The rare spectacle that took place this week in the Polish town of Izbica, the participants will not forget for many years to come.
Among the hundreds of people who accompanied Yaakov Zvi Griner on his last journey were Jews and Christians alike.
The funeral procession began at a church in Jaffa and ended with a Jewish burial on Polish soil, with rugs of land from Eretz Israel, since the deceased was a Jewish Holocaust survivor who spent most of his life as a priest in the city of Jaffa.
"It was a particularly exciting and thrilling class, not to be forgotten in all my years of activity in Poland," says Meir Bolka, chairman of the Jainsrance organization, which works to preserve the heritage of European Jewry. Griner's will, word for word, was one of the most exciting in my life. "
Griner's will and last request to Hitman as a Jew were honored both by church representatives and by Israelis who came from Israel and local Jews who came to pay their last respects to those who were at the center of a particularly complex and rare cross-religious life story.
Griner was born in Izbica in eastern Poland and was staying at his home when Nazi soldiers invaded the town and also reached his family home.
Miraculously, he managed to escape the clutches of the Nazi Germans and while roaming the area, he was picked up by a Polish woman who took pity on him and actually started raising him, while besides his older brother, his parents and the rest of the family of little Jacob Zvi were murdered.
Over the years, having grown up in the Christian faith, Griner was appointed pastor under the name Gregor Pavlovsky.
However, the knowledge that he was born a Jew bothered him and after consulting with Pope John Paul II, he decided to immigrate to Israel, to take on the role of pastor of the Catholic Church in Jaffa and thus live in both worlds.
About twenty years ago he purchased a burial ground in the town where he grew up and thus in due course sought to be buried next to his parents.
This week, at the age of 91, he died and the funeral procession began according to the rules of the Christian Mass and led by churchmen in Jaffa, but when his coffin landed in Poland and the burial ceremony began in the town where he grew up, Jewish representatives from Israel took the lead. , Made sure that the elderly Jewish priest would be laid to rest according to the rules of Jewish burial.
Griner's family member, Haim Plesner, made sure to bring land from Jerusalem with him so that his family member would be buried among the rugs of the Land of Israel.
"From the stage of Griner's death," explains Bolka, who was present at the special class, "the church was responsible for the funeral arrangements with all the Christian ceremonies. The Amit Ashdod High Yeshiva, headed by Rabbi Shalom Malul, is not sure that Yaakov Zvi would have been buried according to his instructions. "
He added that he "does not believe that anyone else will ever be able to stand in this exciting situation. A Jewish funeral of a priest. It sounds as absurd as it can be. Those present, who do not know Jewish funerals, shed more than one tear when they see the Jewish ceremony before their eyes. "In which Griner is buried as a Jew. It is a once-in-a-lifetime play that will not return again."