One of the most difficult challenges facing American Jewry today is that remembering the Holocaust is no longer enough. Our survivors are disappearing into history. Time dulls the mind and memory. We turn over the legacy and lessons of the Holocaust to museums, to Hebrew schools, to pulpits, to annual ceremonies. But museums cannot be the road we choose. Our children — and our future as American Jews — deserve more.

I have dedicated over 25 years of my life to teaching Jewish history and nurturing lasting Jewish identities in young people. In 1987, after 15 years of Holocaust research and teaching, I traveled to Poland for the first time in search of Jewish life before World War II. For 15 years, I have returned again and again, alone and as a guide, to this rich and undiscovered country. Undiscovered because I visit a civilization that has been erased and forgotten. Undiscovered because it has been abandoned by most field researchers and guides.

I have been disappointed by the trend I see beginning in the few formal tours that are offered to Eastern Europe. There are two themes implicit in the journey: first, that revisiting the horrors of the concentration camps is a means of gaining a Jewish identity; and second, that it is the Holocaust that must be the centerpiece of the experience.

I disagree. I have taken over 600 teenagers and adults on private trips to Eastern Europe, with the understanding that the most enduring commitments to Judaism are born of intellectual engagement with its history and its lessons. Emotion, though important, is weak currency in the struggle to maintain our lifelong strength as Jews. What we feel is best served by a foundation of knowledge and critical questioning.

Part of the reason tours overemphasize the death camps is that most guides have access to little else. But I have always known that a visit to Eastern Europe is far more than a visit to crematoria. One of the tragedies of the Holocaust is not just the destruction of Jewish lives but Jewish life — a Golden Age unprecedented in Jewish history. I have worked for over a decade to introduce my students to sites and individuals the world has never seen. I visit — and expect students to visit — as archaeologists, to unearth new remnants of a destroyed culture. We visit as historians, to interrogate the social, political, economic and cultural events that led up to the deportations. And we visit as markers, to honor those who perished in a place that has no graves.

The trip will focus on the diversity of Poland’s Jewish culture prior to the war. We will walk from the cosmopolitan cities to the back roads of former Jewish villages. We will meet and talk with bystanders and Righteous Gentiles of the war. We will sit inside the soup kitchens where they and the few remaining Polish Jews are spending their last days. We will pull weeds from the centuries-old Jewish cemeteries that have been neglected and vandalized. We will walk the railroad tracks leading into Auschwitz. We will spend Shabbat in Prague in Europe’s oldest synagogue. Each day, on-site lectures will be followed by evening discussion groups.

I am currently one of a handful of American guides to this region who has ventured so deeply inside Polish culture. In the pages that follow, you will view the trip's exceptional itinerary, highlights, and testimonials. Thank you for visiting Jewish History Study Tours.