Life / LAST JEW IN POLAND - comedy play [5]

The Last Jew in Poland, which has been playing at Warsaw's Teatr na Woli since February 2009, is a comedy on anti-Semitism and xenophobia. It was written by Tuvia Tenenbom and is directed by Olga Chajdas. The play tells the story of two Poles, living in the city of Lodz, who fall in love with each other and plan to get married. The groom, knowing that his beautiful fiancée hates Jews, never reveals his Jewish identity to her. He claims to be an atheist. Just before the wedding day a Mormon missionary from Utah, whose assignment is to uncover Jewish families in Lodz, declares that the groom is the son of a Nazi officer and the bride is Jewish.

This is yet another example of the constant rehashing of real or alleged Polish anti-Semitism in Poland's news and entertainment media. One rarely if ever hears the terms Jewish anti-Polonism or Jewish Polonophobia. I wonder why? Is it because it doesn't exist and the Jews love us so?!

Life / ANY POLISH CLIPART ONLINE? [7]

I did manage to find 4 busts (Kopernik, Chopin, Mickiewicz and Słowacki) but by and large I have been unable to locate sites devoted to a wider range of Polish clipart.

I mean Polish eagles, other portraits (Kościusko, Piłsudski, Pułaski, Wałesa, kings, etc.),
famous buildings and monuments (eg King Zygmunt monument, Jasna Góra, Wawel, Wilanów, Lazienki) and various traditonal symbols and images: folk dancers, Podhale-style chalet, Lajkonik, hussar, Eatser Lamb, pisankil. Maybe I just don't know where to look?!

Food / CORN SYRUP IN POLISH KIEŁBASA? [4]

Buffalo, NY's well-known Polish sausage maker Wardyński's lists corn syrup amongst the ingredients of their Polish kiełbasa. Anyone ever heard of adding corn syrup or sugar to the Polish sausaege meat? What is the purpose?

News / THOUSANDS OF YOUNG ISRAELIS FLOODING POLAND [93]

The educational project for high school students has been expanded to include opportunities of personal contact between Polish and Israeli youth.

Each year thousands of Israeli high school students come to Poland to learn about the land from where many of their forefathers had come. It is part of the 'Children of Israel' educational project. The trip is preceded by a one year course on the history of the Holocaust.

Until recently, their stay in Poland consisted mostly of visits to museums and places of remembrance connected with the Jewish wartime tragedy, such as the sites of Nazi German death camps in Auschwitz or Majdanek.

Lately, this program has been expanded to include opportunities of meeting Polish youth. Thanks to this they are experiencing Poland from a different angle, at ordinary school level. History is an important element of every nation's indentity, but equally important is making the best of our present to create foundations for a better future, argue the organizers.

Food / POLISH "CHEMICALISED" CONVENIENCE FOODS [23]

Some educated Poles refer to all the instant foods, soup mixes, cake mixes, hot mugs, assorted heat & eat things and snacks, of which there are more and more on the Polish market, as "czysta chemia" (pure chemistry). They say food-industry moguls use deceptive wording like nature-identical to suggest that the lab-produced ingredients are somehow natural. They print "no preservatives" on the package only because benzoate of soda is absent without informing that many other substances can serve as chemical preservatives. Or they say "contains no sugar" but mean only sachrose (beet or cane sugar), whereas dextrose (maize sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), glucose (grape sugar) and others are also sugars. Are any of you also concerned about the amount of chemicals (stabilisers, acidity regulators, emulsifiers, artifical flavouring, etc.) being ingested in all the colourfully packged fake foods on the market?

USA, Canada / HOLY SATURDAY FOOD BELSSING IN YOUR AREA? [13]

If there are parishes in your area that perform the Holy Saturday blessing of Easter baskets, where does the blessing take place? Indoors or out? Are baskets placed in the aisle, kept in the pew, taken up to the altar or set on a special table? In Poland they are mostly placed on specially set-up tables indoors or out, depending on the weather.

What do typical baskets contain?