First rabbis ordained in Poland since the Holocaust
By Reuters
Tags: Jewish World, Poland, Israel
Two rabbis, the first to be ordained in Poland since World War Two,
received their diplomas from Warsaw's Rabbinical College on Sunday.

Nine students from the United States and Israel were granted
rabbinical rights at a ceremony presided over by Poland's chief rabbi,
U.S.-born Michael Schudrich, and attended by Jewish clergy from
Poland, Israel and Britain.

This was a ceremony of historic proportions," said Rabbi Szalom Ber
Stambler, who heads the college. "For centuries, Poland had been a
world center of Jewish studies laying down the code of proper Jewish
conduct."

Most of Poland's 3.5 million Jews were killed by the Nazi Germans in
ghettos and extermination camps during World War Two. Since Poland
ended communist rule in 1989, a Jewish religious and cultural
renaissance has been under way. The college was re-established in
2005.

"Nothing remains of the German invaders who wanted to destroy the
Jewish nation, but the Yeshiva (Jewish school) building has survived,"
remarked Rabbi Gedalia Herc of London. "Warsaw had always been a
center of Jewish culture, to which Jews from all over the world
travelled to partake of the wisdom of the Torah," remarked one of the
new rabbis, Jakub Kruglak of Israel.
Mon., June 30, 2008 Sivan 27, 5768