Building a Jewish Future
A conversation with Tad Taube, Chairman of the San Francisco-based Taube Philanthropies, and Honorary Consul for the Republic of Poland in the San Francisco Peninsula Region.
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A conversation with Tad Taube, Chairman of the San Francisco-based Taube Philanthropies, and Honorary Consul for the Republic of Poland in the San Francisco Peninsula Region.
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The article discusses life and work of Israel Rabon, one of the major writers and creators of literary life in pre-war Lodz. It presents his most important works like Di Gas (The Street), the only one of his book translated into Polish, Bałuty (Balut) and memoirs entitled Farcejchenungen fun jor 1939 (Sketches of the year 1939) written during Nazi occupation. The article also includes Izrael Rabon’s role in Yiddish literature and his activity as an editor of literary journal “Os”.
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This article considers Holocaust testimonies and the question of translation, understood here as both exchanges between languages within a text and renditions of a text into another language. According to Imre Kertész, Holocaust has no language that could express its meaning, and no national language has been able to coin words and expressions capable of conveying its catastrophic dimension. Since Holocaust survivors must express themselves in one of the national languages, Holocaust testimony is always a form of translation, even in the case of writers who wrote their memoirs in their native tongues (such as Kertész, Primo Levi, Jean Améry, Paul Celan, Ida Fink, and Hanna Krall, whose work is discussed here). The choice of language in which survivors’ memoirs (as well as other literary forms) were written had a profound impact on their authors’ sense of self-identity, their ability to heal, and the way they remembered the past. The largest number of memoirs appeared in English, the survivors’ second tongue, whose neutrality enabled them to overcome associations with the language in which they experienced traumatic events. Others, such as Elie Wiesel and Isabella Leitner, translated their initial accounts written in their native tongues (Yiddish and Hungarian, respectively) into smoothed-out versions in the languages of their adopted country (France and the United States).
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Oskar Goldberg’s hermeneutical approach eliminates from the text of the Pentateuch concepts crucial for its traditional – “rabbinic” – understanding. Based on deep etymological analysis, apathetical theory of language leads the German scholar to the conclusion that the idea of “sin” – among many others – was alien to the ancient Hebrews, who knew only the concept of “objective mistake”. Taking a diametrically different approach to the language of the Five Books of Moses, Aramaic translators develop the idea of “sin” as transgression and personal responsibility. This disagreement stems not only from two different visions of language of the Scripture, but is also determined by contrasting visions of god, man and their mutual relations.
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Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, Jewish philosophy after Auschwitz, Jewish theodicy,cosmic religion
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At the time of the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great, the Jews were divided into various “groups” that defined themselves not only by doctrinal positions but also by political choices. These “groups” chose to support or not support the political power. Sometimes they radically changed their position, supporters suddenly becoming opponents, and vice versa. The problem is that the reasons we find in our sources, like Josephus, are often only pretexts.
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On two occasions in his description of the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Josephus mentions the “Camp of the Assyrians” as the area in which Titus’ quarters were located. The historian’s account suggests that the location of this site meant that it played an important role in the battles at the city walls. Scholars do not agree on where it was situated, despite the significance of this fact for accurate reconstruction of the progression of the siege of Jerusalem as well as determining the course of the so-called Third Wall. Analysis of the literary and archaeological evidence leads to the conclusion that the name “Camp of the Assyrians” refers to an area lying north-west of the present-day walls of Jerusalem, whose southern borders are demarcated by the remains of an ancient wall unearthed during archaeological excavations and identified by archaeologists as the Third Wall
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This article presents the history and religious views of the Kraków’s Association of Progressive Jews in the last quarter of the 19th century, a favorable period in the history of this group. The article discusses certain aspects of the history of this milieu (legal status, authorities, finances, growth), social work it undertook, and the religious life of the Tempel synagogue. Special emphasis was put on the sources of religious standpoint of progressives, on the scope of the religious life, and the preachers’ activities (Moritz Duschak and Samuel Landau at that time). The article contributes to the research on Progressive Judaism in Polish lands and to the religious history of Galician and Krakovian Jewry.
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The article is devoted to the pro-Polish integrationist group, an important part of the modernizing section of the Jewish community in Poland, in the second half of the 19th century. The author focuses on Ojczyzna, a Polish-language bulletin and the first regular Polish-language newspaper of the pro-Polish integrationist group in Galicia. The study is an attempt to show how the idea of integration was finally abandoned at the turn of the century, and integration ceased to be seen as the solution to “the Jewish question.”
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The article summarizes and highlights some sections of the autobiography of Abraham Stub, a Jew born in Bobowa into a family of adherents of the Bobower Rebbe. In his early childhood Stub migrated with his parents to Mainz in Germany, later escaping the Shoah to Palestine, where he managed to establish a store in the center of West Jerusalem (Ma‛ayan Stub). The autobiography, written in Hebrew, was until recently unknown, although it contains interesting information about the relationship of Jews from Bobowa with their home town after migration, as well as transmitting remarkable biographical details about Rebbe Ben Zion Halberstam’s life in Bobowa. Stub depicts himself as a traditional Jew who during and after World War I and his service in the Austrian army became more and more a religious Zionist. His book thus also provides many insights into the early development of the Mizrahi movement in Germany, where Jews from Eastern Europe, especially from Galicia, were often discriminated against by German Jews and therefore established their own small prayer circles (Mahzike ha-das). Stub’s life story developed from this traditional Hasidic Diaspora background into a typical religious Zionist, so to speak Israeli orthodox biography. It might serve as an example for further studies about migration from the East to the West and further on to Israel, where Jews from Poland or a Polish background still play a dominant role in the political and religious public sphere.
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For more than six years, Rola – a Warsaw periodical that appeared weekly from 1883 to 1912 with a circulation of two thousand copies – published a series of articles about the position of wealthy Jewish families in Polish society. This series was commissioned by editor-in-chief Jan Jeleński and was of a quasi-documentary character (fictional but based on facts from real Jewish families with changed names). The title of the series was “Podskarbiowie Narodu” [The Treasurers of the Nation].The vocabulary used in this series expressed the phobias and anxieties of Rola’s staff, among which the biggest was the fear that Jewish families would take over Polish society and infect it with cynical philosophy, ruled by money. This would confirm the negative stereotype of the Jew always preoccupied with money and chasing after a “golden calf.”Jeleński and his colleagues believed that the Jewish nature was different than the Polish one, being based on lower-level values and therefore very dangerous. Once infected, Polish families could later imitate that cynical approach. They were also afraid of the way Jewish families supported each other strongly. Jeleński perceived this support – though of great value for the Jews themselves – as a great threat. He worried that Jewish families grew stronger and united, building a new kind of clan of a nouveau-riche character based on fictitious splendor and dominant influence.
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The article deals with the subject of popular demonology as a space of symbolic contact between Jewish culture and the largely Slavic surrounding culture(s) in the Eastern Europe. It brings together two main themes – the presence of Christian beliefs about witchcraft, and demonic representations of diseases (e.g. kolten, hartsvorem, etc.) – as seen and evaluated within the Ashkenazi milieu at the turn of the 20th century. Based on print and handwritten sources of various origins, the article presents examples of extensive intercultural contact, emphasizing their scope and meaning, as well as their limitations, in historical/cultural context.
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This article discusses the Bund’s gender politics present in Tsukunft, the youth organization of the party. In the interwar period Tsukunft grew into one of the most active and dynamic organizations within the Bundist movement in Poland. The author analyzes Tsukunft’s discourse to find out the actual position of the women in the organization. By confronting the organization’s material with the sources produced by the movement’s women activists, the author tries to find out more about women’s experience in Tsukunft. The article therefore incorporates the marginalized narrative of and on Jewish women into modern historiography
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The painter Sasza Blonder (1909-1949) was born into a tradition-observing Jewish family in Chortkiv in Podolia. In the 1930s he belonged to the avant-garde Grupa Krakowska, whose members were Poles and Jews of radical left views. His works of that period included both abstract and figurative compositions. He was the only artist in the group interested in subjects taken from Jewish life, examples of which can be found in his sketchbooks. In 1937 Blonder moved to Paris. During the war he hid in the south of France under the false name André Blondel. His memoirs written at this time testify to Blonder’s strong links with the Jewish milieu. His death at the early age of 40 interrupted the career of this interesting and talented artist.
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The article examines Yiddish-Polish writers’ response to the Holocaust in their poetry written in the years 1941-1948 and published in Poland in the early postwar years, when the country enjoyed relative political freedom. Special attention is given to a highly interesting theme appearing in the wartime lyrics written by Jewish survivors in the East (like B. Heller, H. Rubin, R. Żhikhlinsky, A. Zak), i.e. their call to arms addressed to the Jews living in Nazi-occupied Poland. The refugees could not bear the thought that whole masses of Jews died without putting up a fight in the ghettoes and camps in the West. It was probably this helplessness that evolved into their poetic appeal addressed to their ghettoized brethren, their call for resistance and punishment of the Nazi German murderers. Interestingly, the works of some writers who survived in the ghettos (such as Y. Shpigl, Y. Katsenelson and others), prove that ghettoized Jews who were tormented by the “docile death” complex also dreamed about being involved in an armed struggle against the Nazi Germans, but were aware of their weakness in the face of a much stronger enemy. Immediately after the war, this discrepancy of experience and knowledge led to a serious lack of understanding between those Jews who had survived in Poland and those who had survived in the East. The article examines these difference of experiences as it is reflected in the poetry.
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The Jesuit Jan Bohomolec, a mathematician and philosopher, parish priest in Skaryszew and Praga, studies various religions and philosophical spread the knowledge of them. Among Warsaw’s intellectuals of the latter half of the 18th century he was an example of a man who, while exposing superstitions and prejudice, at the same time awoke interest in other religions and may have been the first person to build bridges between various religions. His works also contain a few—but really interesting—observations about Judaism and its followers. They could be attesting to the fact that his knowledge of the subject was not based on literature alone. He must have known the Jewish community first hand and may have liaised with rabbis as well.
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The article examines the history of the Kraków Progressive Israelites Society between 1918 and 1939. From 1861 the Society had its own synagogue (Tempel) and its members accounted for a considerable part of the Jewish intelligentsia. Prior research into the progressive milieu in the pre-WWII period, Earlier research into the progressive milieu in the inter-war period focused first and foremost on the actions of Ozjasz Thon (1870-1936), who was a preacher and a rabbi of a progressive synagogue. The aim of the article is to describe the activity of the organization which employed Thon and in which he operated while in Kraków.The article looks at the way the society was organized and the structure of its authorities (it was managed based on a charter from 1912, the board was made up of 15 persons), its finance (the main source of revenue were the fees for seats and the main expenses were the salaries of clerical personnel), and its typical members (of whom there were between 450 and 480 in the period in question).Throughout the inter-war period the liturgy at Tempel remained relatively conservative. There was a lot of emphasis on elegance and decorum and the main new element was a mixed female and male choir, which sang during all services. In addition to the regular Sabbath and holy day services, Tempel also hosted Polish patriotic events and Zionist galas. In addition to Thon, two more preachers worked in Tempel: Samuel Schmelkes, and later Hirsz Pfeffer. The progressive association also employed cantors (that post was held in succession by San Dywiński, Ignacy Dembitzer, Dawid Taffel, Lazar Schӓchter), a choir master (Izrael Fajwiszys, Izaak Lust), and male and female singers. The activities of all such persons are described in the article. The source materials used in the article include, next to archived sources and newspapers, also interviews with persons who remember the pre-war Tempel.
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