bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Optimism under Oppression: Maskilic History in Russia, 1825–1855
Authors: Feiner Shmuel
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the Russian Haskalah. The historical context in which the Russian Haskalah was established and developed was marked by a constant struggle with political issues raised by the Russian rulers' policy towards the Jews. Russian maskilim of the 1820s and later based their ideology on the perception that the difficult situation of the Jews — their inferior position in the country as well as the quality of their education and characteristics — was the product of political, economic, and religious circumstances, and, in particular, the result of the oppression and intolerance of the pre-modern rulers. Better treatment, religious tolerance, and an acceptance of the precepts of the Haskalah would deliver the Jews from their troubles and the abnormal circumstances of their lives. A major change, which to some extent strengthened the position of the maskilim in Russia, began in the early 1840s, with the government's new plans for sweeping reforms in Jewish society.
Maskilic History in Crisis
Authors: Feiner Shmuel
Published: February 2021

This chapter recounts how, in the 1860s, the radical maskilim burst onto the stage of the Haskalah in Russia, provoking a protest from within the maskilic camp. They were young, self-educated men in their twenties and thirties, natives of Lithuania and Belarus, employed in teaching and clerical positions. This radical stream began by criticizing the literature of the Haskalah. The radicals claimed that the works of the Haskalah authors were cut off from the spirit of the time and the real problems of the people. The mission of the Haskalah, they argued, was to inject vitality into Jewish life, acting as a counterweight to the traditional leadership that was suffocating it. Moreover, the radicals believed that Jewish culture was permeated with an excess of spirituality, which they wished to replace with the natural sciences. As far as the moderate maskilim were concerned, radicalism posed a dangerous threat and was a total departure from the Haskalah.
Jewish Life in an Age of Reaction
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the intellectual milieu within which Isaac Mayer Wise grew up. Growing up, he stood apart from the intellectual circles whose aspirations evoked the fears of authority. Yet the chapter shows a pamphlet he had picked up in Prague — one which had a profound effect on a young man brought up in the stuffy atmosphere of Metternich’s Austria. He later claimed that this pamphlet made him a naturalized American in Bohemia. Indeed, the influence on Wise of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment can be judged from the way it remained with him. Repeatedly he extolled the power of reason and the rule of progress. One can be sure that during the years of his study in Prague, Wise heard the pros and cons both of Reform Judaism in general and of a modern institution for the training of rabbis canvassed with ardour.
Departure
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter chronicles Isaac Mayer Wise’s departure from Bohemia. Though the inherent unpleasantness of the journey was compounded by its length, Wise has nothing worse to say about the voyage than that ‘I railed at the stupidity of my surroundings’. The Atlantic may have favoured him, though the chapter notes that throughout his life he travelled great distances with little complaint. The hardships Wise does not mention. A new life had begun for him and what had happened before did not concern him over-much; what he gives prominence to is a dream which he says came to him three days before he landed.
Rabbi in Albany
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns to Isaac Mayer Wise’s position in Albany and the congregation of Beth El. The relationship between Wise and this congregation began with acclamation and ended with violence. The tale has been told and retold, but it was Wise who was the literate figure among the combatants, and his version forms the basis of most of what has been written. At this stage one cannot determine whether Wise’s zeal for ritual reform and the congregation’s narrowness was the cause of the breakup (as is usually assumed), or whether Wise’s self-assertiveness and the congregation’s insistence on maintaining its control was the basic reason. Rabbi–congregation relations still retain a considerable grey area in which the authority of one party as against the other is unsettled. How much more unsettled must the position have been when communal organization was in its infancy and had to grapple with the problems and reckon with the temperaments of members of an uprooted society.
Anshe Emeth
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter details Anshe Emeth, Isaac Mayer Wise’s new congregation. Fifty-six members of Beth El followed Wise into the new congregation, and they were joined at the outset by twenty-six people. Early in October, Wise went to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore with a commission to raise funds for the new congregation. Congregation Anshe Emeth later made arrangements for shechitah (ritual slaughter) early in its history, and not long afterwards gave orders for the construction of a mikveh (ritual bath). The most remarkable innovation came when the new synagogue was opened and an organ and family pews (instead of the traditional segregation of men and women) were introduced and accepted. A third innovation related to the music of the service. Apparently it was not chanted by the officiant.
Congregation B’nai Jeshurun
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter shows that changes in the B’nai Jeshurun service did not lag far behind Isaac Mayer Wise’s arrival. First he set about introducing a choir, which had been attempted before but without lasting success. Overcoming the doubts of the president, Wise persisted, and when the trustees met in 1854, a letter from Wise was read announcing that the choir, twenty-five in number, would be ready to take part in the service on the ensuing Friday evening. The repertoire was taken from Sulzer and Naumbourg. He went on to suggest a number of liturgical modifications. With one exception (the omission of the talmudic passage Bameh madlikin, dealing with the laws of the Sabbath lamp), these affected style rather than content.
The Israelite
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the role played by the Israelite in establishing Wise as a leader of American Jewry. The Israelite was a newspaper, of which Wise became the editor in addition to his responsibilities as a preacher. It carried his voice throughout the land, and made some people fear his censure and others curry his favour. It brought him callers and information from all parts. And, as in those days many railways provided free passes for newspaper editors, it gave him the means of undertaking the many journeys to distant congregations which did so much to enhance his influence among the communities of the South and the West.
Minhag America
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Isaac Mayer Wise’s Minhag America prayer-book. This book was used by many congregations in the United States until, nearly forty years after it first appeared, Wise withdrew it in favour of the Union Prayer Book. Minhag America can be described as the most important among Wise’s many books. History and theology interested a limited few; the market for Jewish literature was thin; but a prayer-book was a minimum necessity. Aided by Wise’s promotion, Minhag America attained a certain vogue and therefore came into the hands of a larger number of people. It was a practical embodiment of his quest for unity among the Jews of America. Though described as a collective enterprise (‘By the committee of the Cleveland Conference’), it was regarded as Wise’s very own child. He advanced its claims without inhibition, and attempts to supersede it aroused his protective instincts.
At North College Hill
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter details Isaac Mayer Wise’s move at a large farm between North College Hill and Mount Healthy, and made it his principal residence. The farm lay nine miles north of Cincinnati. It is unusual, even in these days of instantaneous communications, for a clergyman to live at such a distance from the scene of his activities; in 1861 it must have been unprecedented. His congregation did not demur at Wise’s removing himself a distance of nine miles, and Wise, of whose endurance as a traveller there is ample evidence, presumably found driving to and from the city no strain. There is no information as to the role played by Mrs Wise in the decision, peculiarly within the concerns of a wife and mother, to move the family home. Family recollections suggest that the decision was that of the husband, and that the wife acquiesced reluctantly.
First Fruits in Cincinnati
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter shows Isaac Mayer Wise’s activities in the post-bellum era. His first thought was for matters of immediate congregational interest and prestige. As early as 1860, Wise’s own congregation had found the Lodge Street synagogue inadequate. The war postponed efforts to build a new house of worship, but in 1863 a site was bought at the corner of Plum and Eighth Streets, and building started two years later. In 1866, the Plum Street temple was dedicated. Wise used the occasion of his dedication sermon to expound ‘the leading points of American Judaism, the new school in Judaism’. The consecration of a new temple was one of the extraordinary occasions of a rabbi’s career. The chapter considers how Wise acquitted himself under workaday conditions and what impression he gave.
Duties Old and New
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Isaac Mayer Wise’s further struggles after his latest milestone at Hebrew Union College. If not before, when the glow of this ceremony had faded, Wise may have realized that his was the task to trudge on, now with one more burden on his shoulders. He was 56; he had fought his way upwards despite all the opposition of inferior beings, but the plateau he had reached was still not the summit. Over and above his duties to his congregation and his two weekly newspapers, he had to make Hebrew Union College mean something, lest the predictions of his enemies be confirmed and the presidency which had been vested in him with all the external marks of confidence was to go down as an empty and ephemeral title, with no more significance in the life of American Jewry than that of the other institutions which he had vainly attempted to bring to life. Apart from these tasks, during the remaining quarter-century of his life Wise continued to travel and lecture, now being more in demand on account of his new office, and he added several books to his list of publications.
Reform Moves On: The Pittsburgh Platform
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter considers the event which thrust Wise unequivocally into the camp of Reform — namely the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885. Reference to Wise’s own writings fails to establish a rationale for his acceptance of the Pittsburgh Platform. The fact that he identified himself with another point of view is important for his own name. History accords him pre-eminence among the builders of American Reform; the Pittsburgh Platform stamped its identity on American Reform as did no other statement; and Wise’s college became the one rabbinical seminary in the world where the Bible criticism associated with the names of Kuenen and Julius Wellhausen was accepted to full effect. How Wise came to take this contradictory position is a tantalizing question which this chapter addresses.
A New American Jewish World
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter shows how the battles over the Pittsburgh Platform were being fought over a terrain which other factors were already transforming. Large-scale migration from Eastern Europe had begun. The number of Jews in the United States, estimated at 250,000 in 1880, reached the million mark in 1900, the year of Wise’s death. The acculturated community, speaking English albeit with a German accent, largely middle class, reformed in religion, was outnumbered by one that spoke Yiddish, belonged to the proletariat, and was untouched by Reform Judaism. The processes which Wise saw at work when he arrived in 1846 had to begin over again; but although many of the factors were similar, the answers were not necessarily the same. Incidentally, the presence of a second and larger Jewish community enhanced the importance of New York in American Jewish life and diminished the significance of Cincinnati and other Midwest communities where Wise had held sway.
The Legacy
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter considers Isaac Mayer Wise’s legacy to the Jews of America, as well as events in the aftermath of his death. In time, America’s powerful industrial society homogenized the American Jewish community, at the same time allowing for unforeseen divisions. The rejection of practices brought over from Europe, which characterized much of nineteenth-century Reform, abated as the immigrant generation disappeared, and nostalgia for the past helped to influence their descendants. As the twentieth century staggered to its mid-point, the scene was transformed in a more fundamental sense. In 1919, when the centenary of Wise’s birth came round, Europe had lost its hegemony in world affairs; in 1946, at the centenary of Wise’s arrival in New York, Europe lay in ruins, and world leadership had been thrust into America’s hands. The old heartland of Jewish life did not just lie in ruins; it had been utterly destroyed. It was for the Jews of America to take up the torch, and to this task they applied themselves with energy and generosity. Unencumbered by ideological restraints, the institutions which Wise had fostered, amid doubts as to whether American soil could sustain them, showed themselves resilient enough to rise to the challenge.
Maimonides: Dogma without Dogmatism
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter confronts the most systematic, and certainly the most influential, of the medieval Jewish theologians: Maimonides. Maimonides adopted the claim that Judaism was based upon a systematic theology, and that Judaism therefore had dogmas. The chapter first analyses Maimonides' statement of dogma, showing that he meant his Thirteen Principles to be accepted as dogmas in the strictest sense of that word. It then shows that his position reflects a ‘belief that’ orientation. One of the most striking consequences of his position is that mistakes with respect to matters of dogma cannot in any sense be condoned. The chapter thus shows how Maimonides' position on dogma influences his views on how one becomes a Jew and ceases to be a Jew. Afterward, two assumptions crucial to Maimonides' view are examined: that scientific knowledge and religious faith are ultimately the same thing; and that there is one objective, absolute standard of truth, in principle accessible to all. These two assumptions make it possible for Maimonides to insist that all Jews learn enough to know the truth of the principles of faith.
Heresy-hunting
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the problem of heresy. One of the most difficult and painful problems facing contemporary Orthodoxy is the question of how to relate to non-Orthodox versions of Jewish religiosity. The chapter illustrates the complexity of the issue, which is exacerbated due to the fact that the tradition presents very little guidance on how to deal with the problem. Thus, orthodoxy today is faced with something new and unprecedented: expressions of Judaism which claim to be the legitimate, normatively correct versions of the Torah while at the same time rejecting the divine origin and obligatory character of halakhic obedience (Reform Judaism) or understanding the nature and character of the halakhic process in new and unprecedented ways (Conservative Judaism). Moreover, what came to be called ‘Orthodoxy’ was faced with these new problems against the background of the development of the modern world, with its dizzying variety of non-religious versions of Jewish identification, and the ever-present possibility of simply melting away in a process of assimilation.
Early Life (1884–1905)
Authors: Shapiro Marc B.
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the early years of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg's (1884–1966) life amid the backdrop of the final decades of the nineteenth century. Within this milieu, the Jews in Russia, Poland, and Lithuania were coming to grips with a number of new movements and philosophies. Although the apostles of Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah), through their propagation of new ideals, had some influence in bringing about a modernization and acculturation, there were other important factors which were independent of Haskalah, although often indirectly nourished by it. It was into this east European Jewish society in transition that Weinberg was born in 1884, in Ciechanowiec, Poland. From there, the chapter describes Weinberg's early childhood and schooling. The latter in particular occurred during a controversy over the musar movement, founded upon the ideologies of Rabbi Israel Salanter.
Pilwishki (1906–1913)
Authors: Shapiro Marc B.
Published: February 2021

This chapter details Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg's time in Pilwishki, Lithuania, during which he was able to establish a growing presence within the Russian and Lithuanian Orthodox community. It begins with his appointment to the Pilwishki rabbinate, made possible by his loveless marriage to Esther Levin, the daughter of Pilwishki's late rabbi. From there, the chapter shows how his most significant work began appearing in the two leading Orthodox Hebrew newspapers, Hamodia of Poltava (Ukraine) and Ha'ivri of Berlin. As contributions to a newspaper were often regarded as a signal of one's ideological commitment, the fact that Weinberg simultaneously wrote for both apparently shows that he had not committed himself one way or the other regarding Zionism. This open mind is also seen in his relationship with Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines, the founder of the Mizrachi movement, who had started a yeshiva in Lida whose purpose was to combine Torah and secular studies. Finally, this chapter discusses some of Weinberg's German and East European influences as well as his early thought.
The First World War and Its Aftermath (1914–1920)
Authors: Shapiro Marc B.
Published: February 2021

This chapter details Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg's experiences during World War I. Weinberg had travelled to Germany for medical treatment during the early stages of the war. He eventually found himself heavily involved within Berlin's Jewish cultural and intellectual life. There, Weinberg grappled with issues surrounding the traditional east European school system, the ḥeder. The ḥeder system invited debates about educational reform within German Orthodox circles. He also had to contend with the efforts to bring German-style Orthodoxy to eastern Europe — a move he was personally against, as he felt it unsuitable for Lithuania. Despite continuing to look toward the East, however, the chapter also shows Weinberg's extended stay in Germany and his increasing engagement with the ideas of the West.
Is there a Jewish Philosophy?
Authors: Roth Leon
Published: February 2021

This chapter briefly explores the question of whether or not there is a Jewish philosophy. It first attempts to define what is meant by the phrase specifically and reviews extant scholarship on the subject. The chapter reveals a variety of possibilities as to the nature of the subject. At the one extreme there is David Neumark with his History of Philosophy among the Jews, then Salomon Munk and the generality of students with their histories of Jewish philosophy. The intermediate position is occupied by the histories of the Jewish philosophy of religion. After exploring this wealth of literature in some detail, the chapter goes on to explore the role of Judaism within the context of this question and presents reasons as to why the question of a Jewish philosophy is important in the first place.
Judaism: The Elements
Authors: Roth Leon
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Judaism. This is the doctrine of the ‘chosen people’, a doctrine which has been misunderstood by both Jews and non-Jews, and which has done much harm. It is so easy to claim to be the chosen people, and to forget that the choice means duty, not privilege. In itself no one people is any better, as in itself no one people is any worse, than any other. But the Jews were chosen to be a ‘holy’ nation, that is, a nation set apart in order to exemplify a way of living which is right and good for all. The chapter discusses the theory of the matter; and it is no argument to say that the Jews are far from being a pattern people. Here, Judaism is not to be considered in terms of the Jews but the Jews in terms of Judaism.
Back To, Forward From, Ahad Ha'am?
Authors: Roth Leon
Published: February 2021

This chapter asks what is living, and what is dead, in Ahad Ha'am. By ‘living’, the chapter refers to what is living for us; by ‘dead’, what is dead for us. In the volume Tradition and Change, which on the development of the Conservative movement in the Jewry of the United States, there is excerpted an address by the present Vice-Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in which the first of the ‘four tested standards’ of the movement is declared to be ‘scientific knowledge of the whole of Judaism’. But even after the ‘whole of’ Judaism has become known scientifically, there still remains the task of its evaluation. Evaluation is not the business of science. Science describes; it does not judge. But life means judgement, discrimination, and selection. There are subjects and opinions which for us today are more significant than others and it is these which we have to look out for. The chapter thus considers the contemporary significance of Ahad Ha'am, and, having found it, how and where one can go on further.
Prologue
Authors: Sahula Isaac Ibn
Published: February 2021

1 Presumably the reference is to ignorance.

2 Lit. ‘Moab and Ammon’ (see Gen. 19: 33‒8); as the neighbours of ancient Israel, they apparently appear here as a cipher for the Arab world. The whole poem constitutes an apologia for Hebrew, as being senior and inherently superior to Arabic literature. The theme is spelled out in Ibn Sahula’s Introduction, ll. 8 f....
Reform
Authors: Jacobs Louis
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights Reform Judaism that began in nineteenth-century Germany. It mentions the three most prominent Reform thinkers: Zacharias Frankel, Abraham Geiger, and Samuel Holdheim. Frankel, originally a Reformer like the Geiger and Holdheim, eventually gave up the classical Reform position and is rightly regarded as the forerunner of Conservative Judaism, which appealed to people with no desire to abandon traditional Judaism and found the views of both Geiger and Holdheim far too extreme. Reform Jews certainly have a modern mind. Their intellectual integrity in facing up to the challenge of modernity is apparent. Their refusal to accept untenable theories about the history of Judaism is only to be admired.
Mysticism
Authors: Jacobs Louis
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights Jewish mysticism. It talks about Rabbi Yitshak Horowitz, also known as Reb Yitshak Masmid who is a leading exponent of mystical theology in the Habad vein. Reb Yitshak Masmid seemed to be a typical ascetic whose head reached to the heavens. He ate very little but drank heavily in the belief that alcohol could act as a stimulant to the deeper longings of the soul. The chapter also describes the traditional ceremony of the benediction over the moon (kidush levanah), which is considered to be a mystical rite. In this ceremony, carried out preferably in the open, at the beginning of the month, a benediction is recited in which God is praised for the creation of the moon and the other heavenly bodies.
From Austeria to the Manor: Jewish Landowners in Autonomous Galicia
Authors: Gąsowski Tomasz
Published: February 2021

This chapter concerns Jewish landowners. It illustrates a wider phenomenon: the purchase, by Jews living on Polish territories, of property formerly belonging to the szlachta. This phenomenon was one of the symptoms of the deep social changes (the dissolution of old estates of feudal origin, followed by the forming of modern social classes) that in this region accompanied the delayed growth of capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century. These changes took place not only among Christian Poles but also within Jewish society. In the latter case, the modernization of the Jewish social structure led to the formation of a new élite, the Jewish landowners. The spread of Jewish landowning occurred not only in the Congress kingdom of Poland, but on an even larger scale in autonomous Galicia. The granting of political rights here culminated with the final emancipation of Jews in the whole Habsburg monarchy when it legalized Jewish landowning.
Bernard Singer, the Forgotten ‘Most Popular Jewish Reporter of the Inter-War Years in Poland’
Authors: Rogozik Janina Katarzyna
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Bernard Singer. The works of Bernard Singer belong to the Polish–Jewish cultural border, and enriched both cultures. He wrote articles for Jewish periodicals in Polish, informing the Jewish reader about Polish political affairs, aware that Poles also read his work. Like other great Polish Jews, he bore the ‘stamp of Polish noble culture’, but although he wrote mainly on Polish matters, he never renounced his Jewishness. He was, as this chapter shows, an ace reporter. Bernard Singer's reputation derives principally from his career as the political, economic, and cultural commentator of Nasz Przegląd. Published in Warsaw from 1923 to 1939, Nasz Przegląd was a newspaper addressed to well-to-do and ‘enlightened’ assimilated Polish Jews. Its mission was to reclaim these Jews and bring them back to the nationalist idea.
The Endecja and the Jewish Question
Authors: Wapiński Roman
Published: February 2021

This chapter views the great attention Polish society devoted to the Jewish question, as well as its hostility towards Jews, as making the stance which the Endecja (Partia Narodowa-Democracja, or National Democratic Party) adopted to some degree inevitable. Virtually from its beginnings, the antisemitic camp urged the strengthening of the Polish national element in all spheres of social life. Its primary founder, Roman Dmowski, stressed in his 1893 book Nasz patriotyzm (Our Patriotism) the need to increase nationalist sentiment daily. This nationalist approach also wanted to strengthen the Polish middle classes in the cities and towns, and correspondingly limit the Jewish hold on this sector, at least in the territories of the Russian and Austrian partitions. Despite the fact that when the Endecja called for a boycott on Jewish trade and artisanry they did not likewise call for greater support for Polish trade and crafts, their programme for the nationalization of economic life increased the gulf between Poles and Jews and added a new context to the traditional distances. In addition, within many urban centres in Russian and Austrian Poland, fierce economic competition between the established and newly emerging merchant classes accompanied the mutual cultural isolation.
Four Days in Atlantis: Józef Lewandowski’s Complex Vision of the Polish Jewish Past
Authors: Korek Janusz
Published: February 2021

This chapter takes a look at Józef Lewandowski's Cztery dni w Atlantydzie (Four Days in Atlantis). It looks at Four Days in Atlantis as an allegory of the past that has not wanted to move on and that has lingered in spite of the fact that — or perhaps because — people have not wanted to notice it. Not only does this book call for a balanced picture of the German occupation and a de-demonized picture of the post-war period, it also seeks to find a place for the complicated fate of Polish Jewry within the borders of Polish consciousness. It seeks this not only by the very fact of touching upon the problem and challenging the stereotypes accumulated throughout the years, but also by refusing to erect a wall of collective guilt before the contemporary Polish reader. Indeed, with Jewish culture still remaining an unopened book for many, Four Days in Atlantis can become an introduction to the subject, which until recently was taboo.
Żydzi
Authors: Tomaszewski Jerzy
Published: February 2021

This chapter considers a series of books, A to Polska właśnie (This is Indeed Poland). These books introduce their readers to various issues of interest to anyone studying Polish society. The chapter focuses on the volume Żydzi (The Jews), in particular, as it is the first to discuss an important group among Poland's population. The volume covers the period up to the second half of the eighteenth century, political and social problems from the second half of the eighteenth century until the end of the nineteenth, Jewish culture and religion in the nineteenth century, the period from the First World War until 1939, the Holocaust, and Jews in Poland after the Second World War. The chapter contends that this book should be regarded not as just one more study about Polish Jews, but as making a singular contribution to the promotion of knowledge about Jewish traditions, culture, and history in Poland.
The Politics of Tradition: Agudas Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1936
Authors: Bacon Gershon C.
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews Gershon C. Bacon's The Politics of Tradition. The book is based on Agudas Yisrael, a very important component of both Jewish and gentile political life in Poland before 1939. The chapter shows how Bacon succeeded in discovering a process of historical changes going on behind the veil of moral stories and stereotypes as the hasidim went from linking their strict, conservative distancing of religion from current politics to forming a conservative but modern party engaged in the political life of the Polish republic while maintaining strict religious observance. Probably the most important merit of Bacon's book lies in its understanding and explaining that the religious conservatism and tradition of Agudas Yisrael did not contradict an acceptance of contemporary ways of defending those values. The strength and significance of this party derived from its successful combination of these apparently contrasting elements.
Jewish Identities in the Holocaust: Martyrdom as a Representative Category
Authors: Webber Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the issue of Jewish martyrdom in the Holocaust. Like other such fragments of the Holocaust, the notion of martyrdom seems to be helpful to people in their attempt to condense the Holocaust down, simplify it, and make it somehow more manageable in order to understand the totality. Indeed, the problem of finding a suitable way of encapsulating the identity of all those who suffered and died because they were Jews has commonly been solved by dubbing them all as martyrs. But were they really martyrs? Did all the Jews who died see themselves as martyrs? Were those Jews who consciously went to their deaths as martyrs somehow ‘typical’ of all Holocaust victims? The chapter examines whether the notion of Jewish martyrdom is yet another representation—a contemporary simplification that is merely presumed to do justice to the totality of the catastrophe.
Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński: A Poet-Hero
Authors: Clark Joanna Rostropowicz
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on poet Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński. Before the cycle of the trauma of the Nazi occupation's horror, already in the spring of 1941 Baczyński had written a few remarkable poems testifying to his shock at what everybody had seen. Baczyński can be identified as a representative and forerunner of ‘generational catastrophism’, as opposed to ‘historiosophic catastrophism’. Ultimately, Polish poets writing and publishing their booklets of poems during the occupation in clandestine publishing houses used allusion and silence not just as a means of expression, but also as a precaution. The circle of their readers, a few thousand strong, who every day were in contact with the same truths, understood every metaphor and every ellipse. The poems that were closest to these truths-facts were most often copied, recited among friends and in prison cells.
Paper Epitaphs of a Holocaust Memorial: Zofia Nałkowska’s Medallions
Authors: Kuprel Diana
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses Zofa Nałkowska's literary Holocaust memorial Medallions, which was written in 1945 and first published in 1946. Considered a masterpiece in anti-fascist world literature, Medallions is the literary offspring of Nałkowska's wartime and commission experiences. It also stands as the culmination of her stylistic, formal, and thematic literary evolution. Medallions is one of the first, and most important, in the flow of literary accounts to take up the challenge to represent the Nazi machinery of genocide. Avoiding the tendency to mythologize the victims as either heroes or martyrs, it offers instead a concise, severely elegant witness to what people experienced in Poland during the war as distilled from the mass of facts gathered while Nałkowska served as a member of the Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes in Auschwitz.
Poles and Jews in the Kielce Region and Radom, April 1945–February 1946
Authors: Penkalla Adam
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the Poles and Jews in the Kielce Region and Radom. The relations between Poles and Jews and the situation of the Jewish population directly after the end of the Second World War on Polish territory are topics which have only recently been addressed in Polish historiography. The Kielce region is particularly important in any discussion of this problem, because of the importance of the pogrom in Kielce on July 4, 1946 in any evaluation of Polish–Jewish relations at that time. The chapter presents documents which pre-date that event and come mostly from Jewish sources. They reveal the complexity of the political, economic, and social situation in post-war Poland, which determined Polish–Jewish relations, and shed light on the situation within the Jewish community, whose fate had been drastically transformed by the events of the war.
A Shadow over the Dialogue
Authors: Adamczyk-garbowska Monika
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a critique of the statements by Revd Waldemar Chrostowski. No doubt there is some prejudice against Jews in Poland, but, at least in circles such as the academic community and the Polish episcopate's Commission for Dialogue with Judaism, certain things are understood and require no further explanation. In Chrostowski's statement, instead of openness, an eagerness for dialogue, and admission of transgressions, one finds a somewhat competitive, obstinate attitude. Such an attitude is not rare in this context. Some Poles think that the very fact that they are interested and involved in Jewish culture or Judaism should make all Jews in the world grateful to them; therefore, if they happen to come across criticism or hostility towards Poles or Poland on the part of a Jew, in spite of their own good will, they start to resent the whole Jewish community. In such an approach, the dominant concern is not to be open towards the other, but to demonstrate at any cost that one is right.
Forbidden Fruit: Illicit Love Affairs between Jews and Gentiles in the Novels of Julian Stryjkowski
Authors: Grol Regina
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the illicit love affairs between Jews and Gentiles in the Galician novels of Julian Stryjkowski, a Polish Jewish writer. In most of his oeuvre, Stryjkowski exhibits a pronounced loyalty to his Jewish heritage, and several of his novels are dedicated specifically to the reconstruction of the pre-First World War Jewish milieu of the region where he was born and lived. Together, Stryjkowski's four Galician novels constitute a subtly evoked return to a segment of Europe now vanished, and they focus heavily on the Jewish community. The author reconstructs the reality of Jewish life with such sympathy and meticulousness that one never doubts its authenticity. He is faithful to details of custom and tradition, to nuances of speech; he traces the changes effected in the Jewish community by political movements and explores the characteristics and conflicts of the group with exceptional powers of social observation. Poles and Ukrainians, by contrast, are marginal presences in his works. Indeed, the thrust of his writing appears to be to underscore the separateness of the Jews in Galicia, the gulf that existed between them and their Christian neighbours prior to the First World War.
Analyses of World Antisemitism Published between 1991 and 1997
Authors: Udrenas Nerijus
Published: February 2021

RENE COHEN and JENNIFER L. GOLUB, Attitudes toward Jews in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia: A Comparative Survey, Working Papers on Contemporary Antisemitism (New York: American Jewish Committee, Institute of Human Relations, Aug. 1991); pp. 44

The Skinhead International: A Worldwide Survey of Neo-Nazi Skinheads (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1995); pp. 90...
Toledot Hakolnoa Hayehudi Befolin, 1901‒1950
Authors: Gross Natan
Published: February 2021

(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1990); pp. 160

A recent documentary on the United States Public Broadcasting Network called Hollywoodism examined the influence of Jews on the fledgling film industry in America. The documentary did not try to prove that influence. It examined, rather, a well-established fact. Surprisingly, Natan Gross’s ...
Obituary Teresa Prekerowa 1922‒1998
Authors: TuszyńSka Agata
Published: February 2021

ON 19 May 1998 Teresa Prekerowa, one of the most prominent and well respected contributors to these pages, passed away quietly after a long illness. As the 18-year-old Teresa Dobrska she entered the Warsaw ghetto illegally numerous times to bring aid to the family of her friend Alina Wolman; later she helped to smuggle the whole family out of the ghetto and found hiding-places for them on the ‘Aryan side’ near Warsaw. In 1941 she rescued a 4-year-old Jewish girl whom she found crying in the street in ‘Aryan’ Warsaw, taking her into her own home and later placing her in a convent. In 1943 she and her new husband hid a Jew for nine months in their own flat....
New Perspectives on the Haskalah
Authors: Feiner Shmuel
Published: February 2021

This book offers a new understanding of one of the central cultural and ideological movements among Jews in modern times. Disengaging the Haskalah from the questions of modernization or emancipation that have hitherto dominated the scholarship, the book puts the Haskalah under a microscope in order to restore detail and texture to the individuals, ideas, and activities that were its makers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, it replaces simple dichotomies with nuanced distinctions, presenting the relationship between ‘tradition’ and Haskalah as a spectrum of closely linked cultural options rather than a fateful choice between old and new or good and evil. The chapters address major and minor figures; ask whether there was such an entity as an ‘early Haskalah’, or a Haskalah movement in England, look at key issues such as the relationship of the Haskalah to Orthodoxy and hasidism, and also treat such neglected subjects as the position of women.
Portrait of the Maskil as a Young Man
Authors: Werses Shmuel
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses how the intellectual passage from the culture of Torah scholars to the new world of the Haskalah was one of the fundamental experiences of the maskil. It reconstructs the social experience of the east European maskilim, showing the high price the young man paid for his attraction to the Haskalah, since that attraction often entailed a clash with parents and in-laws, teachers and religious leaders. One way to escape this predicament was to acquire a rich patron. Another route was to forge strong ties with other maskilim. The chapter then reveals the critical role played by the ‘forbidden’ book: the young man's clandestine reading of non-canonical books, his conversion through such reading, and the subsequent trauma of discovery and punishment.
Introduction
Authors: Polonsky Antony
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter briefly explores Jewish life and Polish nationhood within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth up until the Second World War. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dual state, created in 1569 by the union of the kingdom of Poland with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was extremely heterogeneous in character. The history of Poland–Lithuania throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries raised the questions of who was a Pole and what should be the boundaries of the future Polish state. For the Polish political élite, there was no question that the goal was the reconstitution of the country within its 1772 frontiers. This created a new interest in documenting the ‘Polishness’ of the borderlands (kresy) of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Self-Perception of Lithuanian–Belarusian Jewry in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Authors: Zajka Vital
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the Lithuanian–Belarusian Jewry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From the earliest times of their settlement in the easternmost Slavonic and Baltic territories, the Jews have been aware of their special status, first as discoverers of lands beyond the limits of the Jewish world of that time, and then as a distinct part of that world. Potential economic and social opportunities and freedom of religious practice and self-government, combined with the benevolence of rulers and the relative tolerance of the surrounding population, gave rise to the distinctiveness of Lithuanian–Belarusian Jews in relation to the rest of Ashkenaz. The term ‘Lithuanian–Belarusian Jewry’ refers to the Jews who lived in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, including the protectorate of Kurland, after the Union of Lublin in 1569. In Yiddish, the land was referred to as ‘Liteh’ and its Jews referred to themselves as ‘Litvaks’. Jewish Liteh also included the region of Podlasie that became a part of the Polish crown territories (the ethnically Polish part of the Commonwealth) as a result of the Union of Lublin.
The Jewish Community in the Grand Duchy of Poznań under Prussian Rule, 1815–1848
Authors: Kemlein Sophia
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the effects of Prussian legal and administrative practices on the Jewish communities in the Grand Duchy of Poznań, and how these communities responded to the changing situation. The question of the autonomy of the communities seems especially instructive, since in pre-emancipation times autonomy had generally been considered a guarantor of the continuance of Jewish life in the Diaspora. In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, autonomy had been developed through countrywide institutions with claims for political representation. After briefly outlining the situation before Prussian rule, the chapter describes the legal status of the Jewish communities with particular attention to the regulations for South Prussia and New East Prussia, since they constitute stages leading to the formulation of legal norms after 1815. It then explores the practical implementation of these laws and the tense relationship between state supervision and the concept of a legal unit on the one hand and traditional Jewish autonomy on the other. Finally, the chapter briefly describes the ways in which the Jewish communities in the Grand Duchy dealt with the realities of Prussian rule, with its pressures for integration and assimilation.
John Paul II on Jews and Judaism
Authors: Wistrich Robert S.
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores Pope John Paul II's denunciations of antisemitism. Since his election in 1978, John Paul II has repeatedly broken new ground in relations with the Jewish community. As the texts on Jews and Judaism compiled under the title Spiritual Pilgrimage by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) show, his writings, homilies, and speeches on Jewish themes represent a remarkable contribution to the historic dialogue between Jews and Catholics today. This ‘spiritual pilgrimage’ culminated in his becoming the first Roman pontiff to visit a synagogue in the Eternal City (or elsewhere) in 1986, followed seven years later by the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the state of Israel. Nor has any previous pope been as consistent, firm, and unequivocal in condemning antisemitism as John Paul II.
Michal Glowiński
Authors: Rappaport Gilbert C.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Black Seasons. This book is a compelling first-person narrative about how a Jewish boy who turned five years old in 1939 survived the Nazi occupation of Poland during the Second World War. The boy, Michał Głowiński (hereafter G), went on to become one of Poland's leading literary scholars and is currently a professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Literary Studies in Warsaw. Black Seasons often comes across as a drama driven by the powerful and ubiquitous tension facing G between life and death (życie i śmierć). There is constant reference to his vulnerability. Death could strike not only in a small bakery on the street, but at the hands of a neatly turned-out man who shows up at the apartment door without cause or warning. And yet the book hardly shows anyone actually dying. And G himself manages, of course, to elude his pursuer time and time again.
Obituaries Andrzej Szczypiorski
Authors: Scharf Rafael
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents an obituary of Andrzej Szczypiorski (1924–2000). Szczypiorski was born in Warsaw the son of an eminent Polish Socialist Party activist. He saw the outbreak of war and the German invasion through the eyes of a 15 year old, then the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto from the ‘Aryan’ side. He took part in the Warsaw uprising, which landed him in the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen. After the war, the new regime in Poland found in him a keen supporter, but his independent spirit soon led him into opposition. In his books and newspaper columns, the chapter reveals how the events of that era find a true and full reflection of contemporary Polish history. It also discusses some of his books from the last decade: The Mass for the Town of Arras, Night, Day and Night, American Whisky, To Catch the Shadow, and Selfportrait with Woman.
Isaac of Troki’s Studies of Rabbinic Literature
Authors: Schreiner Stefan
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Isaac ben Abraham of Troki (c. 1533–c.1594), one of the outstanding members of the sixteenth-century Karaite community in Lithuania, if not its most prominent intellectual. His major work, the Ḥizuk emunah (Strengthening of Faith), occupies a particular place in the history of Christian–Jewish polemics. Isaac’s book, written in old age, was a result of certain interreligious disputations. He decided to systematize the conclusions in one book, hoping that in future the book might serve his co-religionists as a ‘ḥizuk emunah’, as he called it in an allusion to Isaiah 35: 3. The book itself consists of two parts. In the first part, which consists of fifty chapters, he deals at length with the Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, focusing on all those passages that were traditionally read as prooftexts for the Christian dogma. The second part, which is much shorter although it consists of 100 chapters, contains a thorough discussion of the large number of New Testament texts that refer to the Hebrew Bible.