We arrived in Warsaw later than we had hoped, but we did not have a gig for that night so figured it would be OK. As it turned out they, Beit Warshava were running on "Polish time" and services started instead at 8 PM, just as we arrived. Rabbi Sid Schwarz (Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews Can Transform the American Synagogue), his wife and daughter were guests of the synagogue for several days. He had led the Seder, and led Shabbat services as well. They were very comfortable and familiar services, led in a comfortable style. The congregation meets in a very large villa, made available by a significantly wealthy Polish Jew living in LA. He runs a modeling agency in Warsaw and has some other business in LA. It's a three story building, with large meeting rooms, elegant furniture, huge bathrooms (bigger than the biggest I've seen in America), internet connection, a fully modern kitchen, a full time, live in housekeeper and cook who prepares Shabbat dinner for the community each Shabbat (with additional staff). Because the Schwarz family had already established themselves in the guest wing, we simply plugged our van into the house's electricity and enjoyed the comfort of our familiar bed, while taking advantage of the cook, the Seder leftovers, including delicious homemade macaroons, the laundry and the bathtub!
At Shabbat dinner we met Uri Heppert, who lives in Jerusalem but is an intense Polish chauvinist, complaining that most liberal and Reform leaders ignore the fact that Reform has Polish, not only German roots. We see this as well in Prague as well. Heppert, by the way is a lawyer, has written a couple of books. He gave us one in Polish which we will give to Jola, Mark's boss. Interestingly, he has worked on several social and religious cases for the Reform movement in Israel.
Mark asked Jan, the outgoing president, who helped arrange the electricity for the van, how his English was so good. In response Jan said that he had lived for many years in Canada (Toronto?), but decided to return to Warsaw, because he considers it one of the many holy cities of the Jewish experience.
We had a bit of a matzah brie contest--Sid's on Shabbat morning made with with cheese, my usual on Sunday morning with orange juice and vanilla flavor. It was a tie...
We were surprised to learn that the Polish have crackers called (pronounced?) "matzah" that look and taste just like Matzah (but are significantly smaller. And, they are not (to the best of our knowledge) kosher for Pesach.
...started late, as is apparently the expectation, we finally ended up with a Minyan using xeroxes of selections from the Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills Minyan Siddur.
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Everyone then enjoyed a lunch of much Shabbat and Seder leftovers; Mark spoke about preparing for Pesach and his Haggadah in the afternoon.
Two young women from America, working in Warsaw, invited us to stay for the "Women's Seder" to be held Monday evening. This was the first time that Mark had been invited to a Women's Seder and (while he disagrees with the concept), we were very tempted to stay. However, that would have thrown our schedule off quite a bit, so we declined.
Sid spoke about God in AM and congregation building in the afternoon. After all that sitting and talking, a walk with Sid, his family and the son of the current president to a lovely nearby park was perfect.
We decided that trying to get downtown later that evening did not make sense so we stayed at the villa reading and preparing our notes and photos for posting.