Jews and Their Neighbours in Eastern Europe Since 1750

Description

Relations between Jews and their neighbors in eastern Europe have long been perceived - both in the popular mind and in conventional scholarship - as being in a permanent state of conflict. This book counters that image by exploring long neglected aspects of inter-group interaction and exchange. In so doing, it broadens our understanding of Jewish history and culture, as well as that of eastern Europe. Whereas traditional historiography concentrates on the differences between Jews and non-Jews, the essays in this collection focus on commonalities: the social, political, and economic worlds that members of different groups often shared. Shifting the emphasis in this way allows quite a different picture to emerge. Jews may have been subject to the whims of ruling powers and influenced by broader cultural and political developments, but at the same time they exerted a discernible influence on them - the social, cultural, and political spheres were ones that they not only shared, but that they also helped to create. This model of reciprocal influence and exchange has much to offer to the study of inter-group relations in eastern Europe and beyond. Designed to move the study of east European Jewry beyond the intellectual and academic discourse of difference that has long troubled scholars, this volume contributes to our perception of how members of different groups operate and interact on a multitude of different levels. The various contributions represent a wide cross-section of opinions and approaches - historical, literary, and cultural. Taken together, they move our understanding of east European Jewry from the realm of the mythical to a more rational mode. In addition to essays considering interactions between Jews and Poles, other contributions examine relations between Jews and other ethnic groups (Lithuanians and Russians), discuss negotiations with various governments (Habsburg, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, and Soviet), analyze exchanges between Jews and different cultural realms (German, Polish, and Russian), and explore how the politics of memory affects contemporary interpretations of these and related phenomena. Note on Place Names Note on Transliteration PART I: JEWS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS IN EASTERN EUROPE SINCE 1750 Between Jews and their Neighbours: Isolation, Confrontation, and Influence in Eastern Europe ISRAEL BARTAL & SCOTT URY Reform and Exclusion: Conceptions of the Reform of the Jewish Community during the Declining Years of the Polish Enlightenment MARCIN WODZINSKI Praying at Home: The Minyan Laws of the Habsburg Empire RACHEL MANEKIN Overcoming the Signs of the 'Other': Visual Aspects of the Acculturation of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland in the Nineteenth Century AGNIESZKA JAGODZINSKA The Ideological Roots of the Polish Jewish Intelligentsia ELA BAUER Between Permeability and Isolation: Ezriel Natan Frenk as Historian of the Jews in Poland FRANCOIS GUESNET S. A. An-sky - Dialogic Writer BRIAN HOROWITZ Between Judaism and the West: The Making of a Modern Jewish Poet in Uri Zvi Greenberg's 'Memoirs (from the Book of Wanderings)' KARIN NEUBURGER Between State Loyalty and National Identity: Electoral Behaviour in Interwar Poland JEFFREY S. KOPSTEIN & JASON WITTENBERG Failed Integration: Jews and the Beginning of the Communist Movement in Poland PIOTR WROBEL The Jewel in the Yiddish Crown: Who Will Occupy the Chair for Yiddish at the University of Vilnius? KALMAN WEISER Rites of Violence? The Pogroms of Summer 1941 KAI STRUVE Nusekh Poyln? Communism, Publishing, and Paths to Polishness among the Jewish Parents of 16 Ujazdowskie Avenue KAREN AUERBACH Changing Images of 'the Jews' in Polish Literature and Culture, 1980-2000 DOROTA GLOWACKA PART II: NEW VIEWS Ogee Arcades in Synagogue Architecture of Volhynia and Podolia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries SERGEI R. KRAVTSOV The Attitude of American Jews and American Diplomacy towards the Bill Banning Shehitah in Poland in the Second Half of the 1930s PRZEMYSLAW ROZANSKI Imagining Polish Jews: British Perspectives in the Period 1944-1946 MICHAEL FLEMING 'The Hanging of Judas'; or, Contemporary Jewish Subjects JOANNA TOKARSKA-BAKIR 1968; or, America! America! REGINA GROL 'Campo di Fiori' Fifty Years Later: The People Who Remain A discussion that took place on the fiftieth anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, between JAN BLONSKI, MAREK EDELMAN, CZESLAW MILOSZ, and JERZY TUROWICZ Obituaries Chimen Abramsky Marek Edelman Glossary Notes on the Contributors Index