Constructing Jewish identity in post‐communist Poland part 1 : 'deassimilation without depolonization' (original) (raw)

Modern Times Polish Style? Orthodoxy, Enlightenment, and Patriotism

2019

I n this short essay, I examine the gap between historiography and collective memory as far as nineteenth-century Jewish history in Eastern Europe is concerned-and I have deliberately used the term Eastern Europe rather than Poland. Was there a singular track of modernization in Jewish history, or was the case of Polish Jewry different from that of other Jewish communities in the nineteenth century? These questions are highly relevant for the presentation of Jewish history in Poland in the nineteenth century as set out in this magnificent museum. One of the issues that most concerns me is the continuity of premodern institutions, mentalities, and ways of life well into the nineteenth century. This issue is closely related to that of Jewish individual and collective responses to the changes experienced by society in general and Jewish society in particular as a result of the impact of modernities (in the plural)-a process that took place in the nineteenth century. These responses can broadly be described as ranging from rejection, indifference, in many or most cases, to identification with and encouragement and support of those processes. Every modern Jewish movement emerged as a result of choices involving all these options. In addition, they acted together, operated simultaneously, and had their impact on the process. The second issue is that of voluntary continuity in a post-corporative environment-of alternative collective Jewish entities, whether real-such as the The Nineteenth Century

Romanticism and realism in Poland

The aim of this article is to defend a hypothesis according to which Polish culture, and in particular, Polish political culture 1 have since the early 19th century been characterized by cyclical returns of Romanticism and Realism. 2 In the course of the 19th century both these cultural currents, first Romanticism and later Realism, gained enormous popularity in Poland.

"The Jewish Problem" as a Polish Problem

chapter in Poland and the Jews: Reflections of a Polish Polish Jew, Austeria, Kraków 2005

This essay is a survey of the issues in Polish history in which there exist clearly diverging views among average Jews and average Poles. The very fi rst version of the essay, meant for the Polish intelligentsia, was published, under my penname Abel Kainer, in an underground periodical “Spotkania” 29/30 (1985), pp. 32-64. A version close to the present one was published in Catholic monthly “Więź” in 1992, and the English version in 1998 in a special issue of “Więź” entitled Under One Heaven. Poles and Jews., pp. 60-81, together with an addendum, omitted here. Many footnotes explaining Polish history are by William Brand, who added them for “Więź”.

Khmelnytsky and Szela. Radical Romantics Struggling with Peasants’ History of Poland

As an intellectual movement romanticism has, for a long time, been generating extreme emotions: from despair of those who focus on semantics (think of the difficulties with defining this concept) to the concerns of political realists of all kinds. Nonetheless, the Polish imagination is very strongly marked by romantic thinking since Central Europe reached modernity in its deeply spiritualized version. Modernity is difficult to imagine when there is no mass political agent. In the Polish context which was marked by the experience of the partitions, the enlightened Reason could not be granted the task to invent a new form of political “us,” as was the case for example in France.