Polacy i Żydzi na Brooklynie i Podkarpaciu... Odtworzone z pamięci zbiorowej sąsiedztwo?
Poles and Jews in Brooklyn and Podkarpackie Voivodeship. Collective Memory of the Reconstructed Neighborhood

Summary/Abstract: The text presents a pattern of Jewish-Polish relations characteristic for the Eastern Poland’s countryside in the early 20th century, and addresses a question whether and if yes, in what way the pattern has been reproduced in Brooklyn in New York and a town of Leżajsk in south-eastern Poland at the turn of the 21st century. In Brooklyn, similarly to the prewar Poland, the geographic proximity and economic exchange between Hasidic employers and Polish immigrant employees are accompanied cultural estrangement, social distance and resentment. In Leżajsk, on the other hand, the polish locals make excited observers of the Hasidic religious tourists. The economic exchange and other forms of direct interaction are very limited. The relationship reestablished in Brooklyn between Hasidic Jews and Polish immigrants, many of whom originate from south-east Poland, have therefore no significant impact on how relations between Hasidic pilgrims and the Leżajsk locals are performed. This paper conclusions rest on the results of research on Polish immigrant community in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that I conducted in years 2006–2010, and the content analysis of the regional newspaper Nowiny24 articles on Hasidic Jews in Leżajsk in years 2012–2017. The interpretation refers also to the research on history of and memory on Polish-Jewish relations in the Eastern Poland, ethnographic and sociological research on Hasidism in Eastern Europe and United States.

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