Rabbi Berel Wein of blessed memory gave a talk once about the Jewish Diaspora experience in which he profiled the large communities in history where we thought we had made a home… until we couldn’t any longer.

Poland was his prime example.  Jews had lived in Poland for over 1,000 years, with the earliest documented communities having established deep roots as far back as the High Middle Ages. For nearly a millennium, Poland was a vital center of Jewish culture, eventually becoming home to the largest Jewish community in the world.  Prior to World War II, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, numbering roughly 3.3 million people.

After a 1,000-year history, the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust resulted in the near-complete destruction of the community, wiping out approximately 85 percent to 90% of Polish Jewry.  A thousand-year-long history almost completely wiped out in less than five years.

Those of us who were born and raised in New York, especially during the period that followed the devastation of European Jewry during the Nazi era, thought we were safe in America, but if things did turn bad, it would take a while and there would always be time to get out. Yet look what has happened in just the last three years since October 7 and at such a fast pace as well.

On Sunday, a Poetica coffee shop located in the........

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