Synopsis
Relations between Jews and their neighbours 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 volume 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 here 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, Russians), discuss negotiations with various governments (Habsburg, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, and Soviet), analyse 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. CONTRIBUTORS Karen Auerbach, Israel Bartal, Ela Bauer, Jan Blonski, Marek Edelman, Michael Fleming, Dorota Glowacka, Regina Grol, Francois Guesnet, Brian Horowitz, Agnieszka Jagodinska, Jeff Kopstein, Sergei Kravtsov, Rachel Manekin, Czeslaw Milosz, Karin Neuberger, Przemyslaw Rozanski, Kai Struve, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Jerzy Turowicz, Scott Ury, Kalman Weiser, Jason Wittenberg, Marcin Wodzinski, Piotr Wrobel
About the Author
Israel Bartal studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Harvard University and received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, McGill, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and Moscow State University. He served as the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University between 2006 and 2010 and is the chair of the Historical Society of Israel. Among his publications are (with Magdalena Opalski) Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (1992); Polin, Volume 12 (1999) (co-edited with Antony Polonsky), which focuses on the Jews in Galicia, 1772 1918; and The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772 1881 (2005), which has also appeared in Hebrew, Russian, and German. Antony Polonsky is Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Until 1991, he was Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is chair of the editorial board of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry; author of Politics in Independent Poland, 1921 1939 (1972), The Little Dictators (1975), The Great Powers and the Polish Question, 1941 45 (1976); co-author of The History of Poland since 1863 (1980) and The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland (1981); and co-editor of Contemporary Jewish Writing in Poland: An Anthology (2001) and The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (2004). His most recent work is The Jews in Poland and Russia, i: 1350 1881 (2009); ii: 1881 1914 (2010); iii: 1914 2005 (forthcoming). Scott Ury is a senior lecturer in Tel Aviv University s Department of Jewish History, where he also serves as acting director of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism. His work has appeared in Jewish Social Studies, Polin, the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, and other academic forums, in English, French, German, Hebrew, and Polish. He has also co-edited a special edition of the European Review of History on Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe. His latest book is Red Banner, Blue Star: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry (forthcoming).
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