Building photo credit: Betzalel Rosenberg/Google maps. Inset photo courtesy of Congregation Sha’arei Torah
By Jeffrey Catalano
Assistant Editor
The armed uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto is a well-known act of resistance in Jewish history, but something that is lesser known is how this ghetto inspired many other acts of spiritual and intellectual resistance. Chief among them was a remarkable group made up of poets, artists and historians, known as the Oyneg Shabbes collective. These individuals courageously risked their lives to the document the grim, inhumane day-to-day reality of living under Nazi rule. They then buried these records so that future generations of Jews might be able to find and pour over them, preserving an era in time that should never be forgotten.
Among these hidden treasures were the sermons of the Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, also known as the Aish Kodesh. Despite the world falling apart all around him because of the Nazis, Rabbi Shapira found the will to never stop writing, teaching and delivering his sermons. In one note he left to the readers he tragically knew he’d never get to meet, he encouraged his works to shared “among Jacob and spread…among Israel” (Gen. 49:7), so that “each and every Jew will study my words.”
Rabbi Shapira’s last sermon came a year before his death in the concentration camp Trawniki 1943. In his 1942 sermon, he offers a remarkable and haunting glimpse into his compassionate theology. In it, he addresses not his people, but G-d Himself: “Look closely at the suffering of Your people,” he implores, urging the Divine to abandon any distant, utopian design that would justify present agony. His words echo as both a cry of pain and an unforgettable act of spiritual defiance.
Please join Congregation Sha’arei Torah, the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center and visiting scholar Dr. James A. Diamond on Saturday evening, December 6th, 8:00 p.m. to honor Rabbi Shapira’s sacred wish to bring his words to life once again, to study them and to remember.
Dr. Diamond holds the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo; his large body of writings include “Jewish Theology Unbound,” “Maimonides and The Shaping of the Jewish Canon” and many other scholarly works. His upcoming book, “Confronting Divine Rage in the Warsaw Ghetto” will be released in 2026.
In his lecture, titled, “Spiritual Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto: The Buried Sermons of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira,” Diamond will build upon his broad expertise with Jewish thinkers to explore Rabbi Shapira’s meaningful confrontation of the theological implications of the Holocaust.
