Tangible judaism
MI POLIN is the first Polish Judaica company since World War II.
MI POLIN was created by Helena Czernek and Aleksander Prugar in 2014 to design and produce contemporary Judaica from Poland. Interpretation is at the very essence of Judaism, and we interpret Jewish tradition and symbolism by our products to enrich Jewish life and strengthen Jewish identity.
Helena (b. 1985, Warsaw) studied Product Design at Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and Hebrew Studies at Warsaw University. She deals with Jewish design, graphics, photography, calligraphy and Japanese wood block printing. Her project (a collaboration with Klara Jankiewicz) a crosswalk of a shape of piano key was awarded 1st place in a competition for designs promoting the 2010 “Year of Chopin” in Warsaw. She designed also a yellow paper daffodil for the Museum of The History of Polish Jews as a symbol of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Aleksander (b. 1984, Gliwice) studied Journalism and Mass Communication at Warsaw University, Social Sciences at Katowice School of Economics and film course at National Film School in Łódź. For 5 years he worked as a photojournalist with the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2009, critics, art historians and photo-editors associated with the Month of Photography in Krakow included him in the top hundred of the most significant Polish artists of the decade working in the field of photography.
In September 2023, Aleksander cut out of active involvement in MI POLIN and sold part of his stake in the venture.
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The March of Rememberance in 2014 was organized by the Jewish Historical Institute in partnership with MI POLIN. We designed the graphics for the March of Rememberance and created the idea concerning the documents from the Ringelblum Archive. We chose signatures of real people from documents from the Archive.
The paper daffodils were designed by Helena Czernek for the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The campaign has been run by the Museum of The History of Polish Jews since 2014. The daffodils symbolize memory. For a long time, every year Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, used to get a bunch of daffodils from an anonymous person. Edelman decided to bring these flowers to the Monument of the Ghetto Heroes. The “daffodil campaign” is a kind of continuation of that gesture, a memory.
We made bright ecumenical trees for Holidays in Kazimierz – former Jewish District in Krakow at Brzozowa Square. In 2014 Hanukah and Christmas started and finished at the same time. By this event we wanted to create a common holiday atmosphere to enojy this unique time.
The Trees of Light were created in a cooperation with The Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow and The Machers.
Our bronze mezuzah based on the mezuzah trace form Ząbkowska 12 in Warsaw was given as a statuette to President of American Jewish Committee John Shapiro during Global Forum 2019.
We were asked by the american organization The Workmen’s Circle to design for them a spacial pin for the 75th anniversary of the Ghetto Uprising. The pins had to be connected to the Ghetto. We decided to make an imprint of the brick of the Ghetto Wall. The part of the Ghetto Wall survived at Złota Street in Warsaw. We wrote “Mir Zaynen do” on the imprint – “We are here” in Yiddish.
The biggest synagogue for the LGBTQ in New York was opened after 43 years! On each of 36 doors our bronze mezuzahs were affixed. By this collection Poland is much closer to the Congregation Beit Simchat Torah and we are closer to CBST as well. The Mayor of New York City Bill DiBlasio, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, and CBST President Nate Goldstein affixed a Mi Polin mezuzah to the front door at their dedication ceremony.
We give lectures on mezuzah traces and our research. Here we talked:
Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia
Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City
Holocaust Education Week in Toronto
Toronto Reference Library
Limmud Toronto
Jewish Community Library in San Francisco
Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków
JCC Kraków
Museum of Masovian Jews in Płock
We designed a short series of mezuzahs for JCC Krakow!
We showed our works at many exhibitions.
Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw
JCC Warsaw
Miles Nadal JCC in Toronto
Fenster Gallery in Toronto
Osher Marin JCC in San Rafael
Peninsula JCC in Foster City
BWA Bielsko-BIała
Museum of Masovian Jews in Płock
During our adventure, we found 165 traces of mezuzahs in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania and Hungary. We created the largest database of mezuzah traces in the world.
We have met many fantastic people through our years of searching for traces of mezuzahs. We have always enjoyed every meeting and we remember every meeting.
Jewish Museum in NYC
Etnographic Museum in Warsaw
Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna
Museum of the city of Krakow
As the Mi Polin / From Poland Foundation, we organized the first educational festival dedicated to mezuzahs in Poland. During the Mezuzah Festival (Festiwal Mezuza), we introduced Warsaw residents to the city’s Jewish past, the symbolic meaning of the mezuzah and the documentary activities of the Foundation. The Festival began with a walk through Warsaw’s Praga district in the traces of the last mezuzahs. The main part of the Festival took place at the JCC Warsaw. Lectures were devoted to the mezuzah and Jewish Warsaw, and the exhibition “Mezuzah – Memory – Identity” presented 100 traces of mezuzahs found and documented by us.
