People enter a JCC of Krakow building to help
coordinate aid for refugees.

Volunteers help the JCC of Krakow organize supplies for refugees from the war in Ukraine.

Philadelphia-area rabbis Gregory Marx, David Levin
and Jon Cutler helped unload bags containing
crucial materials for refugees.

Within two weeks, they were flying over the
Atlantic Ocean, according to Marx.

Upon arrival, the men expected to see a city in
disarray. “People living on streets or in tents,” Marx said.

But Krakow wasn’t like that. Instead, despite the
massive influx of people, it was orderly.

Ukrainian refugees were living with city residents
or in quarters put up by nongovernmental organiza-
tions. They were using convention centers and shop-
ping malls, among other locations.

“The people of Krakow are remarkably industrious
and inventive in helping the refugees,” Marx said.

“Most of the people will be taken into Polish homes
until they’re able to get back on their feet.”
That part, though, may take a while.

While the scene in Krakow was more orderly
than expected, the refugees’ lives were not. As Marx
put it, in many cases, they come across the border
with nothing but a trash bag of clothing and fear in
their eyes.

Their houses have been destroyed and their fam-
ilies separated. In many cases, women and children
are crossing to Poland while men are staying back,
either to fight or to protect their homes.

The rabbis were trying to offer assistance to “people
who otherwise have nothing,” Marx said.

One woman told Levin she’s teaching her child
never to speak Russian again.

“She said, ‘I don’t hate Putin. I hate the Russians,’”
Levin recalled. “’It’s the Russians who are tying peo-
ple up and shooting civilians.’”
Another woman told Marx about the harsh nature
that they were not alone, according to Levin.

“People are deeply grateful that we are here,” he
said. “That people are here on this side to welcome
them, to treat them with kindness.”
Ornstein was grateful for the assistance.

His JCC is not a humanitarian organization, he
explained. But it needs to become one during the war.

It would not be possible without the financial sup-
port from the Jewish community, he added. Ornstein
is seeing that “the Jewish world stands with us.”
“When we were persecuted, the world stood mostly
silent,” Ornstein said. “We cannot be silent when oth-
ers are being harmed.”
On the night of April 12, the rabbis and other
volunteers held a Passover seder. Its attendees were
Polish, Jewish and Christian. Marx said they were all
celebrating “the festival of freedom.”
“To share the story of what does freedom mean?”
Levin added. “The values of Passover are playing out
in the world as we speak.”
On April 14, the rabbis departed from Krakow,
flew back over the Atlantic and arrived home a day
before Passover started. They said they had to get
back for the important holiday. But they returned
home with a message.

“We did not go to Ukraine, but we saw the results
of that violence,” Marx said.

“It’s very hard to look into the eyes of someone who
left home and who with her child has left her husband
behind to defend his country,” Levin added.

“You cannot turn away,” Marx concluded. JE
Photos courtesy of Rabbi Gregory Marx
18 APRIL 21, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
of her journey. Marx asked if she considered herself a
refugee. She said no.

“I lost my home, but I’m going to find a new home,”
she continued, according to Marx.

“She’s going to stay here in Poland,” he added. “I
don’t think she’s going to go back.”
The rabbis spent much of their time in Krakow
doing behind-the-scenes work, as a language barrier
prevented them from talking directly with many of
the refugees. On April 13, for example, they took 60
suitcases, opened them and made piles of medicine,
toiletries and blankets, among other items.

But though most of their work was practical, as the
rabbis prepared to fly home on April 14, they still felt
like they bore witness.

JCC of Krakow Executive Director Jonathan
Ornstein, who is originally from New York, told the
rabbis at one point that, “What the people of Poland
are doing today for the Ukrainians is what they did
not do for the Jewish community in World War II.”
And that’s the message that the local Jewish leaders
will bring home, they said. Levin was impressed that
the JCC was aiding both Jews and non-Jews. Ornstein
estimated that 90% of the people his organization is
helping are not Jewish.

Marx promised that he would speak about his
experience during High Holiday services this fall.

What he saw and what he did, as well as the “atroci-
ties committed by the Russians,” as he put it.

“The sin of World War II was the sin of silence,”
Marx said. “We have to be here to be accurate
reporters.” Despite their situation, the refugees recognized
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com



arts & culture
‘Let There Be Light’ Finds
Meaning Between the Lines
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
Courtesy of Random House
L iana Finck’s “Let There Be Light:
The Real Story of Her Creation” is
hardly the first time a mere mor-
tal reinterpreted the story of creation.

In 2009, underground cartoonist
Robert Crumb published “The Book of
Genesis,” a tome depicting the 50 chap-
ters of Genesis in explicit detail. Crumb,
with exhaustive line work, illustrated
the men of the Bible as beefy and wooly
cavemen, the women as indecent and
full-bodied, their rudimentary clothing
torn to reveal ample flesh underneath.

On the cover alongside Adam and Eve
is another provocative image: An old,
white man clothed in a billowing white
robe, with a white beard dangling near
the ground over which he is hovering.

The graphic novel adaptation of the
first book of the Torah was meant to be
a very literal — and very Christian —
interpretation, but the depiction of God
as light-skinned and masculine persists
in popular culture.

In “Let There Be Light,” published
April 12 by Random House, that isn’t
the case.

A cartoonist duly employed by The
New Yorker and a Fulbright Fellow, Finck
opts out of meticulous drawings of a burly
man and an aged God to present her own
one-and-only God: a stick-figure woman
in a triangular dress, a single swooping
blob delineating a plain haircut, a dimin-
utive crown donning her head. Behold,
the omniscient God of our ancestors.

But really, the simple-looking girl
Finck conceived God as is just that:
Finck’s conception.

“Let There Be Light” is far from a
feminist polemic about what would
happen if God was depicted in Biblical
texts as a woman. Instead, Finck asserts
that just as humans are made in God’s
image in the story of creation, God can
be made in the image of an unassum-
ing cartoonist whose squiggly-line text
bubbles and uneven shading make it
clear she is far from perfect.

God sits on her puffy, minimalist
cloud and peeks down at her creations,
from a wobbly Adam, Eve and Lilith the
snake to Joseph, whose prophetic dreams
are, according to Finck, so boring, that
she refuses to illustrate them.

In the telling of the book of Genesis,
Finck takes some major liberties.

Ditching the desert, she draws Abram
as an art school student, assigned by
God to create a great masterpiece. He
wears a sloppy, curly pompadour and
thin, wiry glasses instead of the usual
robe and becomes more of an image of a
2014 hipster nightmare than the Jewish
forefather. Finck, in her author’s note, writes that
she isn’t particularly religiously minded.

Her skepticism of the biblical telling of
creation are clear, as are her grievances
with the way women, enslaved and vic-
tims of sexual abuses are often swept
under the storytelling rug.

Yet clearly she believes the stories of
the Torah have merit. Even if, in her
mind, they aren’t factual, they at least
contain truth.

In her sometimes simplified and
abridged telling of Genesis, Finck inter-
weaves midrashim: In the telling of the
story of Isaac, Finck describes him as
a laughing child until Abraham, asked
by God, intends to sacrifice him. Knife
brandished toward him, Isaac stops
laughing. Finck writes next to an under-
stated asterisk at the bottom of a page
that Isaac would become a totally differ-
ent person after the intended sacrifice.

Trauma changes people.

Published three days before Passover,
“Let There Be Light” is, almost painfully,
an apt telling of the events of so long ago,
but also a telling of the times today.

Though Biblical texts have long been
upsetting and alienating to some, the
minimalism and restraint of Finck’s pan-
els are a balm. When the minutiae of
Biblical time and space are gone, what
remains is the mind and soul of the
reader, who is gently invited to see them-
selves in the archetypes of characters in
a world once absurd and far away, but
now held closely in a page between their
fingertips. JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com “BEAUTY
AND THE
BEAST” ART EXHIBIT AND SALE
Oil paintings
by Hal Robinson
May 1 to June 2
At The Waverly Gallery
1400 Waverly Road,
Gladwyne, PA 19035
Artist’s reception,
Sunday, May 1, 4-6 PM
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 19