention! From our area, Cantors Stephen Freedman (Temple Sinai, Dresher) and Eliot Vogel (Har Zion, Penn Valley) and his wife, Karen, will be joining us. By the time we arrive, I believe there will be 300 of us in total--how much Jewish geography do you think we can play??

My mom is pictured here with "Tova Torah." Tova comes with us as a gift of Eileen Kupersmith, Early Childhood Director, so that we can share news of Tova's travels abroad with the pre-schoolers in the Fall.