Warsaw, Poland - Ludmila Krzewska abandoned Judaism after enduring anti-Semitic childhood taunts, and warnings from her parents that it wasn't safe to be Jewish in Poland.
The 25-year-old biology student decided to reclaim her heritage five years ago in the face of declining anti-Semitism. But she met a different kind of rejection. She was discouraged from joining Warsaw's Orthodox Jewish community by one member because her husband isn't Jewish, she recalled.
So Krzewska turned to Warsaw's fledgling Progressive Jewish community, becoming one of a growing number of eastern European Jews embracing a modern, liberal stream of Judaism amid a larger rebirth of a Jewish community, once Europe's largest, that was devastated by the Holocaust.
Many are drawn to Progressive Judaism _ known in the U.S. as Reform Judaism _ because they consider it more in tune with modern life, and say it allows them to remain more a part of the non-Jewish world.
"There's been a tremendous resurgence of (Progressive) Jewish life," said Rabbi Joel Oseran, vice president of international development with the World Union for Progressive Judaism in Jerusalem. "We see young people searching for Jewish meaning, people who have come anew to their own Jewish identities. And Poland is the best example of that."
It is tricky to live an Orthodox life in this staunchly Roman Catholic country of 38 million, where there are perhaps 30,000 Jews, according to some estimates. Pork sausages and other non-kosher foods crown most menus. There's only one kosher butcher in the entire country, in Bialystok, 110 miles northeast of Warsaw. Sundown comes at 3 p.m. in the deep of winter, meaning Jews who observe the Sabbath must cease work in the middle of the work day on Fridays _ not an option in most jobs.
Unlike the Orthodox, Reform Jews travel on the Sabbath, sit with the opposite sex during services and don't necessarily adhere to all dietary laws.
"It gives you more independence and a spectrum of choice," said Krzewska, whose husband eventually converted. "And it makes it easier to have non-Jewish friends, homosexual friends, people who are different."
Before World War II, Poland was home to a vibrant Yiddish-speaking Jewish community of nearly 3.5 million. Following Nazi Germany's invasion in 1939, most were murdered in Nazi-run death camps, such as Auschwitz, that dotted the land that had been their home for a thousand years.
Of those who survived, many fled in reaction to anti-Semitic violence or repression under communism. Those who remained often turned their backs on the faith _ though their last names sometimes prevented them from hiding their heritage _ and many intermarried with the Roman Catholic majority.
But now, with post-Cold War democracy nurturing a new tolerance and security, many Jews are increasingly returning to their roots, in many cases discovering only very recently they have Jewish ancestry.
Reform Judaism was founded in 19th-century Germany, but came to maturity in North America, where it has grown into the world's largest Jewish denomination. It faces challenges in other countries, particularly Israel, where religious life is dominated by the Orthodox.
Liberal Jews in central Europe face a similar struggle for acceptance from the Orthodox, some of whom hold that they aren't real Jews because they reject some of the 613 Jewish mitzvot, or commandments.
That offends people like Emil Jezowski, a 17-year-old whose father was born Jewish but whose mother was raised Protestant.
He was raised Protestant but converted along with his mother and three of his five siblings last summer. He was circumcised in a Warsaw hospital with a group of adult males from Beit Warszawa, Poland's only progressive community and celebrated his bar mitzvah on Saturday.
"I am who I think I am _ I am Jewish," said Jezowski.
Another problem for Polish Progressive Jews is that the state only recognizes the Orthodox community, which it inherits synagogues and other communal Jewish property seized by the Nazis, taken over by the communists and now being slowly returned.
The Orthodox community worships in the Nozyk synagogue, the only one to survive the war in the capital. Beit Warszawa's members meet in a modern house in the city outskirts, filled with abstract art and Ikea furniture.