The Matzevah Foundation (TMF), a U.S.-based Christian NGO that has worked to clean and restore Jewish cemeteries in Poland since its foundation in 2010, is winding down its activities and will cease direct field work.
“While the task of restoring and caring for Jewish cemeteries in Poland continues, we have a sense of accomplishment in what we set out to do,” an announcement on its web site from its founder and president he American Baptist minister Steven D. Reece said.
Numerous local Polish individuals and organizations are now effectively continuing the cultural stewardship we helped initiate. We believe our goal of “awakening” this stewardship has been accomplished. We look forward to continuing to champion their work and dedication for many years to come.
Reece has stressed that his key motivation in founding TMF was to foster reconciliation. Each summer, in partnership with various Jewish and civic NGOs, academic institutions, descendants, faith communities, and others, TMF led field sessions to clean up and restore several Jewish cemeteries. It also carried out commemorative and educational work.
Over the years, more than 4,000 people from all over the world have taken part in this work through 60 different projects. Together, we spoke for those who have no voice today. We connected Polish-Jewish descendants with their antecedent Polish-Christian communities and witnessed the power of pojednanie (reconciliation) as long-held assumptions were transformed through shared labor.
Projects encompassed around a score of Jewish cemeteries in Poland (and one in Ukraine).
Reece, who in recent years received a PhD and a Fulbright grant based on his Jewish cemetery work, began to research Jewish cemeteries in Poland in 2004, when he lived there working with the Baptist Church of Poland.
He had learned Polish and studied Polish history and culture, he wrote in a 2016 JHE Have Your Say personal essay titled Working towards Reconciliation: A Christian’s Involvement in the Restoration of Jewish Cemeteries.
And then, he wrote “One day in 2004, I met a woman of Jewish descent In Otwock, near Warsaw. Our conversation led to an unexpected suggestion for me to visit a Jewish cemetery in Otwock. I began to wonder: Why was this Jewish cemetery important to her?”
Due to the Shoah, the Jewish community was small and mostly unable to care for the more than 1,200 Jewish cemeteries that lie scattered, abandoned, and neglected across Poland. In the face of the need, I wondered: What should I do? What could I do?
I began to consider how I might involve Christian volunteers in caring for one neglected Jewish cemetery in Otwock. In March 2005, I met with Aleks Schwarz, the representative of the Chief Rabbi of Poland and a member of the Rabbinical Commission for Matters of Cemeteries in Poland. He asked me, “Why would you wish to bring Baptist volunteers to work in a Jewish cemetery?”
I answered him simply with one word, “reconciliation.” With that one word, I began a journey with Aleks and the Jewish community. We work towards reconciliation. I am learning that reconciliation is bringing parts together. Reconciliation is a relationship. It is a process of reconnecting, and it is something towards which we have labored for eleven years now, as my work with Aleks and the Jewish community has evolved and transformed.
2 comments on “Poland: The Matzevah Foundation is winding down activities and ceasing direct field work”
I was privileged to have joined in a cleanup of a Polish cemetery with the Matzevah Foundation in 2024. It was a fabulous experience and I am saddened to learn that this organization will not be continuing this important work. I am grateful for their work over the years and would like to thank Steven Reece and all the participants in the Mitzvah Foundation.
Fantastic work by T.M.F. and such a shame it’s not continuing! Is that because of lack of funding? Are there other organisations that do this type of work in Poland and other places?
So much more to be done!