bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A ‘Polis’ in Jerusalem: The Jewish State
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns to politics. Here, the return of the Jews to history was also their return to the realm of politics and statesmanship, whether as participants in European politics in various countries or as a new emerging political entity in Palestine from 1882. The idea of a Jewish state could be nourished by the memories of Jewish independence and Jewish sovereignty in biblical and post-biblical times, or by the messianic prophecies, but no one seriously thought of a revival of a Jewish kingdom. Thus it was the European political experience which was the political school of the Zionist movement. When Jews of the late nineteenth century lost faith in absolute enlightened monarchies (or after monarchies gave way to other types of government), the liberal-democratic paradigm of state that they adopted was closer to the political heritage of classical antiquity than to the Jewish political heritage. In that they followed the course taken by Western civilization.
Conclusion: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This concluding chapter explores the complex reality of the modern Jerusalem as it has been irrevocably influenced by Athens. The fact that Athens is an integral and essential part of the modern Jerusalem has already been established. Thus, the chapter now considers that, given Athens and Jerusalem are two antipodal entities, can these hostile and contradicting spiritual and cultural entities exist together? It reveals that modern Judaism, namely secular Judaism, inspired by Athens and shaped by the heritage of classical antiquity (and Western values), is a different type of Judaism from the Judaism of previous generations; therefore, the conflict between Athens and Jerusalem in Jerusalem was and is inevitable. This conflict is the core of the struggle over the identity and content of modern Judaism in Palestine.
Cantor-Rabbis in Italy, Franco-Germany and England
Authors: Weinberger Leon J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies the ninth- and tenth-century payṭanim in Byzantine Italy, looking at Aḥimaʻaṣ b. Palṭiel (b. 1017) and his Scroll (Megillaṭ ’Aḥimaʻaṣ), which chronicles the life and times of his family. His memoir provides knowledge about the early Italian hymnists, including the versatile Amittai b. Šefatyah of Oria (in Apulia). Amittai is credited with pioneering the genial side of the liturgy in his mock-serious dialogue between the vine and the tree. The mid-tenth century found a neo-classical revival in Italy. Solomon Ha-Bavli of Rome reintroduced the Qilliric two-root-consonant rhyme, a practice that had been neglected by less gifted poets because of its severe constraints. In the twelfth century, Italian poets began to reflect the influence of their Andalusian colleagues. Yeraḥmiel b. Solomon (12th c.) was probably the first Italian poet to compose hymns for the synagogue in Arabic-style quantitative metres. The chapter also explores the hymnography of Rhineland rabbi-poets and English synagogue poets.
Review Essays
Authors: Gąsowski Tomasz
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights four review essays. It looks at a debate between Tomasz Gąsowski and the late Artur Eisenbach on the latter's book on Jewish emancipation in Poland. Eisenbach's reply represents probably his last publication. Meanwhile, Chone Shmeruk reviews two books on Isaac Bashevis Singer. Singer's years in Poland up to 1935 remained throughout his life the basis for his work; his departure from Poland took him to a personal diaspora. To the end, he was immersed thematically in the history, day-to-day experience, and way of life of the Jewish community in Poland. Finally, Nechama Tec reviews several books on Auschwitz. As the biggest death factory and a huge labour camp complex, Auschwitz became the centre of human destruction and degradation. From 1940 to 1945, like a powerful spider, Auschwitz relentlessly wove an ever-larger web over German society and German institutions.
Consolidation (1600–1620)
Authors: Israel Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates how mercantilism powerfully contributed to the fundamental shift in ideas about the Jews in the seventeenth century. By and large, the anti-Semitic strand in mercantilism was a minority stance. The senators who staffed the Venetian board of trade repeatedly reiterated, from the 1570s onwards, that they regarded the Jews as an indispensable prop of the Venetian economy. In 1619, the Spanish arbitrista Martín González de Cellorigo urged the Spanish crown to curb Inquisition persecution of Portuguese Marrano immigrants in Spain, arguing that this group should be tolerated and encouraged out of reasons of ‘razón de Estado’, to improve Spain's finances and trade. This changed intellectual and political climate made an immense difference. For European Jewry, the opening decades of the new century were a time of rapid and mostly successful consolidation. Where readmission had already been secured, in the previous period, there was now a further increase in Jewish population, notably in Prague, Frankfurt, Mantua, Venice, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Livorno. This increasing stream of Jewish population and resources into western and central Europe flowed from three main external sources, though in Germany the major factor was internal migration.
From Traditional History to Maskilic History in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany
Authors: Feiner Shmuel
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses how ‘maskilic history’, developing in the circle of German maskilim during the last two decades of the eighteenth century, broke with ‘traditional Jewish history’. Just as the European Enlightenment had constructed a new picture of the past and proposed a kind of ‘philosophical history’, the Haskalah, functioning within the framework of its critical goals and demands for a reformed society, also created a new image of the past that presented a clear alternative to the traditional version. The new legitimization of historical study, the new division of history into periods, the belief in the historical turning-point and the shaping of ‘a modern age’, stemming from awareness of modernity, together with progressive programmes and realistic explanations, all characterized maskilic awareness of the past. They also made it possible to identify maskilic history as a specific historical phenomenon and an element of the consciousness of those Jewish intellectual circles that made pragmatic and didactic use of history. Maskilic history presented exemplary types, elevated historical heroes, and proposed moral explanations of events, all aimed at realizing the maskilic aspiration of creating a new, ideal Jew who would also be a universal man and a citizen of his country.
The Manipulation of History in Nineteenth-Century Galicia
Authors: Feiner Shmuel
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the Galician Haskalah, which may be viewed as one segment of a Haskalah network that encompassed the maskilim of the entire Austrian empire. In their development and activity, the Galician maskilim were closely allied to the Austrian Haskalah. The militant nature of the Galician Haskalah was determined by the very process of enlightenment. In personal testimonies and biographies, the experience of becoming enlightened is described as a revelation and conversion that occurred at a young age and engendered great excitement in the heart of the maskil. Indeed, young people were the target population of the Haskalah propagandists. The chapter then explains that hasidism was an obsession among the Galician maskilim, and they would resort to almost any means to block the expansion of the ‘sect’, which before their very eyes was sweeping up the Jewish masses, even spreading to the central urban communities. Nahman Krochmal (1749–1840) was the unacknowledged leader of the Galician maskilim.
Young America
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Isaac Mayer Wise’s first impressions of America as he disembarked, and the impression made by his arrival. When he established himself in Cincinnati in 1854, Wise began to publish two weeklies, for both of which he wrote profusely. For the 1846–1854 period, the chronicle is less ample, but he did figure in such other Jewish periodicals as appeared at that time, and in other records, for example, of synagogues. In 1874–1875, Wise wrote Reminiscences, which began with his arrival in New York and broke off abruptly with the publication of his prayer-book Minhag America in 1857. Naturally, they form the principal guiding lines for a sketch of his career during these eleven years.
Queen City of the West
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter shows the good relations cemented immediately upon his arrival at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. In Cincinnati he remained for the rest of his days. In 1854, Cincinnati was in truth ‘the Queen City of the West’. In view of Cincinnati’s expansive prosperity, in view of its business relations with all parts of the United States, in view of its position as a meeting-place of merchants, it would be only natural for Wise to encounter a broader outlook than would exist in most congregations; for a man who harboured ‘bold plans’, plans which extended far beyond the confines of a single town, his position was ideal. From the start he seems to have impressed himself on the congregation. They accepted his ideas for reforms within the synagogue; they stood by him in the difficulties which his larger schemes involved; in forty-six years there were few disagreements, and only one serious incident — his candidature for the Ohio Senate during the Civil War — marred their relationship, and the speed with which it was passed over confirms that basically there was a happy association which neither party wished to endanger.
Wider Ambitions
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns to Isaac Mayer Wise’s further ambitions after the Civil War. His emphasis shifts, at times, from the training of American rabbis to education as an antidote to antisemitism. The specialized function of the college in which he was most directly interested he did not forget, even during the dark years of the Civil War. But, seeking at every turn a hearing for his plans but never receiving the response which would suggest the opportunity of executing them, he gave expression to the sense of victimization exhibited time and again in his writings. In addition, Wise’s concern for the maintenance of the American Union reinforces his pursuit of the idea of the union of American Israel.
Establishing the Union (1871–1873)
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Isaac Mayer Wise’s attempts at the establishment of a union. It was in 1871 — not long after the close of the Cincinnati Conference — that the first decision to join was made, by Congregation Bene Israel of St Louis. But if Wise was to get the union going, he needed the support of his own congregation. B’nai Jeshurun merely joined those congregations which signified their willingness to join the union once established; it had undertaken no commitment to establish the union. Somehow the project lagged. Perhaps the ‘Personal God’ controversy frightened people off from Wise’s enterprises; perhaps recollections of the false start of 1869 made them sceptical as to its realization; perhaps the absence of the influential congregations of the East made them dubious as to its value. Indubitably the communities were in closer contact than they had been when union projects had been discussed in 1848 and 1855, but still there were problems immediate and local in impact and far higher in priority than setting up a national organization.
President of Hebrew Union College
Authors: Temkin Sefton D. , Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter follows Isaac Mayer Wise into the presidency of Hebrew Union College. He left the second Council of the Union (1875) with his rapturous enthusiasm undimmed. He was showing congregational presidents and boards of trustees how by helping the union they would be helping themselves, as the union would ‘exert its influence to get every Israelite to observe the Sabbath and to be a member of the congregation’, and would supply the congregations with rabbis to whose oratory it would be a feast of reason to listen. After the board of governors resolved formally to appoint Wise president of Hebrew Union College, he performed his services gratuitously, and his only assistant was Solomon Eppinger, who had been on the staff of the Talmud Yelodim Institute. Though there was no ready-made grandeur surrounding the presidency, Wise responded in a tone which suggests that the official appointment affected him deeply.
How to Live with Other Jews
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter sketches a way in which Orthodox Jews can relate to non-Orthodox Jews and their understandings of Judaism. Furthermore, this must be done in a way which avoids the language of ‘legitimate versus heretical’ without at the same time adopting a pluralist position which sees all (or almost all) expressions of Judaism as equally acceptable. Labelling non-Orthodox Jews and interpretations of Judaism as heretical is too exclusive, while true pluralism is too inclusive. The chapter thus seeks some middle ground which will allow an Orthodox Jew to participate in Jewish unity while still adhering to the doctrine according to which the Torah was given in its entirety to Moses by God on Sinai. In other words, the chapter attempts to arrive at a position of tolerant respect for non-Orthodox Jews and Judaisms without being forced to adopt a position of relativistic approval of them.
The Nazi Era (1933–1945)
Authors: Shapiro Marc B.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the challenges faced by Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg and the rest of the German Jewry during the Nazi regime. Aside from the political challenges in Nazi Germany, there were many pressing religious issues brought on by the policies of the regime. It was in this area that Weinberg assumed a prominent role. The chapter thus embarks on a few of the halakhic issues with which he had to deal, to illustrate the difficult circumstances in which Orthodox Jews found themselves. Despite these challenges, however, the chapter also shows that Weinberg and the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary experienced a rather productive period, as the seminary became the focus of German Jews' social, cultural, and intellectual engagement — and all this was accomplished without government interference. The chapter also describes the decline of the Torah im Derekh Eretz ideal among the younger generations, despite Weinberg's attempts to defend it. To conclude, the chapter closes with the events of the Kristallnacht and the closure of the seminary despite Weinberg's persistently optimistic views regarding the Nazis' treatment of the Jews.
Post-War Years (1946–1966)
Authors: Shapiro Marc B.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg's shift from a very public life to a more private one during his final years, which were spent in Montreux, Switzerland. It shows how his failing health and postwar developments have affected him and his intellectual work. Although in the post-war years Weinberg was able to write productively on Talmudic and halakhic themes, it was much more difficult for him to be involved with modern Jewish scholarship. In spite of the logistical difficulties, Weinberg was never totally removed from modern Jewish scholarship, and it was important to him that his views should find favour in the academic community. In addition, the chapter addresses the changes which impacted the Orthodox Jewish world in the aftermath of the war. Finally, the chapter discusses the most important aspects of Weinberg's writings — his postwar responsa.
Mysticism, Thick and Thin
Authors: Roth Leon
Published: February 2021

This chapter suggests that we are all mystics nowadays but we need not be contentiously so. It queries the mystic vision, asking if it is conceivable that just this, allegedly the greatest prize of all, is denied to the vast majority of mankind. The chapter suggests is that it is not so denied — everyone can, in some way, sense the divine. The chapter brings up other concepts related to the subject: the empty void of seeming meaninglessness; the emergence of rightness or pattern and the accompanying enlargement of the mind; the conceiving of the inconceivable; the sudden joy, the sustained satisfaction. It argues that these are the acknowledged marks of the classical mystical experience and they are common in some degree to us all.
Introduction
Authors: Sahula Isaac Ibn
Published: February 2021

1
Minim, originally meaning ‘sectarians’ and often applied specifically to Jewish-Christians (as at BT Shabbath 116a, where, as frequently because of censorship, ṣeduqimṣeduqim, ‘Sadducees’, replaces minim). Unlike Paul’s converts, Jewish-Christians observed Jewish customs and were thus felt, in pharisaic rabbinic circles, to compromise Jewish identity. What is here deprecated is not the reading of heretical writings in the strict sense, but books in Spanish or Arabic as emanating from a Christian (or Christianised) background. See I n. 47....
Austrian First Impressions of Ethnic Relations in Galicia: The Case of Governor Anton von Pergen
Authors: Szabo Franz A. J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents an extensive report on Galician populations by Count Johann Anton von Pergen. His report was entitled Beschreibung der Königreiche Galizien und Lodomerien, nach dem zustand, in welchem sie sich zur Zeit der Revindicirung durch Ihro Kaisl. Königl. Apostolischen Majestät, und besonders im Monat Julius 1773 befunden haben (Description of the Kingdoms of Galicia and Lodomeria, in accordance with the condition in which they found themselves at the time of the Reintegration by his Imperial, Royal, Apostolic Majesty and particularly in the month of July 1773). Although, in typical eighteenth-century fashion, Pergen's Beschreibung casts the principal problems of the newly acquired province as social, economic, and political rather than ‘national’, it nevertheless demonstrates a clear awareness of the ethnic dimensions of the situation. Ethnicity was not an eighteenth-century preoccupation, but awareness of ethnic differences was certainly well developed. Ethnic relations, as the Habsburg officials saw them, played themselves out on two principal levels: the three-way relationship between Ukrainian peasants, Polish lords, and the Jewish communities between them in the countryside, and the Polish–Ukrainian relations within the framework of the church. A third sphere of interaction was the urban centres.
The Consequences of Galician Autonomy after 1867
Authors: Buszko Józef
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains how the balance of power in Galicia shifted after it achieved autonomy. Galicia received autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867, the same year the constitution was passed. The autonomy resulted from an agreement between two parties: the imperial government in Vienna and the Poles as represented by the major Galician landowners. In the constitutional era that followed, Galicia's Polish population enjoyed certain special rights. However, the Ukrainian and Jewish populations together counterbalanced the Polish. With such close numbers of Ukrainians and Poles, it is clear that the Jews with their 575,000, whether they wished to or not, determined the balance of power, resulting in a Jewish political role and in general political consequences that are not to be underestimated.
Yiddish as an Expression of Jewish Cultural Identity in Galicia and Vienna
Authors: Kohlbauer-Fritz Gabriele
Published: February 2021

This chapter illustrates the backwardness of Yiddish in the easternmost province of the Habsburg Empire. In Galicia, Yiddish language and culture developed quite differently and at a much slower pace than in the other parts of Poland and Russia. At a time when the works of Isaac Leib Peretz, Mendele Mokher Seforim, and Sholem Aleichem were flourishing elsewhere, Yiddish culture in Galicia was still underdeveloped, emerging only fleetingly at the beginning of the twentieth century, inspired by the political and social movements that encouraged Jewish national self-awareness. No doubt one reason for this long period of dormancy was the particular historical situation that resulted from the policies of the Habsburg regime. Thus, a history of the Yiddish-language movement in Galicia and the Austrian capital, Vienna, must also be an account of its failure. The chapter shows that it was precisely in Galicia that a thriving cultural symbiosis emerged among the coexisting national groups, and this symbiosis had a substantial impact on the Yiddish cultural movement. Yet competition from the Polish and German languages ultimately ousted Yiddish almost completely.
Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, 1872–1905: A Polish Socialist for Jewish Nationality
Authors: Snyder Timothy
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, a pioneering sociologist and the major theorist of the Polish socialists (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, or PPS). Most Polish socialists identified themselves with a past in which Poles ruled other nationalities, whereas Jewish socialists had no territorial identity and only an extremely distant tradition of statehood. Each party saw the other's programme as misguided and potentially counter-productive, and as supporting rather than challenging tsarist rule. These deep differences between Jewish and Polish socialists in tsarist Russia demanded creative and courageous solutions, which were usually lacking. The single exception on the Polish side was Kelles-Krauz. His unusually sympathetic appreciation of the predicaments of Jewry in central and eastern Europe allowed him to see points of common history and common interest between Jews and Poles, and led him to a pioneering explanation of the rise of modern nationalism in general.
The Return of the Troublesome Bird: Jerzy Kosiński and Polish–Jewish Relations
Authors: Adamczyk-Garbowska Monika
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Jerzy Kosiński, author of The Painted Bird (Malowany ptak). Many critics, both Polish and otherwise, have stressed the influence on Kosiński's fiction of his background as a sociologist. Those who like his work have said that being a sociologist gave him some insights; his detractors have claimed either that his books read more like academic studies than fiction, or else that he used his sociological expertise to determine what would interest readers and critics at that particular time. Paradoxically, Kosiński himself became something of a sociological phenomenon, primarily but not exclusively because of The Painted Bird, and he occasioned debate that offered excellent material for sociological study of particular strains in Polish thought, Polish–Jewish relations, anti- and philosemitism, political divisions in Polish society, and the complex and ambivalent Polish use of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’. The chapter goes on to show that reading about the various approaches to Kosiński may prove more interesting than reading Kosiński himself.
Judaica in Slovakia
Authors: Bartosz Adam
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews the Židovskě näboženskě obce na Slovensku (A Guide to Jewish Monuments in Slovakia) by Eugen Bárkány. The guide is a list of all the Jewish communities that had existed in Slovak lands, with a brief account of their history and a description of the monuments that survived the Holocaust. The chapter describes the guide's advantages and its flaws. Despite its relatively minor flaws, the chapter argues that Bárkány's guide deserves high praise as the first broad attempt to present a survey of Slovakia's existing Judaica. It expresses hopes that someone might verify its content and publish a more up-to-date version. But even its outdatedness has a positive value in the photographs and drawings it contains of objects that no longer exist.
The Hasidic Movement and the Gaon of Vilna
Authors: Brill Alan
Published: February 2021

This chapter takes a look at Elijah Judah Schochet's The Hasidic Movement and the Gaon of Vilna. Schochet sets out to answer two related questions in this book: What problems did its opponents perceive in the hasidic movement and why did the Vilna Gaon, Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (known as Hagra), reject it? The book presents the problems of hasidism through the eyes of the edicts and polemical tracts against it. The chapter reviews how Schochet presents his arguments and how the Gaon is presented within the book. Schochet's scholarship is also analysed, and certain possible influences to his work drawn. To conclude, the chapter offers some critiques on Schochet's analysis could be improved.
Introduction
Authors: Polonsky Antony
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how Poland was one of the principal areas where the Nazis attempted to carry out their planned genocide of European Jewry. It was there that the major death camps were established and that Jews were brought from all over Nazi-occupied Europe to be gassed, above all in Auschwitz, where at least 1 million lost their lives in this way. There is no more controversial topic in the history of the Jews in Poland than the question of the degree of responsibility borne by Polish society for the fact that such a small proportion of Polish Jewry escaped the Nazi mass murderers. The primary responsibility clearly lies with the Nazis. However, the recognition of the primary role of the Germans in the genocide has not prevented bitter arguments over Polish behaviour during the Second World War. Jews have harshly criticized what they see as Polish indifference to the fate of the Jews and the willingness of a minority to aid the Nazis or to take advantage of the new conditions to profit at Jewish expense.
Three Essays on Jewish Education during the Nazi Occupation
Authors: Małowist Marian
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents three essays on Jewish education during the Nazi occupation. The first essay, entitled ‘The Spiritual Attitude of Jewish Youth in the Period before the Second World War and in the Ghetto’, discusses Jewish youth and its spiritual attitude in the pre-war period and during the war. The outbreak of war, with the traumatic bombing of Warsaw and the occupation, greatly affected the young people; they were spiritually completely unprepared for the hardships of the times. The second essay, entitled ‘Jewish High Schools in Warsaw during the War’, describes in general outlines the education of young people during the war. The third essay, entitled ‘Teaching Jewish Youth in the Warsaw Ghetto during the War, 1939–1941’, looks at the situation of Jewish secondary education during the Second World War.
Two Coffins on Smocza Street and Śliska Street
Authors: Korczak Janusz
Published: February 2021

This chapter recounts how the author saw two dead children on Smocza Street and Śliska Street. The first one on Smocza Street was a teenage boy who lay on the white snow. His mother stood by him and repeated the words ‘help him, people help him’ over and over. However, nobody was helping him. The other one on Śliska Street was a little child who was wrapped in paper tied with string. The author also saw dead adult women and men ‘in the doorways and by the walls on many different streets, where living people wear on their forearms bands with the yellow Star of David’.
The Day after the Pogrom: A Documentary Account
Authors: Bekker Józef
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the wave of pogroms of 1903–06. The pogrom in Siedlce, which took place in September of 1906, was the last outbreak of the wave of violence which began in Kishinev in April of 1903. The main railway line from Warsaw to Terespol and on to Moscow ran through the town and was responsible for its expansion in the last part of the nineteenth century. It also accounted both for its strategic importance and for the presence there of a significant socialist movement. These factors explain the role of the Russian army, and in particular the Libau regiment, as well as the Monarchist League in organizing the pogrom. Estimates of Jewish casualties range from twenty-three dead to 100 dead and 300 wounded. The chapter highlights an account written in Russian by Józef Bekker, who was a well-known Yiddish journalist. Bekker's account illustrates many aspects of the problems raised by the wave of pogroms of 1903–06, in particular the vexed question of the degree to which this was orchestrated centrally and the role of the army and local tsarist officials in initiating anti-Jewish violence.
Abraham Joshua Heschel in Poland: Hasidism Enters Modernity
Authors: Kaplan Edward K.
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at Abraham Joshua Heschel. Abraham Joshua Heschel emigrated to the United States in 1940, but his first thirty-three years in Europe made him the religious philosopher, biblical interpreter, and social activist he became as a naturalized American citizen. Born in Warsaw on January 11, 1907, his ancestors were hasidim, continuing the eighteenth-century pietistic movement founded by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba'al Shem Tov. This Jewish consciousness, according to Heschel, assumed a spontaneous awareness of divine presence. Heschel's relationship with Poland was painful and complex. Growing up in hasidic Warsaw, he had little contact with Polish culture, and to prepare for his secular studies, he had to learn Polish from tutors. As a child he experienced the common antisemitism of the streets. As an adolescent in Warsaw, Heschel was expected to inherit the position of rebbe—a spiritual and community leader—held by his father and uncles. However, he reconciled his hasidic vision with west European culture and history's demands, making the transition by leaving Warsaw to earn a diploma at the recently established secular, Yiddish-language Realgymnasium in Vilna. By 1933, he had completed a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Berlin. From there he went to Frankfurt, and returned for one academic year to Warsaw before finally leaving Poland in July of 1939.
Book Reviews
Authors: Perl Joseph
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at ten book reviews. The first three reviews discuss books on the first Hebrew novel, the Kraków reformed Jewish community, and the politics of Polish Jewry. The next three reviews consider books on the role of the left-wing movements in the Jewish tradition; the Hebrew poetry in Poland between the two world wars; and the impact of the Endecja's thought on the broader political spectrum, with respect to the question of ethnic minorities. The seventh review examines Natan Gross's The History of Jewish Cinema in Poland, which talks about the Jewish involvement in Polish cinema during the 1920s and 1930s. The last three reviews explore books on Salo Wittmayer Baron, an architect of Jewish history; the changing attitudes of Polish society towards the Holocaust; and the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer, contemporary Poles' current views on Jews, and Polish Jewish survivors' perspectives on Poland and on Singer's writing.
No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935‒1939
Authors: Melzer Emanuel
Published: February 2021

Monographs of the Hebrew Union College, no. 19(Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997); pp. xii + 236

The first edition of this book, written as a doctoral dissertation, was published in 1982 in Hebrew. The present edition was condensed but also updated, now that political changes have made it possible to study documents from Polish archives (notably Archiwum Akt Nowych in Warsaw). The author presents the basic political and economic problems of Jewish society in Poland; the attitudes of the government, political parties, and Polish society towards Jews; and the responses of the Jewish leaders, political parties, and ordinary people. Several of these topics have been treated in books and articles published by both Polish and Jewish historians and covering specific areas of Polish and Jewish history. This book’s merit is that it analyses a complex of issues and takes into consideration different elements of the changes going on not only in Poland, but in the whole of Europe as well. Such analysis can help readers to understand the situation of Jews in Poland and indicate the main directions for future studies....
Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust
Authors: Steinlauf Michael C.
Published: February 2021

(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997); pp. xiv + 190 + 28 illus.

The author of this book is well known among Polish historians. Since 1983 he has visited Poland several times and studied Polish–Jewish relations on site. In his new book he undertakes the difficult task of analysing the changing attitudes of Polish society towards the Holocaust, until 1995. He is probably the best person to write such a book. The Polish and Jewish historians who spent the Second World War in Poland or who are living now in Poland seem the best situated for gathering sources. They are, however, significantly affected by past and contemporary debates over the problems discussed in this book, and it would be difficult for them to free themselves from their own personal experiences. Yet most of the scholars living abroad are too far from the primary sources. Michael Steinlauf, who was born in France, speaks all the necessary languages (Polish and Yiddish, notably), has spent a long time in Poland, and has many Polish friends. He is free from the most significant personal biases and, at the same time, has the necessary knowledge of Polish literature, the press, and the people. He can, therefore, understand the problems and has sufficient distance from Poland and her current hot quarrels to view them with a properly critical eye....
Was there a ‘Haskalah’ in England? Reconsidering an Old Question
Authors: Ruderman David B.
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates a largely unexplored facet of English Jewish history, reopening the issue of whether there was a Haskalah in England. Historians generally contend that the modernization of England's Jews was not ideological but was shaped by the irresistible pull of English society. In this view, the creative work of diverse Anglo-Jewish thinkers is seen as a specifically Jewish phenomenon, a response to English openness and tolerance. In contrast, the chapter points to a number of thinkers who were in contact with English intellectuals and were influenced by such important trends as Lockian philosophy, millenarianism, Newtonianism, deism, and atheism. The discovery of this English Jewish intellectual current prior to the Berlin Haskalah, and apparently unrelated to the work of other maskilim, certainly provides students of the Haskalah with food for thought.
Reality and its Refraction in Descriptions of Women in Haskalah Fiction
Authors: Cohen Tova
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the depiction of women in nineteenth-century Haskalah literature, demonstrating just how gender-specific this was. Haskalah literature was written by men for a male audience, and the maskilim were taken by surprise when women readers and writers began to appear in the 1860s. The chapter then outlines two extremes of the literary image of women. On the one hand is the idealized depiction of the goddess or angel. On the other hand is the critical depiction of the insensitive, crass, and domineering woman. Both of these images derive from literary conventions. The chapter examines the interplay of these conventions with the social experience and social agenda of the maskilim.
The Vilna Years of Jakub Rotbaum
Authors: Hannowa Anna
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Jakub Rotbaum (1901–1994), artistic director and principal producer of the Vilna Troupe from 1929 to 1936. The Vilna Troupe was the best-known Jewish theatre company in Europe, and Rotbaum was its director and longest-lived artist. Rotbaum initiated the changes in the company's repertoire and artistic and ideological image, directed its groundbreaking performances of six plays, and won for the troupe the collaboration of the noted scenographer Andrzej Pronaszko. Critics of his own time considered Rotbaum a pioneer of social theatre and an innovator in stagecraft, as well as a transformative figure in Jewish literary theatre. The graphic quality of his stage conceptions and his use of pantomime and of rich musical accompaniments earned him public admiration and the acclaim of connoisseurs of both Polish and Jewish theatre.
Jewish Autonomy in Inter-WarLithuania: An Interview withYudl Mark
Authors: Levin Dov
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents an interview with Yudl Mark, focusing on the problems inherent in the autonomous experiment in Lithuania. Mark was a young Folkist politician who later became an important Yiddish folklorist and philologist. The interview itself refers to the period after the First World War, when Lithuania was the scene of the most far-reaching attempt to put into practice the principle of non-territorial Jewish autonomy. This experiment was accompanied by high hopes in the Jewish world. Given the mixed character of the area, Jewish national autonomy would also make the state more attractive to Belarusians and Germans who might be incorporated into it.
My First Encounters with Jews and Ukrainians
Authors: Kuroń Jacek
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the author's experiences with the Jewish question in Lwów. Lwów was a city of Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, a city of acute antagonisms. Here, the chapter details the author's experiences with the cult of the ‘Orlęta’, who fought to win the city for Poland in 1918. It also shows how the author became fascinated by what was different about the others. This was when the author was becoming increasingly involved in what was then called internationalism but today might better be described as a kind of universalism. From there, the chapter describes the author's experiences with the Holocaust. Although the author lived on the ‘Aryan’ side, they had met people from the other side of the wall, the ‘non-Aryan’ part. Moreover, outside Lwów there was a death camp, and outside Janów there was a labour camp.
Lithuania Honours a Holocaust Rescuer
Authors: Goldstein Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Jan Zwartendijk (1896–1976). Zwartendijk was a Dutch businessman and a non-Jew who helped thousands of stranded Jews in the Lithuanian capital city of Kaunas in the summer of 1940. The Polish Jews who had fled to Lithuania precisely to escape Soviet rule felt especially vulnerable and desperate during the annexation process. By July, virtually all consulates in Kaunas were in the process of closing. Panic set in among the Jewish refugees. At this point, Jan Zwartendijk, voluntarily and at great personal risk, took on a role which quickly evolved into the rescue of Jews. The chapter explores his accomplishments and considers why Lithuania only chose to recognize him for his courage 59 years after the event.
Recent Developments in the Historiography of Silesian Jews
Authors: Marcin Wodziński
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews some recent studies on the Jews of Silesia. The history of the Jews in Silesia became an abandoned field for nearly two decades. Isolated, if sometimes very interesting, studies appeared (including works by Stefi Jersch-Wenzel and Karol Jonca), but they did not maintain the continuity of research, and it could certainly not be said that there was any systematic interest in the subject. But with the renaissance of Judaic studies in Germany and Poland in the second half of the 1980s came a revival of interest in Silesian Jewry. Two conferences on the history of the Jewish community in Silesia, organized almost simultaneously, can be regarded as a symbolic double threshold: the first took place at the Institute of History at Wrocław University in June 1988, the second, a year later in Berlin.
Gates of Heaven
Authors: Bergman Eleonora
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka's new book, Bramy nieba: Bóżnice drewniane na ziemiach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Gates of Heaven: Wooden Synagogues in the Lands of the Former Polish Commonwealth). However, rather than addressing the book's main topic, the architecture of synagogues, the chapter opts to explore other parts of the book instead, including its maps, illustrations, albums, bibliography, and survey sections. This is done to address the difficulties in interpreting these buildings. The chapter asserts that this book is extremely important, and its influence will reach far beyond Poland's borders. It is regrettable that it should have been published with so many editorial flaws, but even the most critical comments cannot undermine its great value, perhaps demonstrating to the reader how complicated is the apparatus needed for such a study.
Edward Fram
Authors: Broyde Michael , Angela Ricetti
Published: February 2021

This chapter takes a look at Edward Fram's Ideals Face Reality: Jewish Law and Life in Poland 1550–1665. It shows how the book is a rich portrait of the life of Polish Jewry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of the impact of halakhic legislation upon it. In the work, Fram approaches the era from the perspective of the posek (halakhic authority): finding ways to adapt the halakhah to contemporary situations while maintaining its integrity. The demands of the market-place especially stretched Jewish legal thought to its creative limits. Through the use of the responsa documents of some of Polish Jewry's greatest thinkers — Moses Isserles, Joel Sirkes, and Solomon Luria among them — Fram seeks to determine how the rabbis made Torah liveable in complicated times.
Olaf Bergmann
Authors: Rudnicki Szymon
Published: February 2021

This chapter takes a look at Olaf Bergmann's book National Democracy's Attitude to the Jewish Question in the Period 1918–1929. This book is the first study fully devoted to the history of the National Camp, including the subject of antisemitism in its programmes and actions. Here, the chapter shows how the author sets himself toward addressing nine questions. The first asks who it was who took a particular position. It goes further to consider what he was saying, by what means, to what end, to whom, and in what way. The chapter then considers the effect. It asks to what degree was a specific judgement accurate and why the National Democrats expressed certain opinions and not others on the Jewish question.
Daniel Tollet (ed), Les Vérités des uns et celles des autres: Points de vue de juifs et de chrétiens sur la Shoah en Pologne
Authors: Haus Jeffrey
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores inter-group dialogues focused upon the healing process. Members of all races, nationalities, genders, and religions have sought to air their differences and to discuss possible resolutions as a means of moving into the future with a deeper mutual knowledge and understanding. Les Vérités des uns et celles des autres publishes the contents of one such academic dialogue. The book compiles materials delivered at a three-day conference held in Switzerland at the University of Fribourg in February 1994. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the conference aimed to explore Polish actions and attitudes towards Jews before, during, and since the Second World War. Participants included members of the Polish Catholic clergy, the Polish media, and the Polish and French academic communities.
Introduction
Authors: Polonsky Antony
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter discusses the larger theme of the spiritual life of Polish–Lithuanian Jewry and its relation to the wider religious history of the Jews. There are a number of problems in describing that history. It is obvious that Jewish history in the period from the end of Jewish statehood and, in particular, from the end of a significant Jewish presence in Erets Yisrael has a highly significant religious component. Yet there has been a tendency to write this history statically — to see normative Jewish religious practice as unchanging from the period of the Mishnah and Talmud. In addition, historical investigation is complicated by the absence in the Jewish religious tradition of a clearly formulated creed. The attempts to formulate such a credal statement, such as that of Maimonides (1135–1204), who sets out thirteen basic principles of the Jewish faith, or those of the Spanish Jews Hasdai Crescas (d. ?1412) and Joseph Albo (1380–1445), can only be seen as deviations from this norm and are not regarded by normative believers as binding, although much of the religious establishment did accept them as such.
The Influence of Frankism on Polish Culture
Authors: Galas Michał
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the influence of Frankism on Polish culture. From the general perspective of Jewish history and the history of Judaism, Frankism may be viewed as a marginal phenomenon. However, from the perspective of Jewish history in Poland and Polish–Jewish relations, Frankism appears to be a more important question. Frankism as a religious movement was not a homogeneous phenomenon. There are three different branches, with the Polish Frankists playing the leading role within the group. Among the important issues in studies of Frankism in Poland are those connected with the multicultural and multi-religious character of the movement and with its impact on Polish culture, especially in the nineteenth century.
Strangers in their Own Land: Polish Jews from Lublin to Kielce
Authors: Blatman Daniel
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines several aspects of the lives and experiences of the survivor community in Poland. Much has been written about relations between the new regime in Poland and the Jewish survivors, the formation of the relief committees, the political entities, the beriḥah (‘flight’) apparatus, and the revitalization of youth and political movements. The main characteristic in any historical analysis of a collectivity’s daily life is an examination of long-term processes taking place within the society in question. Such a perspective, however, does not apply to the situation of the Jewish survivors in Poland. The most consistent factor in their lives was instability; theirs was a life of reconstruction and entrenchment within a reality of deconstruction and departure.
The Vatican Documents and the Holocaust: A Personal Report
Authors: Wistrich Robert S.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the material in four of the volumes published in the Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale. The main concern of this chapter is to examine how the Vatican responded to the predicament of the Jews (and also the Poles) during the Holocaust era. It begins with volume vi because this covers efforts of the Holy See to help victims of the war (especially baptized Jews) in the period between March 1939 and December 1940. The two parts of volume iii that concern Poland (in effect two separately published volumes on the same theme but chronologically divided) are treated next, since they deal predominantly with the relationship between the Vatican and the Poles. Finally, the chapter examines the letters of Pope Pius XII to the German bishops between 1939 and 1944, which are fundamentally different in character from the ‘normal’ documentation of the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman (eds.) Women in the Holocaust
Authors: von Mering Sabine
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Women in the Holocaust. This book shows how men and women experienced the Holocaust differently owing to culturally defined gender roles, gender-related expectations, and differences in the way the Nazis treated them. The twenty-one original articles in this book present a wide spectrum of historical detail, personal narrative, short fiction, description of experiences, statistical evidence, and theoretical conclusions. They highlight women’s suffering and ingenuity, their mistakes, and their unfailing resilience in nurturing relationships, supporting others, and sacrificing everything for their children. They also tell the story of women’s professional versatility, courage, and even creativity in the face of a monstrous machinery of death.