A leading Orthodox rabbi today urged the Jewish community in Cracow, Poland, to prevent a scheduled Bar Mitzvah there because the ceremony is to be officiated by a Reform woman rabbi.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of North America, telegraphed Tzeslav Jakubowicz, head of the Cracow Jewish community, seeking to prevent what he described as a potential “desecration” of the Remu Synagogue, where the ceremony is to take place. The Bar Mitzvah of Eric Strom, an eighth grader from Stamford, Conn., is scheduled for September 7 in the 15th century Remu Synagogue, the oldest in use in Poland and the only one in operation in Cracow. There are some 200 Jews in Cracow with an average age of 73.
Strom is travelling to Poland along with a delegation of 12 persons, including his parents, sister, two grandmothers and one grandfather. Joining with the delegation is Rabbi Emily Korzenick, spiritual leader of the Fellowship for Jewish Learning in Stamford.
According to Feinstein, Poland “has never had any Reform rabbis in any synagogue in Poland and especially in Cracow. Therefore, we are protesting not to allow a Reform woman rabbi to officiate at the forthcoming Bar Mitzvah.”
In announcing the planned Bar Mitzvah, the first celebration of its kind in Cracow in 35 years, there was no mention whether Korzenick would actually officiate the ceremony. The Bar Mitzvah is the outgrowth of a visit to Cracow last April by a group of Federation of Jewish Philanthropies trustees and leaders on a UJA-Federation Campaign of New York trip.
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