Jewish Revival in Poland: a neo-Nazi does teshuvah
The NY Times has a story of Jewish revival in Poland, told through the lens of a former neo-Nazi turned ultra-Orthodox Jew:
“I still struggle every day to discard my past ideas,” said Pawel, a 33-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew and former truck driver, noting with little irony that he had to stop hating Jews in order to become one. “When I look at an old picture of myself as a skinhead, I feel ashamed. Every day I try and do teshuvah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for repentance. “Every minute of every day. There is a lot to make up for.” [read the story here]
I just stumbled on a Hasidic proverb in Pico Iyer’s “The Open Road” that this story brought to mind:
“You must invent your own religion or else it will mean nothing to you. You must follow the religion of your fathers, or else you will lose it.”
