A Warsaw yeshiva ordained the first rabbis in Poland since World War II.
Nine rabbinical students were ordained Sunday by the Chabad-Lubavich Yeshiva of Warsaw during a ceremony at the Hilton Hotel.
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and former chief rabbi of Israel, attended the ceremony. Lau was born in Poland and survived the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The yeshiva opened in 2005 as the first post-Holocaust yeshiva in Poland, according to the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Poland, Rabbi Shalom Ber Stambler. It can admit up to 15 students.
“The voice of the Torah is once again heard in Poland,” Stambler said. “We are the next link of the chain of Jewish generations, which the Nazis wanted to break. Today the students of the yeshiva have become rabbis and will help strengthen Judaism all around the world.”
More than 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland before World War II, but most were killed or died in Nazi death camps and ghettos. Today there are about 20,000 Polish Jews.
