bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Making a Space for Antisemitism: The Catholic Hierarchy and the Jews in the Early Twentieth Century
Authors: Porter Brian
Published: February 2021

This chapter argues that as recently as the 1880s, Catholicism, as it existed in Poland at the time, was still somewhat resistant to expressions of antisemitism. Catholicism, in other words, was configured in such a way in the late nineteenth century as to make it hard for antisemites to express their views without moving to the very edges of the Catholic framework. Catholicism and antisemitism did overlap at the time, but the common ground was much more confined than it would later become. If one moves forward fifty years, to the 1930s, one sees a different picture: the discursive boundaries of Catholicism in Poland had shifted to such a degree that antisemitism became not only possible, but also difficult to avoid. The upshot of this argument is that Catholicism in Poland is not antisemitic in any sort of essential way, and that religion did not directly generate the forms of hatred that would become so deadly and virulent in the early twentieth century. None the less, Catholicism did become amenable to antisemitism in Poland, so much so that the Church in Poland between the wars was one of the country's leading sources of prejudice and animosity.
Some Remarks on Leszek Hońdo’s Study of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Kraków
Authors: Trzciński Andrzej , Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter offers some remarks on Leszek Hońdo's study of the old Jewish cemetery in Kraków. For centuries, the old Jewish cemetery in Kraków has attracted the special attention of researchers on Jewish antiquity and pious pilgrims to holy grave sites, as well as ordinary travellers and the simply curious. Recently, the need for a detailed inventory of the grave sites has become ever more urgent, particularly with the pace of erosion of the headstones. Following the publication by earlier historians of several incomplete descriptions of the cemetery in Kraków, Leszek Hońdo took a full inventory between 1994 and 1997. On the basis of this work, he has published a volume entitled Stary żydowski cmentarz w Krakówie: Historia cmentarza, analiza hebrajskich inskrypcji (The Old Jewish Cemetery in Kraków: History of the Cemetery with Analysis of the Hebrew Inscriptions). The chapter then reviews Hońdo's work, discussing the wider methodological issues arising in the analysis and description of Jewish cemeteries.
The Last Controversy over Ritual Murder? The Debate over the Paintings in Sandomierz Cathedral
Authors: Landau-Czajka Anna
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses a series of religious paintings in the Sandomierz Cathedral, one of which depicts a ritual murder. In 2000, a debate began over what should be done with a painting whose message was so clearly and unambiguously antisemitic. Should a depiction of ritual murder be on display in a church even though Church doctrine has long recognized that Jews never killed children for matzah? On the other hand, should works of art be censored? If they are illegal or immoral, should they be removed? The subject of the painting in Sandomierz Cathedral soon ceased to be merely a local issue when discussion of it filled the Polish press for several weeks. The main problem seemed to be that the myth of ritual murder, though it should by now have been relegated to the past along with that of the existence of witches, was a subject whose interest, in Poland at least, was by no means confined to historians and folklorists. This should come as no surprise, since the issue of ritual murder was still taken seriously by the press in the period between the two world wars. Despite official Church prohibitions, accusations against the Jews were still being made during that period.
The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland of 1967‒1968: Documents
Authors: Rozenbaum WŁodzimierz
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the anti-Zionist campaign in Poland of 1967-1968. The anti-Zionist campaign in Poland which culminated in March of 1968 has been given much attention in the last few years by historians. However, for the most part, published works have focused on anecdotal evidence rather than analysis, mainly because of restricted access to the archives, lack of familiarity with primary sources, and insufficient knowledge of the period. Moreover, the Jewish aspect of the events of March of 1968 has been relegated to the status of an almost secondary, ‘embarrassing’ factor, and the authentic heroes of the events who chose to remain in Poland ‘Polonized’ the character of these events in their own recollections and analyses. A monograph by Dariusz Stola, a historian at the Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk (Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences) in Warsaw, is a remarkable departure from the standard literature on the subject published to date. Stola sets the record straight in his introduction, referring to the perverse character of the anti-Zionist campaign. Stola maintains—and the documentation he has assembled bears him out—that Polish political leaders had no qualms about applying racist criteria when launching the anti-Zionist campaign.
Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky
Authors: Molodowsky Kadya , Hellerstein Kathryn
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky. In Paper Bridges, the poet, translator, and Yiddish scholar Kathryn Hellerstein has selected poems from the six books of Yiddish poetry which Kadya Molodowsky published between 1924 and 1974. In her introduction, Hellerstein mentions that, according to Jewish legend, when the messiah comes, the Jews will cross into paradise over a paper bridge. Molodowsky's use of this folk motif as a theme in her poetry exemplifies its double character, which embraces both social realism and messianic utopianism. The poems are presented in their original Yiddish version and in precise, often evocative, translations. Endnotes elucidate ambiguous meanings of Yiddish words. This allows the reader to partake in some of the choices Hellerstein faced as translator.
Szlagiery starej Warszawy: Śpiewnik andrusowski
Authors: Wielanek Stanisław
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Stanisław Wielanek's Szlagiery starej Warszawy: Śpiewnik andrusowski (Hits of Old Warsaw: A Songbook of the Streetwise). Wielanek is the leader of Kapela Warszawska, a street band that usually performs for tips in an underpass near the Hotel Forum in the centre of Warsaw. They play mainly pre-war Warsaw urban folk music. Wielanek's 500-page volume contains a richness of material that is not only musical—including both scores and lyrics—but also literary and iconographic: from cabaret monologues and vignettes, jokes, bon mots, and biographical and contextual information, to drawings, posters, photographs, and postcards. Alongside old Warsaw songs and criminal or lumpenproletarian ballads, the book includes a separate section on Jewish folklore in Polish which is nearly 100 pages long, and another fifty-page section on Lwów.
Collaboration during the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941‒44
Authors: Dean Martin
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews Martin Dean's book Collaboration during the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44. Martin Dean's book is about local police participation in the murder of the Jews in certain regions of Belarus and Ukraine which were part of Russia until 1918, then part of Poland or the Soviet Union until 1939, and then part of the Soviet Union until 1941. He points to the importance of a ‘second wave’ of killings, at least in the parts of the former Soviet Union he addresses. Generally, he notes, the historiography of the Holocaust has focused on the ‘first wave’, which took place in the summer and autumn of 1942. But the great majority of the murders took place later, in 1942 and 1943, as ghettos were systematically cleared. In this deadly ‘second wave’, local Ukrainian and Belarusian police forces played an essential role, primarily in rounding up and hunting down Jews for execution, but also from time to time as gun men. The Germans relied heavily on these policemen to find the Jews since they had the advantage of knowing the intended victims personally.
Study at Volozhin in the Time of R. Naftali Berlin
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the period of relative tranquillity after the leadership struggles of the 1860s. While there do seem to have been shifts in Volozhin's reputation during this time, in general it retained its pre-eminent status. After the 1860s, although the methods of teaching and study remained unchanged there were important developments in the curriculum, though they attracted little attention at the time. Talmud had always been at the centre of the curriculum but now it became the sole text studied (with the exception of the weekly Torah portion): the shiurim on halakhah disappeared, the study of halakhic codes declined drastically, the practical halakhic implications of Talmud study were de-emphasized, and the study of kabbalah ceased. The chapter details these changes.
The Last Years of the Volozhin Yeshiva
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter deals with the final developments of the Volozhin yeshiva. By the 1880s and 1890s, the Volozhin yeshiva found itself in difficult circumstances. Its finances were catastrophic, its relations with the Jewish community at large were deteriorating, and it faced many calls for far-reaching structural changes in the institution. There was also an internal split over the question of R. Berlin's successor. These challenges did not significantly change the atmosphere of the yeshiva, though the increasing importance of student societies was a noteworthy development. By surveying these organizations and other aspects of student life in the last years of the Volozhin yeshiva and giving a careful look at the finances of the yeshiva it is possible to come to some important insights into the changing realities of yeshiva life during these critical years.
The Slobodka Yeshiva
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the Slobodka yeshiva and notes its differences with the Volozhin yeshiva. Founded around 1881, the Slobodka yeshiva was a completely new type of yeshiva, and it became one of the most influential of its time. It was unique in combining intensive Talmud study with a passionate commitment to developing its students' moral character and instilling in them an awareness that a concern with musar (ethics) was an essential attribute of a Torah scholar. These innovations were not accepted unquestioningly. This chapter examines the reasons and background for this, as well as the opposition that the founders had to face and the difficulties that eventually split the institution.
Hadassah, 1912–1933: Finding a Role
Authors: Katzburg-Yungman Mira
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the founding of Hadassah within the context of its American setting as well as the growing need for organizations dedicated to providing health services. It shows how Szold and six other women published a flyer calling upon the Jewish women of America to found a large Zionist organization, with the twin aims of disseminating Zionism in the United States and setting up health and welfare services for women and children in Palestine. In response to this appeal, thirty-eight women gathered at Temple Emanuel in New York in 1912. The new organization adopted the name Hadassah Chapter of the Daughters of Zion, after the study group that formed its core; and the women agreed, following Szold, that it should be devoted to meeting the pressing need for better health services in Palestine. The main field of activity that Hadassah chose to enter was one already considered suitable for women in the United States, professionals and volunteers alike.
Hadassah, 1933–1947: Responding to Crisis
Authors: Katzburg-Yungman Mira
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses organizational developments during the Second World War. From 1937 a gradual shift took place in Hadassah's policy that saw it beginning to engage in political activity. A significant contribution was made to this change by David Ben-Gurion, the Zionist workers' leader who would later be considered the architect of the Jewish state. In addition, the rise of Hitler to power in 1933, and the consequent challenge of coping with the problem of the Jewish refugees from Germany, led to an expansion both of Hadassah's activity and of the organization itself. Furthermore, the chapter reveals that Hadassah's political activity in the three years between the end of the Second World War and the establishment of the State of Israel was only part of its overall programme. Another part, which the organization saw as one of its central roles, was the education of its members along Jewish and Zionist lines.
The American Foundations
Authors: Katzburg-Yungman Mira
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Hadassah's American foundations. American zionist ideology had much in common with core American values and the American ethos. Hadassah's ideology is no exception to this rule, echoing American national ideals and characteristics fundamental to American culture. In the absence of a national common denominator, such as country of origin or heritage, the American national consciousness was largely formed on the basis of ideological identification with and commitment to a set of universal values. An individual's American identity is based on a system of ideas that has penetrated the daily life of American society and constitutes a living faith for most Americans.
Hadassah in the War of Independence, 1947–1949
Authors: Katzburg-Yungman Mira
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns to Hadassah's activities during Israel's war of independence. The war began in 1947. It began as ‘“riots,” which quickly developed into the conflagration of battles’. In the first phase of the war, Arab gangs assisted by volunteers from neighbouring countries attacked essential transportation routes, concentrations of Jews in mixed (Jewish and Arab) cities, and isolated settlements. At this stage, resistance was mounted by underground organizations of the Yishuv, particularly the Haganah. When the British left, the regular armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, as well as volunteer units from Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Yemen invaded, with the aim of destroying the State of Israel in its infancy. They were met by Israel's army, known since 1948 as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
Hadassah’s Partners
Authors: Katzburg-Yungman Mira
Published: February 2021

This chapter details Hadassah's ‘partners’. Hadassah's enterprise in Palestine was the largest collective project of women in the diaspora on behalf of the Yishuv and, later, Israel, and remains so today. It depended for its success, however, on its partners in this enterprise: professionals in the Yishuv and Israel. These doctors, nurses, teachers, and others, most of them European migrants to Israel, gave of the energy, talent, and knowledge they had acquired in the countries in which they had been educated. They were the executors, and sometimes the visionaries, of Hadassah's various projects in the Yishuv and Israel. These people played a critical role in Hadassah's work for the Yishuv and Israel, and in its existence as a Zionist organization in the United States.
Introduction
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the author's collection of articles which all deal with aspects of east European Jewish life in the modern period. This was a time of transition from a society in which tradition was a key force to one in which models of the past no longer significantly determined behaviour and thought. This shift took place rapidly and under conditions that were not obviously conducive to a quick and smooth transition, and the consequences are still very evident today. The chapter explains thar divided into three sections, the book studies the workings of Jewish communities, particularly east European Jewish society. The first section deals with family formation, family reformation, and family maintenance. The second section deals with education. Finally, the last section deals with the rabbinate — not with specific rabbis but with the institution.
Remarriage among Jews and Christians
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates the phenomenon of remarriage in nineteenth-century eastern Europe, demonstrating its significance in Jewish marital behaviour. Patterns of remarriage deserve attention for a number of reasons: they influenced fertility levels, affected family structure, played a role in networking, and served as an indicator of the importance of marriage in a given society. Remarriage is highly revealing of group characteristics and behaviour, but remarriage in late nineteenth-century eastern Europe merits attention for an additional reason. Patterns of remarriage and their changes over time significantly diverged among various population groups. Eastern Europe is thus an excellent context for examining the impact of significant variables on remarriage by means of a comparative approach. The chapter then evaluates modes of remarriage among four major religious-national groups: Russian Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. It also considers important differences between Jews and Christians in specific patterns of remarriage.
Ḥeder Study, Knowledge of Torah, and the Maintenance of Social Stratification
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on education in east European Jewish society. On one hand, education was highly regarded by all Jews; learnedness was one of the critical qualities for membership in the elite and lifelong study was one of the most visible features of that society. However, while in many societies education is a means for mobility, traditional east European Jewish society was highly stratified and stable, with little intergenerational social mobility. The key to understanding this situation was the ḥeder, the traditional Jewish elementary school in eastern Europe. The first level of ḥeder study was devoted to learning the mechanics of reading Hebrew. The next level is ḥumash ḥeder, in which students studied each week the portion of the Torah which was to be read the coming sabbath in the synagogue. When a child was able to read the Torah, he was ready to move up to a Talmud ḥeder. For generations up until the late nineteenth century, the standard framework for advanced talmudic study had been study in the beit midrash, or communal study and prayer hall. Ultimately, the ḥeder system contributed to the balance and stability of Jewish society. It was a conservative tool, even though the popular image was that the educational system was open and every Jewish child could become a talmudic scholar.
The Making and the Maintenance of the Image of the Gaon of Vilna
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the development of the image of the Vilna Gaon, one of the best-known east European Jews. The Gaon left few disciples and a very problematic literary heritage. He wrote enigmatic notes rather than clear and readable comments on the Talmud, so that reconstructing his interpretation of a talmudic text is a difficult and arduous task. For this, and probably other reasons as well, he was not often cited. One consequence of this was that later generations could not even learn of his ideas secondhand. If the Gaon's works were not widely studied, how then was his memory preserved? In his lifetime, the Gaon had a very strong impact on a small circle of individuals close to him and a leading role in the Vilna community and region. Therefore, biographies seem to have had an important role in the maintenance of his memory. However, while they preserved his memory, they also helped shape it. Interestingly, one of the elements that seems to have been underemphasized in these biographies was the Gaon's opposition to hasidism.
Introduction
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the history of the entry of Jews into the medical and legal professions. In surveying this history, there are many factors to consider. Among them is the Jews' changing view of the prestige attached to each profession, the variations in their perception of the psychological and financial rewards to be gained from pursuing a career in medicine or the law, and the hierarchical structure of these professions. At the same time, just as England moved from being part of the British empire run by an elite contemptuous of immigrants, whom they viewed as inferior, so the Jews themselves imbibed new values. Furthermore, their class and status in today's multicultural society is no longer that of recent immigrants. Thus, this book sets out to explain how an Anglo-Jewish immigrant population from eastern Europe, mainly proletarian in character, which arrived in England and Wales between 1880 and 1920, transformed itself socially and economically in the course of three generations.
Jews and the Courts 1900‒1945
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses Jews and the courts more generally between the early years of the twentieth century and the Second World War. Jews were keen litigants in the lower-level civil courts, particularly in the Whitechapel and Shoreditch county courts presided over from 1911 by Judge Albert Rowland Cluer. Although an able judge, Cluer possessed many foibles and prejudices, and the chapter assesses whether Jewish litigants had their cases fairly tried and whether they were adequately represented by the Jewish barristers who regularly appeared there. It also considers the small minority of Jewish businessmen who were charged at the Old Bailey and quarter sessions with credit fraud, fraudulent claims against insurance companies, and illegal share-pushing schemes. The number of Jewish bankruptcies was also high, for Jewish businessmen tended to be risk-takers and entrepreneurs, always seeking new opportunities in the market—and sometimes, in the process, exposing themselves to prosecution. After the Second World War, many moved into the urban property market or took over sluggish public companies with hidden assets.
Jewish Solicitors 1890‒1939
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Jewish solicitors from 1890 to 1939. In a London directory of 1883, there were forty-seven Jewish solicitors out of a total of 4,920; that is, slightly less than 1 per cent of solicitors were Jewish, a proportion smaller than the Jewish proportion of the population of London, where the vast majority of these Jewish practitioners would have been located. At that time, Jewish solicitors had been practising in England for a hundred years or more. Apart from the staple fare of solicitors' practices—conveyancing, probate, and litigation—Jewish firms, which were closely connected by family and communal ties with the merchant and shopkeeping classes, specialized in commercial work, and, if need be, in guiding clients through the bankruptcy courts. The chapter then shows how the first Sir George Lewis was a role model for later Jewish solicitors, both as a society lawyer and in his involvement with the arts world. It also examines the structure of Jewish law firms between the wars. Most were concentrated in the City, and were small; there were also a few firms connected with the Anglo-Jewish elite which represented banks and big business, certain others which acted for moneylenders or those in the world of the arts, and a few others associated with leading communal figures.
The Entry of East European Jews into the Law between the World Wars
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains why relatively few Jews from east European Jewish families joined the English legal profession before the Second World War and outlines when Jews from these immigrant families did move into the law. Prior to the First World War, Jewish entrants into the solicitors' profession and the medical schools in England were confined to a small proportion of the upper and middle classes. During the First World War and into the 1920s, it appears, children of east European Jewish immigrants to England began to train as doctors in increasingly large numbers; but few became solicitors, and even fewer barristers, until the late 1920s and 1930s. Why was this? Cost was one highly significant factor. In the absence of special entrance requirements devised to suppress the number of Jewish solicitors admitted to the profession in England, there were economic rather than social barriers that impeded their entry. The chapter then looks at several factors which attracted talented Jewish youths to the legal profession.
Jewish Refugee Lawyers
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights Jewish refugee lawyers. Whereas refugee doctors were given the opportunity of taking up their profession again because of urgent wartime needs, German Jewish lawyers faced a much more difficult task in attempting to integrate themselves into the British legal system. Barristers with German accents felt unwelcome, so that few refugees tried to make a career at the English Bar. Refugees could not become solicitors unless they were naturalized, something that was difficult to achieve during the war, and only a small number qualified as solicitors after the war, as the English common law and Continental legal systems were so divergent. Nevertheless, some German Jewish lawyers settled in England and helped to create and staff the international restitution organizations; others opened practices which specialized in these claims or joined law firms as clerks to handle such work.
Jewish Consultants after the Second World War
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores Jewish consultants after the Second World War. In the years immediately after the Second World War, there was a shortage of places in British medical schools, and in the intense competition for admission between recent school-leavers and returning soldiers, priority was given to those who could show evidence of military service. As a result, there were instances of prejudice being shown against Jewish applicants and refugees, some of whom were of Jewish origin. Meanwhile, because of the shortage of consultants at the inauguration of the National Health Service in 1948, hospitals had to employ a large number of refugee doctors, many of whom were specialists. While the post-war period saw an expansion of the number of Jewish doctors practising in London, the increase over the late 1930s was not dramatic. Following the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968, and 1976, a more tolerant climate of opinion gradually evolved which assisted Jews and others when they applied for medical scholarships and appointments as specialists. The chapter then examines how the new machinery set up for the selection of senior hospital staff enhanced the opportunities for Jewish candidates to make successful applications.
Jewish Solicitors 1945‒1990
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies Jewish solicitors from 1945 to 1990. Although the groundwork for the transformation of the position of Jews in the legal profession had been laid prior to the Second World War, the burgeoning careers of many solicitors were interrupted by service in the armed forces and were not resumed until the late 1940s. Practices left in the hands of managing clerks and neighbouring solicitors had run down, and it took a few years of sustained effort to restore many a practice to its former level. However, a group of enterprising Jewish solicitors did more than this: they seized the opportunities that existed in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of post-war rebuilding, the office and housing boom, and the consumer revolution, and sometimes hitched their fortunes to those of Jewish property entrepreneurs or entered the property market themselves. Others, too, through their financial and legal acumen, became directors of a wide range of companies.
Jewish Communist, Socialist, and Maverick Lawyers
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter reflects on Jewish communist, socialist, and maverick lawyers. Whereas many Jewish solicitors viewed their profession primarily from a business perspective—and were extremely successful in both business and professional terms—another group of solicitors from the same east European background were driven by more altruistic motives, impelled by a zealous pursuit of justice on behalf of their clients or devoted to active campaigning for specific legal reform. Some members of this latter group were communists; a larger number of the outstanding Jewish lawyers from the second generation of east European immigrants were associated with the Labour Party; still others were mavericks. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, it has become apparent that the recruitment of Jewish lawyers into the Communist Party was a passing phase born out of the frustrations of the 1930s, and the misplaced idealism of the early 1950s. Towards the end of the century, Jewish radicalism continued in new forms.
Jewish Barristers 1945‒1990
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Jewish barristers from 1945 to 1990. Partly because the provisions of the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949 were starting to take effect, and partly because of the post-war upsurge in crime, there was a marked expansion in work for barristers in the late 1950s at much higher rates of pay than in the pre-war period. They were also helped by the multiplication of retail chains of shops in the clothing and electrical goods sectors, together with the establishment of large property companies, which in turn fostered a number of influential Jewish commercial law practices. Whereas the emergence of Jewish solicitors specializing in criminal law assisted the careers of some of those practising at the criminal Bar, the West End and City Jewish law practices with large numbers of business clients permitted the entry of barristers from families of east European immigrants into the commercial Bar and generated an appreciable volume of civil litigation. Accordingly, the increase in the number of Jewish solicitors' practices after the Second World War levelled the playing field for barristers from similar backgrounds, although these firms continued to instruct counsel from every creed and every ethnic group.
Jews in the Judiciary, 1945‒1990
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Jews in the English judiciary from 1945 to 1990. Until the late 1960s, no Jew could become a High Court judge unless he belonged to the Anglo-Jewish elite, which differed little in educational attainments and lifestyle from the rest of the English upper class, even if he was exceptionally able. Starting in 1968, during the last years of Harold Wilson's Labour administration, Lord Chancellor Gerald Gardiner began to appoint Jewish barristers from middle-class backgrounds and of east European family origin to the High Court bench. These men had for the most part been educated in local grammar schools and redbrick universities. This policy was continued both by the Conservative Heath government and by Labour administrations in the 1970s. The chapter then assesses how Jewish these High Court judges were in their personal affiliation.
From The Haggadah to The Rubáiyát
Authors: Ansell Joseph P.
Published: February 2021

This chapter primarily discusses the background and context of Arthur Szyk's most enduring work, The Haggadah. It also provides an analysis of the work and its publication. For much of the 1930s, Szyk had been working on this illustrated and illuminated book — his version of the Haggadah, the prayer book used by the Jews for the celebration of Passover. The holiday of Passover commemorates the liberation and Exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. It is thus a celebration of freedom. The decision to work with this text had both art-historical precedent and contemporary political significance. So that work on The Haggadah could be completed and the many details of its production could proceed smoothly, the Szyks settled in London in 1937. Although the several years he spent with his family in London were occupied primarily with work on The Haggadah, Szyk also worked on two additional and very different major projects: a series of paintings on the history of Poles in America and a set of eight illustrations for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
Drawing Lessons
Authors: Ansell Joseph P.
Published: February 2021

This chapter marks Arthur Szyk's return to book illustrations after the war and the ways in which he created interconnections between his art and contemporary world events. In the years after the war book illustration continued to occupy a significant portion of Szyk's creative time. His next project was a series of illustrations for Pathways through the Bible, an abridged version of the Old Testament intended for young audiences. Here, again, Szyk found ways to connect his work to the recent world war. Both the author, Mortimer Cohen, and the illustrator provided dedications for the volume; Szyk's recalled his personal loss resulting from Nazi atrocities, thus connecting his art to the recent war. After exploring his work in Pathways through the Bible, the chapter also analyses his other works during the post-war period.
Fighting for Israel
Authors: Ansell Joseph P.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Arthur Szyk's work on behalf of Jewish rights and the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. After the war, Szyk continued and increased his work on behalf of Jewish groups. Now that the Axis powers had been defeated, he could focus his political activism on his people once again. The political drawings from this period deal with two related subjects: the plight of the homeless Jews of Europe, and the collusion between Britain and the Arab nations in preventing the creation of a Jewish state. Britain had backed away from its earlier commitment, outlined in the Balfour Declaration, and Szyk felt it should be held publicly responsible. Many of these drawings, like those on Jewish topics that appeared during the war, portray young, vigorous Jewish soldiers, fighting for their rights rather than meekly accepting their fate.
Broadening Jewish History
Authors: Endelman Todd M.
Published: February 2021

This book seeks to expand the horizons of modern Jewish historiography by focusing on 'ordinary' rather than exceptional Jews, arguing that what ordinary people did or felt can do more to deepen our understanding of Jewish history than what a few exceptional individuals thought and wrote. The book makes a strong case for comparative history, showing convincingly that only a comparison across national borders can identify the Germanness of German Jewish history or the Englishness of English Jewish history, and thereby reveal what is unique about each. The book redefines the area under consideration and deftly restates the need for Jewish social history to counterbalance the current focus on cultural studies. The book offers an important examination of the major trends in the writing of modern Jewish history and the assumptions that have guided historians in their narration of the Jewish past. It shows in particular how the two watershed events of twentieth-century Jewish history — the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel — influenced Jewish historiography for decades thereafter. It also demonstrates how progressive integration into the scholarly framework of American academia has shaped both the form and the content of Jewish historical research. Each of the case studies focuses on a largely unknown figure whose career illustrates the often tortuous paths of integration and acceptance that Jews faced. Some achieved fleeting fame but many of the people who populate the volume remain altogether unknown, their histories recoverable only as statistics.
Making Jews Modern
Authors: Endelman Todd M.
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the assumption of the value of identity in illuminating Jewish behaviour in recent centuries for understanding the experience of Jews in earlier periods. It explains how Jews constituted a well-defined collective unit for whom questions of self-identification in medieval and early modern Europe rarely arose, such as who people are and what is their place. The chapter also highlights the difference between pre-modern European Jews and their neighbours by virtue of their religion, nationality or ethnicity, and legal status, including language, costume, employment, and social and cultural habits. The chapter cites religious traditions, social structures, and legal categories that defined the borders of the Jewish world, which remained stable throughout the medieval and early modern periods. It refers to the nature of correct belief and practice that is disputed within the Jewish world, such as rabbis who clashed over how best to know and serve God.
German Jews in Victorian England
Authors: Endelman Todd M.
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights the German Jewish settlement of the Victorian period as the least known of the various migrations that contributed to its growth. It cites the British Census, which did not distinguish between Christians and Jews while recording the country of origin of persons of foreign birth at a time when there was a substantial German trading colony in England. It also discusses the few numbers of German Jewish immigrants who integrated into English society with relative ease after they broke with their Jewish tradition. The chapter mentions the Jews who were immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Holland, the German states, and Poland, who had escaped the poverty and degrading restrictions that embittered Jewish life in most ancien régime states. It probes the immigration from central Europe in the Victorian period as a reflection of the social and economic transformation of Germany that was under way in the nineteenth century.
So Many Questions
Authors: Ambrosewicz-Jacobs Olanta
Published: February 2021

I was recently [a speaker] in a school in Brzeszcze near Oświęcim. This was an elementary school and a junior high school. They [the students] were wonderful. They listened and listened, and then there were a lot of questions. Usually few questions or none are asked at such meetings, but here there were suddenly so many questions....
‘On the Gallows’
Authors: Ury Scott
Published: February 2021

THE questions, dilemmas, challenges, and nuances associated with the phenomenon often referred to as Jewish assimilation have been integral components of both Jewish society and historiography for centuries. Thus intellectual figures as diverse as Hannah Arendt and Jacob Katz have gone to great lengths to clarify these and associated phenomena in different historical and political contexts....
Introducing Miss Judaea 1929
Authors: Plach Eva
Published: February 2021

ON 3 FEBRUARY 1929 the Warsaw-based Zionist daily Nasz Przegląd (1923–39) announced the opening of Poland’s first Miss Judaea beauty pageant. The pronouncement was made just as media attention turned to the upcoming Miss Europe beauty competition in which women from twenty European countries would be participating. Only women of the Jewish nation would be missing from the Paris-based European festivities, ...
Shmerke Kaczerginski
Authors: Werb Bret
Published: February 2021

FOR AT LEAST a decade following the Second World War, Shmerke Kaczerginski was a familiar figure to Yiddish speakers worldwide. Yet although he was a popular writer and speaker with a wide circle of friends and professional associates, very little about him appeared in print during his lifetime. That situation altered abruptly with his death, in 1954, and the publication the following year of the ...
You from Jedwabne
Authors: Tokarska-Bakir Joanna
Published: February 2021

Nothing like this has been discussed here …

HANNA KRALL Wyjątkowo długa linia

RICHARD RORTY believes that there are books without whose existence we would feel much better: an example is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Poland, My z Jedwabnego (‘We from Jedwabne’) by Anna Bikont would figure high on that list....
The Dedication of the New Synagogue in Poznań (Posen)
Authors: Polonsky Antony
Published: February 2021

THE CIRCUMSTANCES of the building of the New Synagogue are described fully in Carol Krinsky’s article. Here it should be stressed that there was a single Jewish Communal Body (Gemeinde) in Poznań, which included both those who would now be described as Orthodox and more progressive and Reform Jews. The Neue Synagoge would today be seen as a modern Orthodox house of worship. Rabbi Wolf Feilchenfeld, whose address forms the core of the pamphlet describing the dedication, was born in Glogau, Silesia in 1827. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1849 with a prize-winning dissertation on the ethics of the Stoics and was ordained in 1854. He studied rabbinics with Rabbi Michel Landsberg of Berlin, Rabbi Israel Lipschutz of Danzig, the author of a commentary on the Mishnah, and Rabbi Mordechai Michael Jaffe of Hamburg. Feilchenfeld’s first rabbinic post was in Düsseldorf (1855). His correspondence reveals that he found his congregation too liberal for his views and soon started to look elsewhere, without success. In 1872 he finally obtained a post more to his taste when he was appointed rabbi in Poznań, a post he held for over forty years and where his views were in harmony with the conservative and largely orthodox opinions of his congregants. He had a lifelong interest in Jewish education and while in Düsseldorf had established a Jewish teachers’ seminary, which later moved to Cologne. He was refused governmental permission to create a similar body in Prussian Poland and had to be satisfied with an institute for training Jewish communal workers for small communities, where it was necessary to combine the function of teacher with that of cantor and ritual slaughterer. He also created an association, ‘Leshon Limudim’, to encourage religious study among young people. From 1876 to 1911 he was a member of the Central Board of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and a founder of the world Orthodox union Agudas Israel. His rabbinic rulings commanded wide respect and he was also a fine pulpit speaker, as can be seen in the address reprinted here....
A Selection from Part 1 of Lev Levanda’s Seething Times
Authors: Shrayer Maxim D.
Published: February 2021

THERE is reason to believe that Lev Levanda (1835–88) composed Seething Times: A Novel from the Last Polish Uprising as early as the mid-1860s. Levanda’s novel was serialized in the St Petersburg-based Evreiskaya biblioteka (Jewish Library) in 1871–3. In 1875 a separate book edition was issued in St Petersburg by ...
The Reconstruction of Pre-Ashkenazic Jewish Settlements in the Slavic Lands in the Light of Linguistic Sources
Authors: Wexler Paul
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the reconstruction of the history of pre-Ashkenazic Jewish settlement patterns in the Slavic lands. It first surveys briefly the insights of historians on early Jewish settlement history in the Slavic lands, and then explores some linguistic data which raise some tantalizing questions for the historian. The examples provided constitute a small fraction of the extant materials that could attest to non-Ashkenazic Jewish settlement on the Slavic territories eventually occupied by the Ashkenazic Jews. If these examples do not prove beyond doubt the existence of Turkic or Iranian Jewries in the German- and West Slavic-speaking lands, they certainly do suggest a certain amount of cultural and linguistic impact — probably through an intermediary Judeo-Slavic community in the West and possibly East Slavic lands. The impact of Slavic Jewries on Ashkenazic Jewry has so far been speculative.
Jewish Perceptions of Insecurity and Powerlessness in 16th-18th Century Poland
Authors: Rosman M. J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the fundamental security and the economic and political power which the Jews possessed in 16th–18th century Poland. While many Polish Jews recognized that they were essentially secure in fact and behaved accordingly, at least some of the rabbinic and lay leadership felt that this security was a precarious one, threatened from many quarters, not to be taken for granted. Ultimate power belonged to someone else — the king who decreed, the nobility who enforced, the mob who attacked. These elements had to be pleased or placated; otherwise, seeming Jewish security might quickly evaporate. The feelings of powerlessness that some Jews felt can be detected in many of the stories about the founder of Hasidism, Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, and his successors, which show that part of the Hasidic leader's popular appeal was his ability to avert Jewish falls from the graces of the ruling authorities or his knack for outsmarting non-Jewish opponents.
Polish-Jewish Relations and the January Uprising: The Polish Perspective
Authors: Opalska Magdalena
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Polish–Jewish relations and the January uprising. The memory of the pro-Polish orientation of the Jews in the January uprising remained alive throughout the 19th and in the early 20th centuries. The legend of patriotic ‘Poles of Mosaic faith’, which crystallized in the 1860s as a part of a broader romantic myth, gained a lasting place in literary tradition. The positive evaluation of the Jewish role generally remained artistically and ideologically rooted in the traditional romantic worldview. From that point of view, many later works can be seen as fossils of Polish romanticism. As the character of Polish–Jewish relations deteriorated, the Jewish legend of 1863 was continually revised in retrospect and it evolved in an increasingly negative fashion. Projecting new problems upon the past, Polish literature of the realist and modernist periods emphasized the economic aspect of Polish–Jewish relations and portrayed Jewish political loyalties with growing ambivalence. Echoing complex structural changes in post-insurrectionary Polish society as a whole, changes which brought about the revision of the larger myth of 1863, the evolution of its Jewish aspect followed closely the course of the debate on the so-called ‘Jewish question’.
Jews and Poles in Yiddish Literature in Poland Between the Two World Wars
Authors: Shmeruk Chone
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Yiddish literature in Poland between the two World Wars. After World War I, a schism began to divide the two major centres of Yiddish literature in Eastern Europe. Despite certain difficulties with Polish censorship and in contrast to Soviet Yiddish literature, in independent Poland, Yiddish literature continued to develop in great freedom. Unlike the case of Soviet Yiddish literature, a direct and natural connection existed between writer and reader deriving from an unbroken cultural-historical continuum and enjoying the benefits of a native habitat. Despite the often bitter internal arguments, there was room in Yiddish literature in Poland for all possible ideologies and trends. Yiddish literature in Poland was essentially a secular literature, although there was also a surviving traditional religious Yiddish literature, as well as a new literature in Yiddish with religious orientations. Politically, Yiddish literature encompassed a wide range of ideological positions, from extreme nationalist literature which totally negated the ideological left, to fanatical communistic orientations.