FODZ was invited to join partners who are involved in the preparations of  second annual JewishGen Future Scholars Fellowship program to take place in Poland from July 5, 2022 – July 14, 2022. Graduate students, along with current third and fourth-year undergraduate students, are invited to apply. This immersive program, created in partnership with The Matzevah Foundation, and the Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland, focuses on the role of Jewish cemeteries today in preserving the memory and legacy of former Jewish communities. The purpose of this program is to inspire and begin the training of the future generation of leaders in Jewish genealogical involvement. Focusing on Poland, its initiators seek to explore basic tools of genealogical searching in Poland, once home to more than half of world Jewry. Participants will help clean-up a cemetery, learn about symbols and epitaphs on tombstones, the general state of Jewish cemeteries in Poland after the Holocaust, efforts to preserve them from both a communal, political, and Halachic perspective.  On this 10-day journey, participants will tour many Jewish heritage sites including Warsaw and Lublin, spend an inspirational Shabbat in Krakow, visit Auschwitz/Birkenau, and then travel to Przysucha, where the group will participate in the clean-up and preservation of the Jewish cemetery in partnership with a Polish university student group. Participants will also be able to visit the local synagogue. FODZ has a role as the owner of both the cemetery and the synagogue in Przysucha.

» back