Sparks Amidst the Ashes: the Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry (review)

Abstract

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 320-323 Byron L. Sherwin. Sparks Amidst the Ashes: the Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. 176. In the summer of 1989, twenty-two Catholic theologians from Poland studied Judaica at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago. Byron L. Sherwin, the Institute's vice president and professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism, acted as the chief instructor and curriculum developer for the Polish group. One week after the Polish group's departure, Sherwin received an invitation from the Polish Episcopate's Commission on Dialogue with Judaism to participate in an interfaith conference in Poland. Against the advice of many friends and family (a common experience for American Jewish travelers to Poland in the 1990s), Sherwin, a second-generation American who stems from a long line of eminent Polish rabbis, accepted the invitation and traveled to Poland in May 1990. Sherwin would return to Poland several times in the first half of the 1990s, speaking and participating in Catholic-Jewish dialogue conferences at universities in Warsaw and Cracow, at Catholic and Jesuit colleges, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and at diocesan seminaries in Lublin, Wloclawek, Gniezno, Bialystok and Poznan. In 1995, the Vocatio Publishing Company of Warsaw published a selection of Sherwin's lectures under the title, Duchowe Dziezictwo Zydow Polskich (The Spiritual Heritage of Polish Jews). Sparks Amidst the Ashes, which is an expanded and updated version of the Polish publication, is divided into twelve essays on a variety of topics, including the legacy of Jewish rabbinic culture in early modern Poland, Hassidism, the Musar movement, the Holocaust, and a concluding essay on contemporary Polish-Jewish relations. Three main themes run through the collection of essays: the spiritual legacy of Polish Jewry, American Jewry's relationship to its largely Polish-Jewish heritage, and contemporary PolishJewish relations. At the heart of Sherwin's book is the extreme argument, first formulated by Sherwin's mentor, Abraham Joshua Heschel, that American Jewry was committing a "second Holocaust" by severing itself from Polish Jewry's vast legacy of piety and learning, "an exercise in spiritual suicide disguised as a success story in social dynamics, political activism, and communal organization" (p. ix). Whereas traditional Polish Jewry believed that observance and study of Jewish law assured Jewish survival, the concept of "Jewish continuity" in contemporary American and Israeli life, Sherwin argues, is based on a new "civic religion." The State of Israel and the lessons of Auschwitz, the new idea asserts, will assure Jewish continuity in the post-Holocaust world. The Holocaust "represents death and SHERWIN, SPARKS AMIDST THE ASHES—ZIMMERMAN32 1 destruction; Israel represents survival and rebirth. This idea has become the most fundamental dogma of Jewish communal life today" (p. 81). The fact that the twin pillars on which Jewish continuity is based— Israel and the Holocaust—has little relationship to Judaism is potentially disastrous for the Jewish future, Sherwin argues. A "Jewish communal agenda rooted in survivalism" has made the call for "Jewish continuity" hollow: "Continuity with what?" (p. 87). According to Sherwin, the answer lies in the rediscovery of Polish Jewry's spiritual legacy: "The spiritual heritage of Polish Jewry can provide a foundation for an authentic Jewish continuity, an alternative to obsolete forms of Jewish secularism, and a conceptual framework and a value system for the re-creation of Judaism in the future" (p. 87). Sherwin goes further and argues that American Jewry's "civil religion" itself poses a danger for Jewish survival: "From the perspective of Polish Jewry, the Torah is the only authentic and viable foundation of individual and communal Jewish life. Study of the Torah is the only basis for Jewish continuity." He concludes that political liberalism, American -Jewish ethnicity or Israeli Jewish national identity "serve not only to replace and to circumvent, but also to subvert the spiritual heritage of Polish Jewry. They offer visions of Jewish identity that are incompatible with the continuity of Judaism as a religious faith" (p. 98). To bolster his call for contemporary Jewry to reclaim the legacy of its Polish past, Sherwin embarks on a fascinating and erudite presentation...