Rabbi Polak Holocaust Memoir Dramatic Reading and Book Signing
When:
Wednesday, May 08, 2019 7:00p -
9:00p
Wednesday, May 08, 2019 7:00p -
9:00p
Where:
Congregation Shalom
87 Richardson Rd
N. Chelmsford, MA 01863
Admission:
FREE
Categories:
Performing Arts, Social Good
Event website:
https://congregationshalom.org/highlight/dramatic-reading-from-award-winning-holocaust-memoir-may-8/#more-22927
Please note that unfortunately this event has been canceled.
Rabbi Joseph Polak, author of the acclaimed memoir "After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring," will present a unique and dramatic reading from his memoir. A book signing will follow.
A toddler survivor of two concentration camps, together with his mother, Rabbi Polak, who is Chief Justice of the Rabbinic Court (Bet Din) of Massachusetts, will read from the chapter ‘Tanya’ (written as a play with three characters) in this memoir, which was a 2015 winner of the National Jewish Book Award, and is now scheduled to be published in Hebrew translation by Yad Vashem. Rabbi Polak is also an an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health and rabbi emeritus of the Boston University Hillel House.
Rabbi Polak’s memoir is a fascinating recounting of a mother and child who miraculously survive two camps (Westerbork, a transit camp in the Netherlands, and Bergen-Belsen, in Germany). The issue of memory is explored in this extraordinary book, which includes a stirring forward by Elie Wiesel, who was Rabbi Polak’s intimate friend.
As summarized at goodreads.com, this memoir goes on to describe "how after the War Polak and his mother battle demons of the past, societal rejection, disbelief, and invalidation as they struggle to reenter the world of the living. … It is the story of the child who decides, upon growing up, that the only career that makes sense for him in light of these years of horror is to become someone sensitive to the deepest flaws of humanity, a teacher of God’s role in history amidst the traditions that attempt to understand it, and to become a rabbi."
As virtually all Holocaust survivors alive today were children at the time of the horrors, "We feel a need to tell, to share our stories," Rabbi Polak has said in interviews. "We are the last witnesses to what happened. We were there."
All are welcome to be there to listen, with just an RSVP to [email protected].
