Rabbi Marc Boone Fitzerman
August 2009
AN EVENING WITH MAZOWSZE
One
Masowsze, the National Folk Ensemble of Poland, regularly tours the ethnic cities of America. I never catch them because I live far away; there are very few Poles in the cities of the Southwest. Since the troupe is sustained by the love of its landsleit, there would not be much point in heading my way. But every so often, I see a notice of a performance. These moments have an odor that summons feeling and memory. I know Masowsze and I think about it often. It clings like smoke to my clothes, to my hair.
It is easy, still, to recall the moment of intitiation, despite the fact that it is decades old. I arrive with misgivings, the captive of free tickets. My feet, never much adept at the hopscotch of folk dancing, seem to me slack and ignorant, incapable of intricacy. But Mazowsze asks only that I appreciate the apotheosis of the form. The Kansas City Music Hall is wall to wall: subscribers, students, the grey-hairs in their boxes. And in their midst, busloads of Poles. More Poles than I have ever seen in this city. Where do they live? What do they do? When did they come to the plains and the prairies?
It occurs to me that Mazowsze is for them what Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur are for me: great tribal occasions of ingathering and communion. You can see it in the expectant agitation of the crowd. The part of the audience that really counts is here to be plugged in, to recharge the spirit. It is here to stand in the presence of Polishness and inhale the geist of the long-ago homeland.
I suppose that I, too, have a Polish connection, though I am not certain that it would be acknowledged or honored here. Kielce, Szeritz, Piotrkov Trybunalski: the Jewish towns of my grandparents, the shtetlach of my in-laws. They are the towns they left or were taken from by night, all according to the vagaries of time. And yet the names on the program are unfamiliar: “Shepherds’ Songs and Dance from Jurgow” and “Karnaval from the Holy Cross Mountain Region.” How did my family refer to those mountains?
A hundred years later, here in this city, I am still an outsider, beyond Polish history. I feel as I once did when I thought of approaching an association of Polish Americans for a college scholarship. There are Poles and there are Poles; they would have smiled at my chutzpah.
Two
The music begins and suddenly the stage is full of sabers and market aprons. Eighty young Poles smile fiercely forward while they do the hard work of cultural preservation. How do they feel about what they do? This is the generation beyond Solidarity, a generation at home in the gritty politics of confrontation.
Meanwhile, these perfect and presentable Poles drill each day in dances of the field and farm, or mincing processionals from the Polish court. I think much later, with some amusement, that there should have been a “Restructured Economy Dance from the Gdansk Shipyard Region.” In my mind’s choreography, the dancers and musicians stream off the stage and into the arms of Polish expatriates. A new world is formed in an frenzy of entrepreneurialism as the company and audience leave the auditorium, striking deals for redevelopment. Some wear dirndls and frock coats, some polyester leisure suits. Only in America.
Three
The music continues and evokes wave after wave of parti¬colored dancers from the wings of the stage. Some of the time they carry axes and staves, the fairy tale props of peasants and wayfarers. These are soon exchanged for leather whips, cracking merrily in time with music from Szamotuly. I am vaguely aware of more pacific accompaniments. At one point, the dancers construct a lovely arbor with flexible rods wrapped in greenery. And yet somehow it is the whips that make the impression. It is the weaponry of folklore that leaves the deepest crease.
Meanwhile, I am lost in my obsessions. One of my companions passes me her binoculars and suddenly a group of Polish women—¬virginal, immaculate, swathed entirely in white—are singing like angels directly to me. Each mouth blows hope and penitence in my direction. Each strong heart beats in a rhythm of regret, begging my forgiveness for unmentionable crimes. We stand on mountain-tops, stretching towards one another in fervent longing and
final frustration.
In a moment, the opportunity passes. It occurs to me that the only conversation I can have with a Pole is one which would certainly exhaust us both. Which of you nodded toward my children’s grandparents? Which one of you whispered the fatal word?
It is true that we stand on mountaintops, but we have no blessings to bestow on one another. The memory of malediction hangs in the air between us.
Four
By this time I am no longer present for the performance. The stage seems to fill again and again. Sometimes it is men in braid and epaulets; sometimes ladies with filmy empire gowns from Jane Austen. And then, from the depths of the Music Hall stage, tumbling peasants take their places. In one hilariously incongruous sequence, the company gathers downstage to sing “Dinah,” an American folk song tribute to the good people of the heartland.
But I am elsewhere, alone and forlorn, in a land of hurt and wandering. Who will sing our songs? Who will dance our dances? I take the binoculars once again and scan each face for some sign of kinship. Pole, Pole, Pole, and then something else. Pole, Pole, Pole, and then something else again. A nose that belongs in the Fitzerman family, with eyes and hair and complexion to match. A face that belongs in the albums of the Berkofskys and the Blitzblaus—and not the publicity stills for Mazowsze.
How did such a face come to be? I remind myself that there are Jewish Poles: men and women of my own generation, remnants of remnants from the time before. Not enough to staff the Yiddish Theater of Warsaw; that is the business of modern-day Polish gentiles. But here and there, a few Jews grow beards. A few bake challah and circumcise their sons.
And a few, apparently, dance for Mazowsze, arm in arm with their Polish countrymen. “Dance our dances and sing our songs. We are afraid that there is nothing more we can offer.”
The dancing ends, the curtain closes, sealing the compact these Jews and Poles have made. In the rush for the exits, I chide myself for expecting more than the human heart can offer. Let no one suffer on my account. If these Jews can dance then I can bear to watch them.
