Whatever happened to Rabbi Weiss? (original) (raw)
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Studia Judaica
In the nineteenth century, Częstochowa was home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the Kingdom of Poland, but for most of this time it had no communal rabbi approved by both the community and the state authorities. The first such rabbi, Zachariasz (Yisakhar) Weingott, was elected in 1822, but a mere two years later he was forced to resign. The attempts to elect a new rabbi led to major social conflicts and continued to fail, while the rabbinical duties were executed by unofficial rabbis (Jakub Brass and Mojżesz Majzel). It was only in 1839 that Weingott was re-elected to the post of the rabbi and held that position until his death in 1852. As it seems, the conflict was animated by a competition between adherents of modernization and the traditional segments of the Jewish community in Częstochowa, including the Hasidim. As such, it was an expression of a typical communal conflict that plagued east-European Jewish communities of the nineteenth century. What seems of special interest, however, is that a detailed analysis of the Częstochowa case makes it possible to trace other-familial and businessconnections, behind the well-known ideological divisions, quite often transcending traditional divisions into modernist and traditionalist camps.
The Holocaust destroyed Jewish communities across Europe and in Poland. Subsequently, in the Soviet bloc, most Jewish survivors were expelled or coerced to leave, while the memory of the millennium-long presence of Jews in Poland was thoroughly suppressed. This article, through the lens of a scholar’s personal biography, reflects on how snippets of the Jewish past tend to linger on, in the form of absent presences, despite the national and systemic norm of erasing any remembrance of Poles of the Jewish religion. This norm used to be the dominant type of antisemitism in communist Poland after 1968, and has largely continued unabated after the fall of communism.
Jewish life in Poland: Achievements, challenges and priorities since the collapse of communism
2011
A detailed look at Jewish life in Poland based on interviews with a broad range of Polish Jewish leaders. It highlights the 'multiplier effect' of Jewish heritage programming, and explores the impact of the post-communist Jewish revival on Polish society as a whole. Part of a four-paper series looking at Jewish life in east-central Europe since the collapse of communism, the authors of the Poland report testify to the rebirth of a small community that has a disproportionate impact on world Jewry, not least because of the importance of Polish Jewish history and heritage. The research was conducted by local experts working in partnership with JPR, and was funded by the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe. A Polish language version is also available.
The Resurgence of Antisemitic Discourse in Poland
Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 2018
and a co-founder of the Nigdy Wiecej [Never Again] Association, which monitors and combats antisemitism and xenophobia. His books include The Populist Radical Right in Poland (2010) and the forthcoming Poland: Inventing the Nation. The surge of hostility to Jews and the Jewish State in the Polish media and politics in early 2018 took many observers by surprise. For some, it was shocking to witness a virtual tidal wave of antisemitism in the mainstream discourse of one of the largest member states of the European Union-on territory which, during the German occupation, was the epicenter of the Holocaust. It was also a great shock because for many years, bilateral relations between Poland and Israel had been especially cordial and fruitful. While the history of antisemitism in Poland is relatively well known and has been thoroughly researched, few observers adequately assessed its potential as a tool with which to whip up the masses in contemporary Polish society. As late as February 4, 2018, Jonny Daniels, a controversial Anglo-Israeli public relations specialist frequently quoted in the Polish media on Jewish issues, boldly declared, "There is no such thing as Polish antisemitism." 1 Daniels, who mysteriously surfaced in Poland after the elections in 2015 that brought the radical, right-wing Prawo i Sprawiedliwosċ́(PiS) party to power, became the Orthodox Jewish poster boy of the Polish right. Sharply criticized by leaders of the Jewish community in Warsaw for acting as an apologist for the high priest of Poland's notorious Radio Maryja, Tadeusz Rydyk, even Daniels suddenly found himself the target of vicious antisemitic verbal attacks in 2018. 2 Konstanty Gebert (writing under his pen name Dawid Warszawski), a respected intellectual and commentator on Polish, Jewish, and international issues, penned a lengthy article for the leading liberal daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, on commonalities in the Polish and Israeli conservative-nationalist outlook. He noted the friendly relations between the two countries' ruling parties. Within hours of its publication on January 27, 2018, Gebert's erudite and well-documented article was suddenly old news and all but forgotten. 3 1
IN AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED in 1986 and provocatively titled "Interwar Poland: Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews?" Ezra Mendel sohn observed that in the historiography of interwar Polish Jewry there are two camps, one "optimistic," the other "pessimistic." He continued: The attitude of most Jewish scholars has been, and continues to be, that interwar Poland was an extremely antisemitic country, perhaps even uniquely antisemitic. They claim that Polish Jewry during the 1920s and 1930s was in a state of constant and alarm ing decline, and that by the 1930s both the Polish regime and Polish society were waging a bitter and increasingly successful war against the Jewish population.' This was the point of view of the surviving prewar Polish-Jewish scholars, such as Raphael Mahler, Jacob Lestchinsky, and Isaiah Trunk.^ Similar views have been expressed by a postwar Polish-Jewish historian, PawefKorzec, and by a number of Israeli historians, includ ing Moshe Landau, Shlomo Netzer, and Emanuel Meltzer.^ This ap proach is most clearly manifested in Celia Heller's book, On the Edge of Destruction (New York: Schocken, 1977). In Heller's view, the peri od between the two world wars was a rehearsal for the Holocaust. By 1939 Polish actions had pushed the Jews to "the edge of destruction," and it only remained for the Nazis to complete what the Poles had be gun. This "pessimistic" evaluation of the situation of Jews in interwar Poland has been challenged by non-Jewish (mostly Polish) historians, and by some Jewish historians as well. The most eloquent of the Jewish "optimists" is Joseph Marcus. Marcus, a supporter of the Orthodox Agudas Yisroel Party, reserves his greatest condemnation for those he refers to as the "reformers" of Jewish life in Poland. Blinded by their Zionist and socialist obsessions, he says, they had a great deal to do with the economic decline of Polish Jewry. According to Marcus, Jews in Poland were able to hold their own economically and were, in fact, better off than the majority of the population; they were more than ca pable of withstanding the assaults to which they were subjected in the
Antisemitism in Contemporary Poland
2013
At the Hoover Institution, I found a space where academic freedom, debate, and discussion is not only permitted but truly encouraged. This is crucial during these times, especially in relation to the study of contemporary antisemitism. I am also thankful to Raphael Fischler, Doron Ben-Atar, Shalem Coulibaly, Jeffrey Herf, and Olufemi Vaughan. I am especially grateful to all the scholars who attended the conference. Most of them did so at their own expense and traveled considerable distances to be there. The conference, on which this series is based, was the largest academic gathering ever on the study of antisemitism. More than one hundred speakers from approximately twenty academic fields and more then twenty countries attended the event. It was truly a remarkable gathering at an important historical moment. Due to the high level of scholarship, the conference produced many key insights and has given rise to many important research projects. Finally, I would like to thank Daniel Stephens for copy-editing and reviewing the contributions for this project. I am most grateful for his professionalism, patience, and assistance, often beyond the call of duty. Without his efforts these volumes would not have been possible. I am thankful to Alan Stephens for his much-valued advice and for making this publication possible in the first place. I am also most grateful to Lauren Clark and would like to thank
JEWISH STUDIES IN POSTWAR POLAND
Scripta Judaica Cracoviensia, vol. 11, 2013
Abstract: The tradition of Jewish studies in Poland has been drastically interrupted by the Second World War and the Holocaust. In the immediate postwar period the process of re-establishing research on Jewish history and heritage was undertaken by the Jewish Historical Commissions and later Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. More examples of the individual and group initiatives can be traced only in the 1970s and 1980s. The real happened in the late 1980s with Kraków as one of the first and main centers of revitalized Jewish studies in Poland. The first postwar academic institution in Krakow specializing in Jewish studies – Research Center for Jewish History and Culture in Poland – was established already in 1986 in the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. More than a decade later, in 2000, it was transformed into the first Poland’s Department of Jewish Studies (Katedra Judaistyki) – now the Institute of Jewish Studies. Nowadays there are more similar programs and institutions – at the universities in Warsaw, Wrocław and Lublin (UMCS). Also other academic centers tend to have at least individual scholars, programs, classes or projects focusing on widely understood “Jewish topics.” Jewish studies in Poland, along with the revival of Jewish culture, reflect the contemporary Polish attitude to the Jewish heritage, and their scale and intensity remains unique in the European context. The growing interest in Jewish studies in Poland can be seen as a sign of respect for the role of Jewish Poles in the country’s history, and as an attempt to recreate the missing Jewish part of Poland through research, education and commemoration, accompanied by slow but promising revival of Jewish life in Poland.
SIMON (Shoah: Intervention. Menthods. Documentation), Vol. 10, No. 3, 2023
This article is a microhistorical study of the activity of Commissar for the Productivisation of the Jewish Population that took place in the Jewish community of Reichenbach/ Dzierżoniów in the years 1946-1947. By studying the activity of communist Jewish Commissar, Simcha Intrator, in the very unique milieu of Dzierżoniów (town in former German territories of which half of the population consisted of Polish Jews in the summer of 1946)this article shows the role of prewar continuations in post-Holocaust Polish Jewish life. As I claim, in the specific social and cultural climate of Dzierżoniów, Simcha Intator, nominated to help to mould the Jewish community according to the communist model, acted against the prerogatives of his institutions, strengthening non-communist, pluralistic elements of local Jewish life. Thus, this article is a microhistorical study of the role of continuation of older norms and traditions in the postwar socio-political subjectivity of the Polish Jewish community.