Krakow’s most active congregation was still praying on the street this week, having been locked out of the Izaak Synagogue by their landlords, the Jewish Religious Community in Krakow (“Gmina”).
Armed guards barred entry into the 17th century building on July 1 as people arrived for morning services.
Its owner and the tenants, Chabad, are engaged in a bitter dispute that saw the landlord impose steep rent increases and turn off the electricity and gas.
In protest, the blended Chabad-Orthodox congregation, led by Chabad rabbi Eliezer Gurary, has been holding services immediately outside the synagogue since last Monday.
Tensions escalated further when, in a show of defiance, Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich and JCC Krakow director Jonathan Ornstein climbed the fence into the synagogue grounds on Thursday and were questioned by police.
“Jewish leadership should not be locking Jews out of a synagogue,” said Rabbi Schudrich, who is working towards a resolution.
The Gmina did not respond to the JC’s request for comment. In a statement last week, it claimed Chabad violated the terms of its rental agreement by “destroying electrical installations” and making “unauthorised and unlawful modifications” to the building.
But sources both in and outside of Krakow told a very different story — of an insular, opaque group that owns a large property portfolio that is not being run in the interests of the Jewish community it purports to serve.
“It’s a closed community under the domination of one family,” said Michael Berenbaum, Professor of Jewish Studies at American Jewish University. He said the Gmina is equipped “with resources that is now seeking to handicap the rebirth of Jewish life in Krakow.”
The Jakubowicz family has run the Gmina for 70 years. Its current president is the family patriarch, Tadeusz, while his daughter, Helena, is the vice-president.
After the fall of communism, buildings that had belonged to Jews prior to the Holocaust were restituted to the Gmina. Today, that real estate is believed to be worth up to £80 million. Many are leased for commercial purposes.
In 2016, the former Chevra Tehilim prayer house became a nightclub named Hevre — critics called it “one of the worst examples of the exploitation of the neighbourhood’s Jewish heritage.”
The American lawyer Michael Traison, deeply involved in Polish Jewish affairs since the early 1990s, told the JC he had had “one fight” with President Jakubowicz over that decision, arguing that turning the beit midrash into a “disco bar” was “not the right thing to do.”
The Gmina’s accounting practices are opaque and financial records private. Because of the tourism boom and gentrification in Krakow’s Jewish district, its holdings are likely to generate millions of dollars in income annually. Critics say it is not being reinvested in Jewish life.
Its membership is also tightly controlled, pushing it to the periphery of Krakow’s Jewish revival, which began in the mid-1980s.
Though there are around 2,000 Jews in Krakow today, the Gmina only has 100 members.
By comparison, Krakow’s JCC has 750 members.
The Gmina “is trying to charge significant rent for the use of [the synagogue] by a vibrant, vital religious Jewish community” in its dispute with Chabad, said Prof Berenbaum. “[It is] seeking to maximise their profits and not participate in the rebuilding of Jewish life.”
Mr Jakubowicz, the Gmina president, “ought to be saying, ‘what’s good for the Jewish people?’” added Mr Traison, who recommended mediation.
“In this case [that] would be cooperating with [Rabbi Gurary], who’s the last person he needs to be in a fight with.”
