Jews in Poland

In 1900, the German Empire was extremely shaken by a violent crime. To the east of the country , in the province of West Prussia in the town of Chojnice (Ger. Konitz), a junior high school student, Ernst Winter, was murdered. The circumstances of the case and the manner of the crime led the local population to believe that the boy had been killed by the Jews in order to win his blood for ritual purposes. The accusation of the local Jewish population resulted in a rapid increase in the hostility of Christians (Germans and Poles) towards their Semitic neighbours. The lie about the guilt of the Jews quickly went through the entire province, and then reached the furthest corners of Germany. In Chojnice, riots and numerous attacks on Jews and their property took place. Anti-Jewish excesses have spread rapidly in West Prussia. The course of the investigation and its relationship with the anti-Jewish riots was described by the main representative of the Polish press in West Prussia – Gazeta Toruńska. Słowa kluczowe: antysemityzm, mord rytualny, przesądy, Żydzi, katolicy, Chojnice, ekscesy anty-żydowskie, Prusy Zachodnie, oskarżenie, Rzesza Niemiecka, " Gazeta Toruńska " W XIX wieku prasa stała się głównym środkiem rozpowszechniania informacji. Było tak do czasu zmonopolizowania rynku medialnego przez telewizję w XX wie-ku. Za pośrednictwem gazet propagowano różne idee społeczne i polityczne, w tym antysemityzm, który wzmógł się w Niemczech po 1871 roku. Rynek prasowy w zjed-noczonej Rzeszy był jednym z najlepiej zorganizowanych w Europie – obok Anglii i Francji. Z każdą dekadą poprawiała się jakość i szybkość dziennikarstwa na szczeb-lach lokalnych, gdzie prowadzono dyskusje o palących kwestiach, opisywano afery kryminalne lub nawoływano do głosowania do sejmiku itp.

ערב רב: פנים וחוץ בוויכוח הפרנקיסטי הוא ספר מרתק וחדשני החושף את סיפורה הייחודי של התנועה הפרנקיסטית, תנועה יהודית אפיקורסית שצמחה בפולין והתפשטה במרכז אירופה במחצית השנייה של המאה ה-18.

בעיני רוב היהודים פרנק היה 'משיח שקר' ידוע לשמצה. בעיני נוצרים נאורים ומיסיונרים מילנריסטים היה יהודי-נוצרי ואדם חופשי בדעותיו, שלו קשרים מסתוריים והוא משתמש במגיה ובמאגרי עושר סודיים. עבור מאמיניו היה למבשר שחרור מן המסגרות המקובלות המדכאות של מגדר, הלכה, מעמד, משטר ודת.

התנועה הפרנקיסטית עוררה הדים והיתה סלע מחלוקת גם בקרב גורמים דתיים ופוליטיים לא יהודיים: יוזף השני, קתרינה הגדולה, גתה, קזנובה ואחרים. תורותיו של יעקב פרנק, מנהיג התנועה, הציבו אתגר בפני היהדות הנורמטיבית, אך גם בפני האסלאם וזרמים בנצרות. הספר מברר מחלוקות פנימיות ביהדות המודרנית אך דן גם ביחסים בין יהודים לסביבתם במאות ה-18–ה-19.

ערב רב מבוסס על מקורות פנימיים שחיברו פרנק ומאמיניו, על מקורות יהודיים פולמוסיים אנטי פרנקיסטיים, ועל מקורות שכתבו גורמים לא יהודיים בני הזמן. דרכו המוקצנת של יעקב פרנק עוררה עניין רב בו ובתנועתו, ולקורא מוגש ניתוח מעמיק של פרשה היסטורית ייחודית זו.
המחבר, ד"ר פאבל מצ'ייקו מן האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, חוקר את תולדות היהודים בפולין-ליטא בעת החדשה. נולד בוורשה וקיבל תואר דוקטור מאוניברסיטת אוקספורד. פרסומיו הרבים זיכו אותו בפרסים, במלגות ובמענקי מחקר רבים. שימש מרצה אורח באוניברסיטאות שונות, בארצות הברית, בצרפת, בגרמניה ובפולין.

Już sam tytuł "Racjonalizm i religia okiem i w duszy Stanisława Lema" zwiastuje, że to nie może być poważna rozprawa naukowa. Po prostu Okołowski wierzy w duchy, a więc to jest tylko wyznanie jego irracjonalnej wiary, a nie poważna rozprawa naukowa.

The author, on the basis of the study of the commentaries and prefaces to Wu-jek's Bible of 1599, depicts the image of the Jews, their language and their customs as it was presented by Jakub Wujek and his contemporaneous fellow Jesuits. The author refers to the sources of the information contained in Wujek's Bible, evaluates it in the context of the religious situation in the Renaissance Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and attempts at establishing the realm and power of the influence it had on readers.

Zarys historii i działalności lubelskiego oddziału TSKŻ uzupełnione o materiały archiwalne, zdjęcia i relacje z zasobów Ośrodka "Brama Grodzka- Teatr NN". "Odbudowa Życie żydowskie w Lublinie 1944-1968", "Scriptores" nr 46 (2019), red. J.Jeremicz, T.Klimowicz, P.Nazaruk: http://biblioteka.teatrnn.pl/dlibra/dlibra/docmetadata?id=125537

This text on the religious legacy of Polish Jews has appeared, accompanied by many illustrations, as a chapter in the book Legacy of Polish Jews (ed. by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Tamara Sztyma, Warsaw: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, 2021, pp. 47-65). To quote, please refer to that book.

While previous scholars, among them Sophia Kemlein and Krzysztof Makowski, have disagreed over how to characterize the Jews of Posen with repsect to the communities of either Poland or Prussia, this study explores the unique features of the Posen community as a clearly independent group, which combined features of both tradition and acculturation. This evaluation is based on a comprehensive study of primary and secondary sources in various languagesçincluding material whose halakhic Hebrew idioms were not available to earlier scholars who studied these communities (some are published here for the ¢rst time^and a more integrative reading of secondary sources, revealing how purported inconsistencies serve as testimonies of a more complex reality. This essay examines the e¡ects of acculturation on the Posen-Jewish community in the ¢rst half of the nineteenth century, as compared to both Polish and Prussian Jewry. The characteristics of Posen's Jews in the latter half of the eighteenth century will be outlined, followed by an evaluation of the subsequent e¡ects of the acculturation process, and the resistant forces of tradition within the community after around 1800. Finally, it will be argued that Posen's Jewish community ought to be viewed as a unique combination of acculturation and tradition. This conclusion is buttressed by three additional case studies: the development of elementary schools, the prevalence of the German language, and the sense of crisis among the Posen Orthodox elite in the ¢rst half of the nineteenth century. The geographical boundaries of this essay correspond with the borders of the Grand Duchy of Posen, Grossherzogtum Posen, during the period 1815 to 1848. This region gradually came under Prussian rule through the gradual partitioning of Poland among Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. The partitions occurred in 1 Paraphrasing Rabbi Yehadah Halevi's ''my heart is in the east, but I am in the far west'', and Talmudic reference to the roots of a tree being in one place and the branches in another (Bavli, Baba-Metsia 118b). * I would like to thank Israel Bartal, Raphael Friedman, Cathy Gelbin, Avivah Schmelzinger, and Shaul Shtampter for their suggestions and insights based on earlier drafts of this paper.

[EN] Zdzisław Beksiński’s cliches of (non)remembrance. Introduction to the case study

Zdzisław Beksiński born in 1929 in Sanok (southeast Poland) who experienced German occupation and establishment of the ghetto in his hometown was later on marked as the creator of ‘fantastical paintings’, disregarding unique meaning hidden within the paintings based on the traumatic and geographic memory of genocide. Despite author’s hesitation (which nowadays I am willing to read as traumatic denial) and general popular opinion which has not changed in the last 40 years, I presume that his works of art are able to ‘speak’ on their own behalf. The significant part of Beksiński’s photographs and paintings (especially his sketches and photomontages from the 50s and 60s) refer to the memory of Holocaust, its discourse and iconography. Beksiński seems to be lost between his own claims, ‘professional’ reviews of his works and messages within paintings – refusing to understand the impact of traumatic memory on his art and life. Subconscious memories seem to be hidden inside his famous works – misnamed and misread paintings based on the early phase of photography – are about to reveal the story of the ghetto and various war reminiscences.


Tekst stanowi wstęp do badań wchodzących w skład projektu doktorskiego / The text is the part of upcoming Ph.D. thesis.

This article examines the gendered politics of public health initiatives among Jews in interwar Poland by focusing on the establishment and activity of the Warsaw School of Nursing (Szkoła Pielęgniarstwa przy Szypitalu Starozakonnych w Warszawie). Founded in 1923 and funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the school’s staff be- lieved that they could shape the attitudes and behaviors of Polish Jewish women and use them as a conduit to advance their vision for a Polish state committed to the protection of Jews and their equality before the law. Drawing upon the voices of JDC officials, local Jewish health activists, Polish government officials, and young Jewish women in the Second Polish Repub- lic, the article highlights the multiple and frequently conflicting ways in which gender figured in their political imagination. It also sheds light on the efforts of American Jewish humanitar- ian activists and Polish Jewish women alike—much like their counterparts throughout Europe and North America—to reframe traditional gendered expectations for women in order to ex- pand their range of professional choices and the roles they could play in public life. The final section of this article recounts the school’s decline and compares its fate to a Jewish nursing school initiative in the city of Vilna. In doing so, it assesses the limits of the Joint Distribution Committee’s interethnic bridge-building initiatives in interwar Poland.

The book contains materials about the historical figures and their genealogies. Biographical Directory is an opportunity to get acquainted with the elite of the interwar years 1919-1939 Grodno. The author has tried as much as possible to cover the concept of "elite". The list includes representatives of the city administration, newspaper editors, teachers, doctors, court workers, large traders and industrialists, representatives of clergy of different faiths and directly active public and political figures.

This article uses war-time speeches, notes scribbled on postwar planning pamphlets, confidential government letters and private conversations from the early to mid-1940s to demonstrate how Jan Masaryk’s understanding of postwar Jewish questions, namely who belongs to the Jewish people and where do those Jewish people belong geographically, cannot be unwoven from broader questions regarding German belonging in the Czechoslovak body politic. While the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister remained committed to resolving statelessness as a condition and wanted to protect Czech and Slovak-speaking Jews in his reconstituted postwar state, his commitment to purging Czechoslovakia of its German minority trumped his other beliefs. This obsession with cleansing the Czechoslovak body politic of Germans and German groupness captivated Jan Masaryk so much that he sometimes failed to differentiate German-speaking Czechoslovak Jews from the broader ethnically German mass. Therefore, scholars who desire to understand how Jan Masaryk utilized his power and influence to keep the bricha flowing across the Polish-Czechoslovakian border in 1946 or how he lobbied for the creation of a Jewish polity in the Middle East, must evaluate how his broader Weltanschauung necessitated the reorganization of all east central European peoples along political lines. In this way, Masaryk¹s postwar commitment to enabling Jewish movement away from east central Europe and towards a faraway, ethnicized polity is best understand within the context of the overall ethnic revolution, which gripped the region between Berlin and Moscow across the 1940s.

The article is devoted to research in the field of Jewish art by Ukrainian art critic Danyla Scherbakivsky (1877-1927); the topic is viewed through the prism of the sсholar’s biography and professional activities in the context of Ukrainian Art. The photographs, pictures, expedition diaries and drafts of articles by D. Scherbakivsky from 1906 to 1926 years, which were taken from the author's Fund and other collections in the Institute of Archaeology of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, are analyzed. On the great volume of materials demonstrates systematic interest by receacher to the monuments of Jewish art as an integral part of Ukrainian art and his desire to understand the traditional artistic culture of the Jewish town (shtetl) in the former Jewish “pale of settlement”, features of architecture and wall-paintings of the synagogues, ritual objects, the typology of Jewish gravestones and symbols. The great value of the receacher’s remaining visual and theoretical heritage for the historiography and modern science shows, according to the formation of the subsequent disappearance of Jewish culture.
Kotlyar E. Danyla Scherbakivsky: Research and Discovery on Jewish Art // Narodoznavchi Zoshyty (The Ethnology Notebooks) Magazine. – Lviv: Ethnology Institute of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. – # 5(119). – P.884-913
Котляр Є. Данило Щербаківський: наукові розвідки та відкриття єврейського мистецтва // Народознавчі зошити. – Львів: Інститут народознавства НАН України, 2014. – Серія мистецтвознавча. – Число 5 (119), вересень-жовтень. – С. 884-913.

The aim of the article is to present the initiating of the ghetto benches at Polish universities in comparison to the situation of Jewish students which changed after 1935. Since then, there has been unprecedented student occurrences that paralyzed life of the university and led to many concessions from the authorities who wanted to restore peace and order. Student riots which started in autumn 1935 were ‘part of the wave of political activity in the society’. Researchers link them with the campaign undertaken by the rejuvenated leadership of The National Democrats (Endecja) and directed against the government camp weakened after Pilsudski's death. The Nationalists planned to use the increase of the anti-Semitic and anti-government sentiments in the society to strengthen their position in the political arena. Moreover after boycotting parliamentary elections in 1935, universities became their very crucial field of work which they intended to make a domain of their influence and students were supposed to be an important, social base of The National Democrats.
On the wave of anti-Jewish occurrences in autumn 1933 took place the first attempt at settling Jewish students in certain place in an auditorium. However, the actual campaign to initiate the ghetto benches at universities has started in autumn 1935. For the first time an order to isolate the Jewish students was issued by the academic authorities in the Technical University of Lviv on 9 and 11 December 1935. And though it was lifted right away, it became a precedent for other universities. Using violence, the young Nationalists stepped up efforts to bring the project to the university authorities as fait accompli. Excesses at the Technical University of Lviv found a great response at Warsaw University (since 1935 the University of Josef Pilsudski).
Also, the attitude of the professors towards these anti-Semitic ideas is very interesting. The indecisiveness and lack of determination were one of the main features of the academic authorities. This attitude, slightly neutral, in the professors’ community, who confined to making statements about examination and explanation certain matters, was just an incentive for the national students to continue their action.

Nazi Germany saw Eastern Europe as an opportunity to expand its territory, its living space. Poland would become the laboratory for an inhumane colonisation plan, the Generalplan Ost (“General Plan for the East”), which involved replacement of the non-Aryan population with Germanic farmers. The anti-urban management of that lobotomised territory was scientifically drafted by a group of architects, geographers, and agronomists working under the orders of Heinrich Himmler. The urban planning aspects of this utopian plan, based on central place theory, self-sufficiency, and neighbourhood units, were of great technical interest and influenced the creation of new communities within Franco’s regime. However, we cannot overlook the fact that, had the Nazi plan been completed, it would have resulted in the forced relocation of 31 million Europeans.

גרשם שלום -- תולדות התנועה השבתאית // 
History of the Sabbatian Movement was the first attempt by one of the giants of scholarship on Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), to present a comprehensive picture of Sabbatianism as a single narrative. The book is based on the series of lectures given at the Hebrew University during 1939-1940, which are of special importance in that they laid the foundation for all of Scholem’s research in the years to come, including his extensive monograph Sabbatai Sevi: the mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, first published in 1957. What follows is a sketch of the massive History of the Sabbatian Movement, over which Gershom Scholem toiled his whole life but never completed. The lectures are presented here for the first time based on the original manuscripts, alongside the text of an additional series of lectures that Scholem gave as part of the “Month of Study” organized by Berl Katznelson in 1941. These long-hidden texts reveal new facets of the Sabbatian movement and its history, as well as of Gershom Scholem as a historian, and serve as prologue to any further study of this most stormy and complicated episode in Jewish history. The new edition includes a comprehensive introduction by the editors on all of Gershom Scholem’s studies on Sabbatianism. //---//

Table of Contents:
“The Open Book” - Jonatan Meir and Shinichi Yamamoto /
Introduction /
Chapter One: The Faces of the Generation /
Chapter Two: The Messianic Movement from its Beginnings to its Height /
Chapter Three: The Twists and Turns of the Sabbatian Movement /
Chapter Four: The Historical Development of Sabbatianism /
Appendix A: Messianism from the Spanish Expulsion to the Eve of Emancipation (Month of Study, 1941) /
Appendix B: The Sabbatian Movement: Its Roots, Its Development, and its Aftermath (Introduction, 1942-45 /
Appendix C: Bibliography of Works by Gershom Scholem on Sabbatianism /
Index /
Notes on the Cover Image (from the collection of Paweł Maciejko)

//--// Order The BOOK
http://www.schocken-jts.org.il/english/bookstore/prodView.asp?idproduct=408

Throughout the nineteenth century, Maskilic journals increased their publication of anti-Hasidic satires. From the eighteen-sixties onward, this literature came primarily as a response to the revival in the publishing of Hasidic hagiography and to the spread of Hasidism into new territory. To this point, no complete review or even general survey has been performed on this extensive polemical literature, despite the fact that it has much to teach us about Hasidism and the Haskalah in those years. We are not speaking of an insignificant bibliographical lacuna, but of a disregard for an entire field of research which would shed light not only on a forgotten chapter of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature but also on an important chapter in the relationships between Maskilim and Hasidim in that period and the genesis and development of the different streams of Hasidism. This Maskilic literature intended to do more than eradicate Hasidism; it aimed to strengthen the self-consciousness of the individual Maskilim who found themselves alone in Hasidic territory. Paradoxically, the literature documented the very movement it intended to eradicate from the world. The distorted reflection displayed in the anti-Hasidic literature does more than present a caricature of its subject -- it conceals hitherto unknown elements about the nature and development of the Hasidic movement. The present article deals with one such case, a satire on Bratslav Hasidism from 1863, which has at its core a Maskilic satirical text written by Yehiel Meller on pilgrimage to the grave of R. Nahman of Bratslav in Uman.





כתבי עת של משכילים לאורך המאה התשע עשרה הרבו לפרסם סאטירות בגנותה של החסידות. משנות הששים ואילך באה ספרות זו בעיקר כתגובה להתעוררות הדפסת ספרות השבחים החסידית ולהתפשטות החסידות במרחבים חדשים. לא קיימת עד עתה סקירה שלימה, ואף לא מיפוי כללי, של אותה ספרות פולמוסית ענפה, על אף שיש בה ללמד הרבה על דרכי החסידות וההשכלה באותן שנים.  לא מדובר רק בחסרון ביבליוגרפי שאין לו משמעות, אלא בהתעלמות משדה מחקר רב עניין שעשוי להאיר לא רק על פרק נשכח בספרות עברית ויידיש החדשה אלא גם על פרק חשוב ביחסים בין משכילים לחסידים באותה תקופה, ועל דרכי צמיחתם, פיצולם והתפתחותם של זרמים שונים בחסידות. הייתה זו ספרות שיותר מאשר נועדה לבער את החסידות נועדה לחזק את תודעתם העצמית של המשכילים הבודדים במרחבים החסידיים; ספרות שבאופן פרדוקסלי תיעדה תנועה אותה חפצו לבער מן העולם. הבבואה המעוותת בה התהדרה הסאטירה האנטי חסידית לא רק הציגה דימוי – אלא טומנת בחובה הצבעה על אלמנטים חדשים ועל התפתחויות בחסידות. במקרה אחד ממין זה הנוגע לחסידות ברסלב בשנות השישים של המאה התשע עשרה עוסק המאמר. שלפנינו - שעיקרו מהדורה של טקסט משכילי שכתב יחיאל מלר - בשנת 1863 - על העלייה לקבר ר' נחמן מברסלב באומן
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Genealogia jako nauka pomocnicza historii, rozszerzyła swój zakres. Wynikiem badań genealogicznych nie są już tylko dane osobowe przodków, ale także wiedza o czasach i miejscu, w których żyli. W powszechnym rozumieniu genealogia Żydów wydaje się trudnym tematem badań, gdyż panuje przekonanie, że wszystkie dokumenty zginęły bądź zostały zniszczone w czasie II wojny światowej. Istnieje jednak dużo materiałów, które mogą być doskonałym źródłem informacji. Również rozwój technologii (technik komputerowych, Internetu, biotechnologii) stał się czynnikiem rozwoju i popularyzacji badań genealogicznych.

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In mei 1937 vertrok een groep jonge vrouwen uit Antwerpen en
Brussel naar Spanje om er in een Valenciaans militair hospitaal als
hulpverpleegsters te werken. El Belga was een initiatief van Belgische
socialisten en een sterk staaltje van internationale solidariteit. Het
hospitaal werd een van de grootste en modernste van de Spaanse
republiek. De vrijwilligsters waren communisten die er niet alleen
verpleegsterswerk verrichtten, maar ook politiek actief waren.