The Kingdom of Poland, also known as the Congress Kingdom or Russian Poland, was created by a decision of the Congress of Vienna as part of its attempt to set up a post-Napoleonic European order. It incorporated lands that for many decades had been the most important centres of Polish politics, finance, education, and culture, and which also had the largest concentration of Jews in eastern Europe. Because of these factors, and because its semi-autonomous status allowed for the development of a liberal policy towards Jews quite different from that of Russia proper, the Kingdom of Poland became a fertile ground for the growth of Jewish cultural and political movements of all sorts, many of which continue to be influential to this day. This volume brings together a wide range of scholars to present a broad view of the Jewish life of this important area at a critical moment in its history.
In the nineteenth century, tradition vied with modernization for Jews’ hearts and minds. In the Kingdom of Poland, traditional hasidic leaders defied the logic of modernization by creating courts near major urban centres such as Warsaw and Łódź and shtiblekh within them, producing innovative and influential homiletic literature and attracting new followers. Modernizing maskilim, for their part, found employment as government officials and took advantage of the liberal climate to establish educational institutions and periodicals that similarly attracted followers to their own cause and influenced the development of the Jewish community in the Kingdom in a completely different direction. Their immediate successors, the Jewish integrationists, managed to gain considerable power within the Jewish community and to create a vibrant and more secular Polish Jewish culture. Subsequently Zionism, Jewish socialism, and cultural autonomy also became significant forces. The relative strength of each movement on the eve of the rebirth of Poland is extremely difficult to measure, but unquestionably the ferment of so many potent, competing movements was a critical factor in shaping the modern Jewish experience.
Table of Contents:
Note on Place Names
Note on Transliteration
PART I: Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 1815–1918
The Kingdom of Poland and her Jews: Introduction
GLENN DYNNER & MARCIN WODZIŃSKI
Jews in the in the Discourses of the Polish Enlightenment
RICHARD BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI
The Jews in the Duchy of Warsaw: The Question of Equal Rights in Administrative Theory and Practice
ALEKSANDRA ONISZCZUK
‘English Missionaries’ Look at Polish Jews: The Value and Limitations of Missionary Reports as Source Material
AGNIESZKA JAGODZIŃSKA
‘Languishing from a Distance’: Louis Meyer and the Demise of the German Jewish Ideal
FRANÇOIS GUESNET
'Each for his Own': Economic Nationalism in Łódź, 1864–1914
YEDIDA KANFER
The Attitude of the Jews towards Poland’s Independence
SZYMON RUDNICKI
Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Kingdom of Poland
ARTUR MARKOWSKI
Theology in Translation: Progressive Judaism in the Kingdom of Poland
BENJAMIN MATIS
'Who Has Not Wanted To Be an Editor: The Yiddish Press in the Kingdom of Poland, 1905–1914
JOANNA NALEWAJKO-KULIKOV
Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 1861–1914: Changes and Continuities
THEODORE WEEKS
Feliks Perl on the Jewish Question
JOSHUA D. ZIMMERMAN
Yiddish Language Rights in Congress Poland during the First World War: The Social Implications of Linguistic Recognition
MARCOS SILBER
PART II: New Views
The Anti-Favus Campaign in Poland: Jewish Social Medicine
RAKEFET ZALASHIK
Władysław Raczkiewicz and Jewish Issues
JACEK PIOTROWSKI
After Złote żniwa: An Attempt to Assess the Social Impact of the Book
ANTONI SUŁEK
Righteousness and Evil: Jedwabne in the Polish Theatre
KATHLEEN CIOFFI
From Brzeżany to Afula: A Child’s Journey from Pre-War Poland to Israel in the 1950s: A Conversation with Shimon Redlich
GABRIEL N. FINDER
Obituaries
Jacob Goldberg
Hasidism without Romanticism: Mendel Piekarz’s Path in the Study of Hasidism
Paula Hyman
Vitka Kempner-Kovner
Roman Totenberg
Zenon Guldon
Notes on Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Glenn Dynner is Professor of Religion at Sarah Lawrence College, and was the 2013–14 Senior NEH Scholar at the Center for Jewish History. He is the author of Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (2006) and Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland (2013). He is also editor of Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe (2011). Author of The Jews in Poland and Russia, 3 vols. (Littman Library, 2010–12), also published in an abridged version: The Jews in Poland and Russia: A Short History (2014). In 2012 The Jews in Poland and Russia was awarded the Pro Historia Polonorum prize of the Polish Senate for the best book on the history of Poland in a non-Polish language written in the previous five years. Holds honorary doctorates from the University of Warsaw (2010) and the Jagiellonian University (2014). In 2011 he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Polonia Restituta and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Independent Lithuania.
Marcin Wodziński is Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław.
