October 11, 2012

(JTA) — Krakow’s Progressive Jewish community has received its first Torah scroll, which was donated by a sister community in Milano.

The Torah scroll arrived in Poland and at the Beit Krakow community on Oct. 5 along with several members of Milano’s Beth Shalom Jewish Reform Congregation, according to Magda Koralewska of Beit Krakow.

Rabbi Leigh Lerner of Beth Shalom and the community’s president, David Ross, presented the scroll at the Galicia Jewish Museum, which has functioned as Beit Krakow’s synagogue building since the community was established in 2009. 

The initial contact between the communities was made in March in Amsterdam, when delegates from both communities happened to speak at the bi-annual conference of the European Union for Progressive Judaism. “They had several scrolls,” Koralewska said of Beth Shalom, which was established in Milano in 2002.  “We, in Krakow, had none. It made sense.”

Also attending the event in Krakow was Miriam Kramer from London, who assumed the position of chair of the European Union for Progressive Judaism earlier this year. It was her first visit to Poland. “I felt it’s the best sort of wedding that I could ever here,” she said.

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