bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Jewish Popular Spirituality in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Hundert Gershon David
Published: February 2021

This chapter shows how, during the period beginning in the latter part of the seventeenth century, works that popularized kabbalistic ideas in homiletic and ethical treatises and in regimens of daily life appeared in substantial numbers. This reflected the significant increase in interest in popular kabbalistic teachings at precisely this time. This increased interest generated a growing market for the large number of books of conduct and other works informed by kabbalistic teachings that were published in these years. And the literature itself served to stimulate further interest in popular kabbalah. Many of the publications in question were essentially inexpensive pamphlets written in accessible language and guiding the reader through prayer services and rituals associated with the life cycle. All these were imbued with mystical significance. In this way the individual could feel privy to the esoteric realm and attain the conviction that they were indeed acting in accordance with God’s will. Moreover, the spread of this popular literature created a constituency for the emerging kabbalistic elite.
Jakub Becal: King Jan III Sobieski’s Jewish Factor
Authors: Kaźmierczyk Adam
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns to King Jan III Sobieski’s factor Jakub Bezalel — known from the sources mainly as Becal (Becall). Becal was one of these elevated court Jews. He was exceptional in that he was one of the few Jews whose biography appeared in the Polski słownik biograficzny. He is also mentioned in the works of Polish historians, most often in the context of the Grodno Sejm of 1692–1693, during which he was accused of blasphemy. In the works of Jewish historians he is represented as a member of a persecuted group who, in unfavourable circumstances, managed to attain high positions through their personal merits and talents.
Anna Landau-Czajka W jednym stali domu … Koncepcje rozwiązania kwestii żydowskiej w publicystyce polskiej lat 1933–1939
Authors: Pawlikowski John T.
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a volume examining the role of Jews in Polish consciousness during the critical period of the 1930s. In this new volume, Landau-Czajka attempts to further understanding of the Jewish presence in Poland by taking the reader, quite systematically, through the prevailing attitudes of the 1930s. Sponsored by the important Instytut Historii Polski Akademia Nauk (Historical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, PAN), the volume works from the basic assumption that Jews belonged in Poland. As the title implies, Polish Jews shared the nation as a common homeland. It examines a host of publications that struggled positively and negatively with the ‘Jewish question’ in Poland from 1933 to 1939. Included in Landau-Czajka’s study are over fifty periodicals (secular and religious) of vastly different orientations such as Słowo, Polityka, Kultura, Mały Dziennik, Czas, and Narodowy Socjalista.
Władysław Szpilman The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw 1939–1945
Authors: Fitelberg Gary
Published: February 2021

This chapter covers Władysław Szpilman’s memoir, The Pianist. The book is a testimony to the power of music, the will to live, and the courage to stand against evil. In 1939, Szpilman, a young Warsaw pianist, played Chopin’s nocturne in C sharp minor live on the radio while German shells exploded outside so loudly that he could not hear the piano. The war cast Warsaw into the horror of occupation, the ghetto, the rounding up of Jews, the uprising, and the evacuation of the city — events that killed most of Szpilman’s friends and all of his family. Incredibly, he survived among the ruins of his beloved city. Szpilman’s life was saved by a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who heard him playing the same Chopin nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. That officer died in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, but he left behind a diary expressing his fierce despair at the barbarity of National Socialism. Extracts are published in the book for the first time, along with Szpilman’s memoir.
The Scholarly Activities of Chone Shmeruk in Poland
Authors: Gierowski Józef A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores Professor Chone Shmeruk’s scholarly activities. His outlook was based on two important factors. First, as a scholar he understood that research on the history of Polish Jewry — that is, on the greatest autonomous Jewish group in the diaspora — could be pursued only through the close cooperation of Jewish and Polish specialists. In this field an ignorance of Polish history and of source materials existing only in Poland can lead to errors and misunderstandings to the same degree as can ignorance of the Jewish past. The second factor was his sentiment towards the country of his youth and of his ancestors. He represented a very specific generation of Israeli patriots with roots in Poland.
Introduction
Authors: Steinlauf Michael C.
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Jewish popular culture. The Jewish engagement with modernity in the Polish lands brought masses of Jews out of their small-town communities and into the tumult of urban life. A Jewish mass culture resulted that shaped Jewish life in Poland until its end. This culture was constructed above all around the possibilities of Yiddish, the vernacular language of Polish Jews. But the culture far transcended literature and included a diverse array of phenomena including mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, music, theatre, and material artefacts of various kinds. For several generations of Polish Jews, this culture defined the texture of everyday life. Yet the popular culture these Polish Jews created to serve their daily needs is largely unknown. This is a consequence of a well-known bias at the origin of modern Jewish scholarship.
Dos yidishe bukh alarmirt! Towards the History of Yiddish Reading in Inter-War Poland
Authors: Kellman Ellen
Published: February 2021

This chapter traces the history of Yiddish reading in inter-war Poland. Jewish public libraries played a pivotal role in working-class Jewish culture in the period between the wars. Since many young people typically left school in their early teens to enter the workforce, libraries and the cultural activities that took place in and around them enabled young people to continue to develop intellectually. The symbiosis between the Yiddish book industry and Yiddish libraries in inter-war Poland meant that the relative health or infirmity of libraries strongly affected the book industry. Thus, when the Yiddish book sounded the alarm in 1939, it was an indication of the troubled state of the libraries as well. Although the twenty-year interlude between the two world wars was an extremely difficult period for Polish Jewry, one that, with hindsight, one may see as characterized by significant losses, it was also distinguished by the tremendous creative energy of its cultural activists.
The Kraków Jewish Culture Festival
Authors: Gruber Ruth Ellen
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes on the Kraków Festival of Jewish Culture, founded in 1988 by Jewish intellectuals Janusz Makuch and Krzysztof Gierat. The public embrace of Jewish culture in Poland had its roots in the anti-communist dissident movements of the 1960s and 1970s and developed steadily after the success of Solidarność in 1980 opened up new cultural and intellectual freedoms that were only partially stifled by the imposition of martial law in 1981. The pervasiveness of underground networks forced some relaxation of official strictures, too. Many taboos remained in place, but from the early 1980s on, with official sanction that at times verged on co-option, books on Jewish topics were published, research on Jewish subjects was carried out, and exhibitions, concerts, and performances on Jewish themes were held with increasing frequency. The Kraków festival was a milestone in this process and throughout the 1990s served as an important, continuing catalyst, changing and developing as overall conditions in post-communist Poland evolved.
Jews in the Polish Security Apparatus: An Attempt to Test the Stereotype
Authors: Paczkowski Andrzej
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the issue of Jews in the Urzędy Bezpieczeństwa (Polish security apparatus, UB), which includes that of the relationship of Jews to communism as well as of Poles to Jews, and also perhaps of Jews to Poles. The disproportionate number of Jews in the communist movement and in radical leftist movements in general is unquestioned, though the time frame is difficult to define. From a certain moment, and certainly from the 1950s, there was an outflow of Jews from these movements rather than the reverse. Moreover, only a minority of Jews laid claim to the possibility of entry. In spite of this, and regardless of their many and varied motivations, this disproportionate number influenced the attitude of Poles and other nationalities towards Jews in general, and was at times the subject of controversy among Jews themselves. The chapter then looks at the Jewish participation in the Polish security apparatus in the years 1944-56.
Burning Questions a Film By
Authors: Porembski Mishael
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights Mishael Porembski's film Burning Questions. Burning Questions is a thoughtful and at times deeply moving personal meditation set within the vexing American context of Polish-Jewish tensions over what occurred between these two communities in Nazi-occupied Poland. The documentary tells some of the Polish Catholic story of the Holocaust, and in this sense it is an apologia. Mishael, through her father, brings the often overlooked or misrepresented Polish perspective to the screen. She then moves into the larger problem of Polish-Jewish wartime relations and tries to find hope. For that she deserves to be highly commended. However, it must be noted that while enquiring into the Polish Catholic ‘Holocaust’, the producer skirts some difficult issues. The distinction between Jewish and Polish victimization could have been drawn much more sharply.
Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

One of the key ways in which the traditional Jewish world of eastern Europe responded to the challenges of modernity in the nineteenth century was to change the system for educating young men so as to reinforce time-honoured, conservative values. The yeshivas established at that time in Lithuania became models for an educational system that has persisted to this day, transmitting the talmudic underpinnings of the traditional Jewish way of life. To understand how that system works, one needs to go back to the institutions they are patterned on. This is a study of the Lithuanian yeshiva as it existed from 1802 to 1914, presenting the yeshiva in its social and cultural context. Three key institutions are considered. Pride of place in the first part of the book is given to the yeshiva of Volozhin, which was founded in 1802 according to an entirely new concept — total independence from the local community — and was in that sense the model for everything that followed. Chapters in the second part focus on the yeshiva of Slobodka, famed for introducing the study of musar (ethics); the yeshiva of Telz, with its structural and organizational innovations; and the kollel system, introduced so that married men could continue their yeshiva education. This English edition is based on the second Hebrew edition, which was revised to include information that became available with the opening of archives in eastern Europe after the fall of communism.
The Jewish Foundations
Authors: Katzburg-Yungman Mira
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores Hadassah's ideological foundations. One of Hadassah's basic principles was that it should be a mass Zionist movement for American Jewish women: that is, ultimately every American Jewish woman should be counted among its members. However, the fundamental values and principles that guided Hadassah were not formulated in explicitly ideological statements, and so for the most part must be traced through its publications and activities. Over the years, Hadassah's ideology was shaped by its leaders, who conveyed it to the rank-and-file members through the organization's publications, especially the official Hadassah Newsletter but also various other documents and pamphlets produced by the Education Department, and at the annual conventions. Here, ideology refers to the organization's ideas, values, and modus operandi, whether formulated explicitly or not.
Projects for Immigrant Children and Teenagers
Authors: Katzburg-Yungman Mira
Published: February 2021

This chapter deals with Hadassah's projects for immigrant youth in particular. Hadassah's work in caring for children and teenagers in Israel's early years laid a particular emphasis on the care of young immigrants, who in the early 1950s constituted some 71 per cent of all children and teenagers within the Jewish population of Israel. Tens of thousands of youngsters arrived in these years, and the education they had received, if any, in the countries from which they came differed from that of their contemporaries in the Yishuv. As a result of the mass immigration, new social classes developed. The widespread social and economic hardship in these groups presented a serious challenge to the young nation, and a large number of the children and teenagers among them would years later be recognized as ‘underprivileged’. At the same time, there was a ‘frightening lack of professional workers [for children and youngsters] of all types’: teachers, educational counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers.
Prologue
Authors: Katzburg-Yungman Mira
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter is a brief overview of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America. It briefly describes the organization's founding, as well as its leader, Henrietta Szold (1860–1945) — a woman who personified a rare combination of spirit, vision, idealism, and an extraordinary organizational and practical ability. Szold, who was both the spiritual and the organizational progenitor of Hadassah, envisioned it as a way to harness the unique capabilities of American Jewish women to the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. Here, the chapter discusses Hadassah's parallel history with that of American Jewry in general, and reviews the extent of scholarship regarding the organization. It places the study within the context of the circumstances prevailing both in the United States and in the Yishuv and Israel.
Families, Rabbis and Education
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

The realities of Jewish life in eastern Europe that concerned the average Jew meant the way their children grew up, the way they studied, how they married, and all the subsequent stages of the life cycle. The family and the community were the core institutions of east European Jewish society. These realities were always dynamic and evolving but in the nineteenth century, the pace of change in almost every area of life was exceptionally rapid. This book deals with these social realities. The result is a picture that is far from the stereotyped view of the past that is common today, but a more honest and more comprehensive one. Topics covered consider the learning experiences of both males and females of different ages. They also deal with and distinguish between study among the well off and learned and study among the poorer masses. A number of chapters are devoted to aspects of educating the elite. Several chapters deal with aspects of marriage, a key element in the life of most Jews. The attempt to understand the rabbinate in its social and historical context is no less revealing than the studies in other areas. The realities of rabbinical life are presented in a way that explains rabbinic behaviour and the complex relations between communities, ideologies, and modernization. The chapters look at the past through the prism of the lives of ordinary people, with some surprising.
Love and Family
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the subject of love and the family within east European Jewish life. In the nineteenth century, almost every aspect of Jewish life was transformed in one way or another. The structures of Jewish family life in eastern Europe and the place of love and affection in these frameworks were no exceptions. However, to a greater degree than many today realize, there was also a great deal of continuity between what was accepted in traditional Ashkenazi Jewish family life and in the lives of their descendants. In some cases, the attention given to atypical lives of famous and exceptional individuals has led to a skewed picture of the past. Similarly, superficial views of traditional family dynamics have created a distorted picture of what life was like in traditional east European Jewish society. Looking at love and family life in their fullness and as part of the general social environment is one of the best ways to correct these errors and to arrive at a balanced view of realities and developments. Because marriage and love within the context of family life is a very broad subject, the chapter focuses on four major topics: courtship and marriage formation; marital roles and expectations; parenthood; and remarriage.
The Pushke and its Development
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter details how charity is collected by Jewish communities. Traditional east European Jewish communities collected money in a number of ways; taxation was only one of the standard means. Communities had to make sure that payments required by the government were met and that communal facilities, such as synagogues, were kept in good condition. However, the needs of individuals were regarded as a very different matter and they were usually dealt with by voluntary, charitable activities. Donations had to be collected by charitable organizations which could not resort to coercion. One of the most popular methods employed by Jewish charities in recent generations was the pushke (‘charity box’ in Yiddish) which was found in many Jewish homes. While it may appear traditional, this was an innovation of the nineteenth century which spread quickly throughout all of eastern Europe. A careful look at the complicated dynamics behind the simple pushke reveals a great deal about the structure and values of east European Jewish society.
The Missing Rabbis of Eastern Europe
Authors: Stampfer Shaul
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the east European rabbinate. The rabbinate in modern eastern Europe was not significantly different from the rabbinate in other Ashkenazi Jewish communities up to the eighteenth century. In the following years, many aspects of rabbinical authority changed in almost every country of Europe. During the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a number of developments altered the conditions of rabbinic authority in eastern Europe in unique ways, and also made the selection of communal rabbis more complex than previously. Many of these changes contributed to a weakening of the power and status of the rabbinate — a power and status that were not exceptionally strong to start with. By the end of the nineteenth century, the patterns of the east European rabbinate were far from the traditional Ashkenazi model because the community, as a body that collected taxes and had internal authority, had ceased to exist.
Victorian and Edwardian Jewish Doctors
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Jewish doctors of the Victorian and Edwardian period, demonstrating why there were so few of them in England in comparison with their numbers in Continental Europe. If Jews wanted a higher education in the early Victorian period, they had to go to the University of London; elsewhere there were restrictions on the admission of Jews to the universities. Mindful, no doubt, of the potential obstacles, Jewish parents in lower-middle-class families as well as from the Anglo-Jewish elite remained reluctant to allow their sons to study medicine. Accordingly, the number of Jewish doctors remained small in Victorian England, both within and outside London. Notwithstanding some antisemitism facing Jews trying to obtain hospital posts in the mid-nineteenth century, English and Welsh society was more open in the late Victorian and Edwardian years than it was to be between the two world wars, and a number of Jews rose to eminence in the medical profession, holding appointments as consultants in the London teaching hospitals and elsewhere.
Jewish Refugee Doctors
Authors: Cooper John
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Jewish refugee doctors. With the advent of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933, the harassment of Jewish professionals intensified and there began an exodus of Jewish doctors from Germany, which accelerated when laws were passed to exclude Jews from the German medical service. In May of 1934, non-Aryan physicians were debarred from participating in the state health insurance scheme; from April of 1937, Jews were no longer entitled to take exams to qualify as doctors; and from September 30, 1938, all Jewish medical licences were to be revoked, even if in certain cases Jews were to be permitted to provide medical treatment for other Jews. Already by the end of 1933, 578 doctors had left the Reich, and by mid-1934, 1,100 had fled abroad. There were also 311 persons dismissed from medical research institutes in the mid-1930s because they were Jewish or partly Jewish.
Introduction
Authors: Ansell Joseph P.
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter briefly describes the life and work of the artist, Arthur Szyk. It discusses his numerous and diverse works and places special emphasis on those works which contain topical commentary on contemporary political and social issues. Though it would seem difficult to reconcile these greatly disparate elements in one artist's work, the chapter argues that the concentrated political activity of the World War II years was not an aberration — however important — in Szyk's career. It was an integral part of an artistic life dedicated to serving humanity through his talents. To understand the interconnection of all aspects of his work, and to understand the man who was equally adept at rendering an entire world within a few square inches of exquisite beauty and savagely attacking a political enemy through caricature, the chapter argues that one must look beneath the decorated surface of the page to the meaning of the individual work and to its historical context.
From ‘Byzantine’ Miniatures to the Song of Songs
Authors: Ansell Joseph P.
Published: February 2021

This chapter covers the period after Arthur Szyk's departure from Poland. He left the country for multiple reasons, both political and artistic, and came to settle in Paris by 1921. There was a thriving Polish Jewish artistic community in the region, although Szyk soon began to distinguish himself from them. Despite building close relationships with many of his fellow Jewish artists, Szyk differed from them in several significant ways — most visibly in style and subject matter. All of the artists among whom Szyk moved worked in some variation of contemporary artistic trends. Szyk, on the other hand, while maintaining a professional place within this milieu, eschewed the contemporary approaches and experiments of his colleagues and friends, preferring to look to history for his inspiration and seeking to convey a message rather than to produce art for its own sake. He also focused extensively on Jewish subject matter. The chapter explores his growing artistic fame during this period, including the first of his governmental honours conferred upon him during his artistic career.
An Artist with a Message
Authors: Ansell Joseph P.
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the nature of Arthur Szyk's works during the war years. It shows that his exhibitions during the Second World War were markedly different from his earlier ones: in the nature of the works on view, in the frequency of the public displays, and, most importantly, in their intent. Unquestionably, most of the political works were executed more quickly than the manuscripts, book illustrations, or paintings, because of their topical nature and the urgency of the message. Also, the majority of Szyk's work prior to this time had been conceived in the rectilinear format traditional in western painting, with the action unfolding in an elaborated environment — a world complete and separated from the viewer. However, virtually all of the anti-fascist materials were created without backgrounds. The figures occupy an indefinite space, accompanied only by those objects absolutely necessary to convey the idea. This convention breaks down the division between image and audience, focuses the viewer's attention, and hastens the decoding of the message.
Valediction
Authors: Ansell Joseph P.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Arthur Szyk's death as well as revivals and retrospectives regarding his work. He died at his home in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1951. The death certificate listed the cause as acute myocardial failure. True to his lifelong habits, he had worked almost until the end of his life. At the time of his death he was planning new works of specifically Jewish and Israeli, as well as general humanistic, content. The continuing troubled state of the world elicited a constant dedication and service to social and political causes through his art. The chapter discusses the various obituary notices and appreciations, and several memorial exhibitions held in the early years following Szyk's death. In the wider world beyond these the exhibitions and sales, interest in Szyk's work was consigned to the margins for almost forty years after his death. In the early 1990s, however, a resurgence of interest in Szyk's work was fuelled by several exhibitions and by the founding of a group known as the Arthur Szyk Society.
The Political Artist
Authors: Ansell Joseph P.
Published: February 2021

This chapter asks what it means to be a political artist. It looks at Arthur Szyk's work within the context of ‘political’ art and twentieth-century art in general. The chapter asserts that Szyk was at least a political artist throughout the years of the Second World War: he dedicated virtually all of his energies during this period towards fighting the Axis and bolstering the Allies. A ‘one-man war’, as he was sometimes characterized, must be a political being and, if he is an artist, then he must be, perforce, a political artist. Yet the chapter also phrases the question in a broader way — by asking what the artist should do with their talents, not just in times of crises, but throughout a professional career. In all likelihood Szyk would have responded that he was working ‘on behalf of humanity’. In this respect he was an anachronism among twentieth-century artists.
The Legitimization of the Diaspora Experience
Authors: Endelman Todd M.
Published: February 2021

This chapter details promotion of Jewish integration into the mainstream of social, political, and cultural life as the major item on the agenda of Western Jewish leaders from the French Revolution to the Second World War. It discusses the communal energies of Jews that were devoted to removing legal obstacles to full equality, combating the bureaucratic discrimination that persisted after emancipation, countering defamation in media, and gaining entry to elite social circles and institutions. It also looks at the communal tensions between traditionalists and reformers over the modernization of Jewish worship. The chapter considers the enhancement of the image of Judaism in order to improve the legal and social status of Jews as one of the chief motives of the reformers in Germany. It discusses the western Jewish concern regarding immigration from eastern Europe from the 1880s, which was derived from the fear that the newcomers would fuel antisemitism.
The Englishness of Jewish Modernity in England
Authors: Endelman Todd M.
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about the Jewish historians who looked to the German Jewish experience as the paradigm for the transformation of European Jewry. It reviews the pioneers of Reform Judaism and practitioners of Wissenschaft des Judentums as the key actors in Jewish development. It also explains how Jewish historians constructed a model of change in which new ideas radiated outwards from Berlin and slowly diffused throughout Europe. The chapter considers Jewish historians who looked at developments in Germany from the perspective of liberal states like Britain, France, and the Netherlands, which was problematic as the German states were not in the vanguard of change. It describes the course of Jewish transformation in central Europe that reflected the backward nature of the states in the region.
Benjamin Disraeli and the Myth of Sephardi Superiority
Authors: Endelman Todd M.
Published: February 2021

This chapter considers Lady Battersea's observation of Benjamin Disraeli's ideas about race that were central to his self-definition and was consistent with contemporary interpretations of his character and beliefs. It links Disraeli's political behaviour and thinking to his ethnic background, which Lady Battersea called his racial instincts. It also mentions Disraeli's biographers, historians, and political scientists who hesitated to view his racial concerns as central to his identity and career, preferring to ignore or at least minimize them. The chapter talks about Stephen Graubard, who confessed that it was difficult to understand why Disraeli charged Sidonia to instruct Coningsby in the greatness of the Jewish race. It refers to Disraeli's biographer Robert Blake who dismissed Disraeli's Jewishness in favour of the Italian 'streak' in his character.
Memories of Jewishness
Authors: Endelman Todd M.
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at Marcel Proust's epic, a multi-volume novel titled In Search of Lost Time, where a distinguished member of the Jockey Club named Charles Swann is regarded as a Jew before the Dreyfus affair erupted and heightened the Jew-consciousness. It explains why Marcel and others in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain regarded Swann as a Jew, who saw himself in a similar light towards the end of his life. It also explores why the lines demarcating Jews from Christians became blurred between the French Revolution and the Second World War and how this blurring affected Jews who had converted to Christianity. The chapter refers to Jews in medieval and early modern Europe, with the exception of Iberian Conversos, who were not troubled by issues of collective identity. It recounts how Jews exchanged one well-defined legal and cultural status for another when they rejected Judaism and became Christians.
Memento Mori
Authors: Finder Gabriel N. , Cohen Judith R.
Published: February 2021

Still, still, let us be still.

Graves grow here.

Planted by the enemy,

They blossom to the sky.1

I don’t know where your grave is. All the earth is your grave.

Under my feet—the waves made by every one of your limbs.2

A photograph of four men sitting in an open pit and contemplating the remains of two human skeletons (...
Jedwabne and Wizna
Authors: Kurkowska Marta
Published: February 2021

THE LOCALITIES explored herein, Jedwabne and Wizna, are both situated in the Łomża region of north-eastern Poland, close to each other. Only a few kilometres separate the two and yet what each can contribute and has contributed to local, regional, and national collective memory sets them oceans apart. The inspiration for this article was precisely this simple contrast. How is it that towns inhabited by persons of a similar culture evolve into symbols of radically different attitudes and actions taken by Poles during the Second World War?...
The Beginnings: Anti-Hasidic Criticism in the Last Years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses anti-hasidic criticism in the last years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Opposition to hasidism is almost as old as the hasidic movement itself. However, it was not the supporters of the Jewish Enlightenment ideology, the maskilim, but representatives of the rabbinical elite who were the first to begin an organized wave of opposition. Their hasidic opponents therefore called them ‘mitnagedim’ (opponents). The first maskilic voices to criticize the hasidic movement were heard at almost the same time as those of the mitnagedim, or perhaps, as some historians suggest, slightly earlier. The chapter then explores the anti-hasidic criticism of Salomon Maimon, Mendel Lefin, and Jacques Calmanson. Calmanson was the first advocate of the Haskalah associated with central Poland and Warsaw to speak out on the hasidic question. The history of subsequent maskilic polemics on the subject of hasidism in the Kingdom of Poland is, broadly, the history of the reception of the works by these three authors.
Hatred or Solidarity? Jewish and Polish–Jewish Fraternity in the 1860s
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the founding of Polish-language periodicals — first Jutrzenka (1861–3) and then Izraelita (1866–1915) — which was one of the most visible achievements of the new integrationist movement. The most active members of this new group were Marcus Jastrow and Daniel Neufeld, who was editer-in-chief of Jutrzenka. Even though it was active only for a short time, Jutrzenka and the writers associated with it wielded considerable influence. Their influence extended to bringing about a realignment of the attitude of the modernizing camp towards the hasidim; in particular, it was not until the 1860s that hasidism was recognized as a major ideological problem and perceived to be the most serious enemy in the battle to emancipate and modernize Jews in Poland. Neufeld and other Jutrzenka writers argue that the hasidim needed to be educated and that learning would bring about the ultimate solution to the problem, i.e. the disappearance of hasidism. But, alongside the voices of criticism, Jutrzenka's writers increasingly expressed the positive features of hasidism, particularly their unrivalled unity, their caring for their families, their concern for religious education, and their wholehearted espousal of their ideology. Ultimately, the reassessment of attitudes towards the hasidic movement among the moderate integrationist camp brought immediate, direct results in the pre-uprising period of Polish–Jewish fraternity and had a lasting effect.
A Turning Point in the History of Polish Socialism and its Attitude Towards the Jewish Question
Authors: Mishkinsky Moshe
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes a turning point in the history of Polish Socialism and its attitude towards the Jewish Question. In dealing with the concept of the Jewish Question, the intention is not, as is often the case, to dwell solely upon the legal status of Jews (emancipation) but to view the problems of Jewish existence in their diversity. According to one view, the dependence upon non Jewish society represents an integral element or, even a determinant, in these problems. In the context of Polish–Jewish relations from the historical perspective of the last hundred years, one may discern six aspects of the subject. These include the development of Socialist thought in its different versions as regards the Jews; the influence of the gradual growth and development of the emerging working class in Polish society; the influence of the relatively large involvement of Jews within the Socialist Labour Movement; the impact of the new processes which matured in the last quarter of the 19th century on the life of Eastern European Jewry in general, and on the Polish–Jewish area in particular; the growth alongside each other, but also in conflict, of two political and ideological movements — Polish Socialism and Jewish labour Socialism; and the tension between the Socialist and the national elements which was common to both yet different in its concrete content.
Five Wartime Testimonies
Authors: Bartoszewski Władysław
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores five wartime testimonies. Five diary accounts, published in Polish in 1983–4, relate the wartime fate of people brought up in Poland's largest Jewish urban centres before 1939: Warsaw, Łódź, and Cracow. A feature common to all of them is their authors' social and professional membership of the intellectual class and the relatively significant attachment they felt towards their Polish environment. Four of the authors belong to the generation born before the establishment of an independent Polish state in 1919 and one account is that of a girl barely 15 years of age when World War II broke out. Thus, her adult life began in conditions of oppression and subjection.
Jerzy Tomaszewski. Rzeczpospolita wielu narodów (A Republic of Many Nations). Czytelnik: Warsaw. 1985. Pp. 287.
Authors: Lewandowski Józef
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at Jerzy Tomaszewski's A Republic of Many Nations (1985). This book began, as is often the case, in a much humbler form, as a cycle of articles published in 1981 in the Warsaw weekly Folksztyme, the organ of Poland's now non-existent Jews. The articles took as their subject, the Jews of Poland in the inter-war years 1918–1939. The author, Professor Jerzy Tomaszewski, is an outstanding economic historian, a Pole who knows Yiddish and is also concerned with the history of national minorities in Poland. The weekly Folksztyme is read by Jews abroad and also has its Polish readers. Tomaszewski's articles found a keen audience among the latter.
David Darshan. Shir HaMa'alot L'David and Kłav Hitnazzelut L'Darshanim. Translated and annotated by H. G. Perelmuter. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press. 1984. Pp. xii, 183 and Heb. 52.
Authors: Jacobs Louis
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies David Darshan's Shir HaMa'alot L'David and Ktaw Hitnazzelut L'Darshanim (1984). This book contains the original Hebrew text in facsimile of two small books by David the Preacher; an English translation with notes; and an Introduction in English in which David is seen against his background in 16th-century Poland. David was an associate of the giants of that period, Moses Isserles and Solomon Luria, and was himself no mean Talmudist. David was the first itinerant Jewish preacher whose sermons were published; an amulet writer; and an artist. The chapter then considers several problems connected with the translation of these difficult texts and it cannot be said that all of them have been successfully overcome.
Avigdor Dagan, Gertrude Hirschler and Lewis Weiner, editors. The Jews of Czechoslovakia. Historical Studies and Surveys. Vol. III. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America. 1984. Pp. 700.
Authors: Brod Peter
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates The Jews of Czechoslovakia Vol. III (1984), which was edited by Avigdor Dagan, Gertrude Hirschler, and Lewis Weiner. This is the final volume of a remarkable undertaking. The first two volumes, published in 1968 and 1971, dealt with pre-1939 developments and set out the complex nature of Jewish tradition and life under the Habsburgs and during the twenty years of the first Czechoslovak Republic. Czechoslovak Jewry was a very heterogeneous phenomenon, divided along linguistic, religious, cultural, and political lines. Some of these divisions, such as those between the so-called ‘assimilationists’ and Zionists, are frequently mentioned in the present volume, but the overriding topic here is the Holocaust in all its aspects — Nazi policy, Jewish reactions, and the attitudes of non-Jews. It is in fact the first comprehensive one-volume treatment of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia in any language.
Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, translators and editors. From a Ruined Garden. The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry. New York: Schocken Books. 1983. Pp. xv, 275.
Authors: Bartoszewski Władysław T.
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates From a Ruined Garden (1983), which was translated and edited by Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin. How does one commemorate the destruction of millions of people, indeed of an entire nation, without being overwhelmed by the enormity of the numbers? How can one grieve for and honour so many human beings on an individual plane and accord to their memory the dignity which they were denied? Jewish survivors of the Holocaust responded to this by creating a unique tombstone — a collection of yizker bikher, memorial books. A large majority of these books, around four hundred volumes, commemorate Polish Jewish communities, providing an extraordinary insight into the life of the shtetl. From a Ruined Garden is an anthology of fragments from over 60 memorial books of Polish Jewry. The translators and editors of this volume have done a most important job of introducing yizker bikher to a wider, English-speaking audience.
Rachel Ertel. Le Shtetl. La bourgade juive de Pologne de la tradition a la modenité. Paris: Payot. 1982. Pp. 321.
Authors: Bartoszewski Władysław T.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Rachel Ertel's Le Shtetl (1982). One of the most unusual characteristics of Poland as compared with other European countries, was a large Jewish presence in villages and townlets. In the inter-war period, approximately 30 per cent of Jews lived in such settlements. These settlements, shtetlekh, were fascinating centres of Jewish life and culture, and places of daily contacts between Jews and Christian Poles. It is therefore surprising how few books on the shtetl have been published. Hence, one welcomes every publication dealing with this important aspect of Jewish life before the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the work of Rachel Ertel does not fulfil expectations. The author, who teaches American and Jewish civilization in Paris, attempts to show the evolution of shtetlekh from tradition to modernity. The first quarter of the book is an historical summary of Jewish life in Poland from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. This is based on secondary material only, much of which is quite old. The history of Jews in Poland is treated in total isolation from Polish history, about which the author knows precious little.
Introduction
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter describes briefly and generally the Muslim, Jewish, and Karaite background against which Moses Maimonides (1138–1204) elaborated his principles. It first explains why systematic theology was not attempted by Jews until after the talmudic period. Here, laying down dogmas for Judaism for the first time is seen as being clearly innovative. It would take a bold person to do such a thing. Maimonides had the requisite boldness; but even he exercised caution in laying down his principles. The chapter goes on to indicate how important and pervasive discussions of dogmatics were in Muslim contexts and note some points about the Muslim discussion which are particularly relevant to a full understanding of Maimonides’ account of the dogmas of Judaism. It shows that had Maimonides posited his ‘thirteen principles’ in a purely talmudic context, the work would have been seen clearly as an innovation. Given the development of systematic theology within Judaism, however, Maimonides was able to posit his creed without appearing to innovate at all.
Kavod, Shekhinah, and Created Light
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the concepts of kavod, shekhinah, and created light. The term kavod occurs about a dozen times in the Torah in some sense or other of perceptible divine presence. Rabbinic literature tends to prefer the term shekhinah for what is apparently the same phenomenon. Heikhalot literature seems to place greater emphasis on kavod than on shekhinah, while later kabbalah does just the opposite, making shekhinah one of the sefirot — the ten hypostasized attributes or emanations by means of which the Infinite enters into relationship with the finite. Medieval Jewish philosophers such as Sa'adiah and Judah Halevi added a third term, ‘created light’, and took all three as synonyms. All of these literatures seem to agree on one thing: the terms kavod, shekhinah, and created light all denote something in the ‘real world’. The terms are not simply metaphors or descriptions of the internal state of an individual undergoing a religious experience. However, it is precisely in such a fashion that Maimonides understood the terms. Maimonides' ‘non-ontological’ view of the terms kavod, shekhinah, and created light is part and parcel of his campaign against proto-kabbalistic elements in Judaism.
Gersonides
Authors: Feldman Seymour
Published: February 2021

Gersonides (1288–1344) was a philosopher as well as an astronomer and biblical exegete. This book is a comprehensive picture of Gersonides' philosophy that is both descriptive and evaluative. Unusually for a Jewish scholar, Gersonides had contacts with several Christian notables and scholars. It is known that these related to mathematical and astronomical matters; the extent to which these contacts also influenced his philosophical thought is a matter of some controversy. Unquestionably, he wrote a library of philosophical, scientific, and exegetical works that testify not only to the range of his intellectual concerns but also to his attempt to forge a philosophical–scientific synthesis between these secular sciences and Judaism. He did not see any fundamental discrepancy between the pursuit of truth via reason and its attainment through divine revelation. As a philosopher-scientist and biblical exegete, Gersonides sought to make this agreement robustly evident. While philosophical and scientific ideas have progressed since Gersonides' time, his work is still relevant today because his attempt to make prophecy and miracles understandable in terms of some commonly held philosophical or scientific theory is paradigmatic of a religion that is not afraid of reason. His general principle that reason should function as a “control” of what we believe has interesting and important implications for the modern reader. He was not afraid to make religious beliefs philosophically and scientifically credible. In this respect he was a precursor of Kant and Hermann Cohen: Judaism is or should be a religion of reason.
The Red String: The Cultural History of a Jewish Folk Symbol
Authors: Teman Elly
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the Jewish folk symbol of the red string in the Hebrew Bible. Beyond the general ‘projective folkloristic’ qualities of the red string, one can only account for its contemporary popularity in Jewish Israeli society by tying the practice to historic Jewish traditions and biblical images that might be beyond the awareness of participants, but are nonetheless embedded psychologically in the string's symbolic function. In ancient Israel, the red string was linked to particular biblical accounts of lives spared in face of danger and the reassertion of order out of chaos. Moreover, the thread is connected to the theme of boundaries between the doomed and the redeemed, the sacred and the profane, those destined to live and those destined to die, and those who belong to the Israelite nation and those who do not. These culturally specific symbolic associations of the red string, together with its psychological ramifications, can answer the question of why this particular folk symbol has gained popularity as a form of ‘folklore under conditions of stress’ in the sociopolitical context of post-Intifada Israel. The chapter then considers the function of the red string in the political context of, and psychological response to, terrorism in the region.