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Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland (Hardcover)
Erica T Lehrer, Michael Meng; Contributions by Genevi eve Zubrzycki, Magdalena Waligorska, Slawomir Kapralski, …
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Discovery Miles 20 220
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In a time of national introspection regarding the country s
involvement in the persecution of Jews, Poland has begun to
reimagine spaces of and for Jewishness in the Polish landscape, not
as a form of nostalgia but as a way to encourage the pluralization
of contemporary society. The essays in this book explore issues of
the restoration, restitution, memorializing, and tourism that have
brought present inhabitants into contact with initiatives to revive
Jewish sites. They reveal that an emergent Jewish presence in both
urban and rural landscapes exists in conflict and collaboration
with other remembered minorities, engaging in complex negotiations
with local, regional, national, and international groups and
interests. With its emphasis on spaces and built environments, this
volume illuminates the role of the material world in the complex
encounter with the Jewish past in contemporary Poland."
In the summer and fall of 1998, ultranationalist Polish Catholics
erected hundreds of crosses outside Auschwitz, setting off a fierce
debate that pitted Catholics and Jews against one another. While
this controversy had ramifications that extended well beyond
Poland's borders, Genevieve Zubrzycki sees it as a particularly
crucial moment in the development of post-Communist Poland's
statehood and its changing relationship to Catholicism. In The
Crosses of Auschwitz, Zubrzycki skillfully demonstrates how this
episode crystallized latent social conflicts regarding the
significance of Catholicism in defining "Polishness" and the role
of anti-Semitism in the construction of a new Polish identity.
Since the fall of Communism, the binding that has held Polish
identity and Catholicism together has begun to erode, creating
unease among ultranationalists. Within their construction of Polish
identity also exists pride in the Polish people's long history of
suffering. For the ultranationalists, then, the crosses at
Auschwitz were not only symbols of their ethno-Catholic vision, but
also an attempt to lay claim to what they perceived was a Jewish
monopoly over martyrdom. This gripping account of the emotional and
aesthetic aspects of the scene of the crosses at Auschwitz offers
profound insights into what Polishness is today and what it may
become.
An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish
culture back to life in Poland today Since the early 2000s, Poland
has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by
non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all things
Jewish. Klezmer music, Jewish-style restaurants, kosher vodka, and
festivals of Jewish culture have become popular, while new museums,
memorials, Jewish studies programs, and Holocaust research centers
reflect soul-searching about Polish-Jewish relations before,
during, and after the Holocaust. In Resurrecting the Jew, Genevieve
Zubrzycki examines this revival and asks what it means to try to
bring Jewish culture back to life in a country where 3 million Jews
were murdered and where only about 10,000 Jews now live. Drawing on
a decade of participant-observation in Jewish and Jewish-related
organizations in Poland, a Birthright trip to Israel with young
Polish Jews, and more than a hundred interviews with Jewish and
non-Jewish Poles engaged in the Jewish revival, Resurrecting the
Jew presents an in-depth look at Jewish life in Poland today. The
book shows how the revival has been spurred by progressive Poles
who want to break the association between Polishness and
Catholicism, promote the idea of a multicultural Poland, and resist
the Far Right government. The book also raises urgent questions,
relevant far beyond Poland, about the limits of performative
solidarity and empathetic forms of cultural appropriation.
Against the gloomy forecast of "The Vanishing Diaspora", the end of
the second millennium saw the global emergence of a dazzling array
of Jewish cultural initiatives, institutional modalities, and
individual practices. These "Jewish Revival" and "Jewish Renewal"
projects are led by Jewish NGOs and philanthropic organizations,
the Orthodox Teshuva (return to the fold) movement and its
well-known emissary Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism, and alternative
cultural initiatives that promote what can be termed "lifestyle
Judaism." This range between institutionalized revival movements
and ephemeral event-driven projects circumscribes a diverse space
of creative agency, which calls for a bottom-up empirical analysis
of cultural creativity and the re-invention of Jewish tradition
worldwide. Indeed, the trope of a "Jewish Renaissance" has become
both a descriptive category of an increasingly popular and
scholarly discourse across the globe, and a prescriptive model for
social action. This volume explores the global transformations of
contemporary Jewishness, which give renewed meaning to identity,
tradition, and politics in our post secular world.
In a time of national introspection regarding the country s
involvement in the persecution of Jews, Poland has begun to
reimagine spaces of and for Jewishness in the Polish landscape, not
as a form of nostalgia but as a way to encourage the pluralization
of contemporary society. The essays in this book explore issues of
the restoration, restitution, memorializing, and tourism that have
brought present inhabitants into contact with initiatives to revive
Jewish sites. They reveal that an emergent Jewish presence in both
urban and rural landscapes exists in conflict and collaboration
with other remembered minorities, engaging in complex negotiations
with local, regional, national, and international groups and
interests. With its emphasis on spaces and built environments, this
volume illuminates the role of the material world in the complex
encounter with the Jewish past in contemporary Poland."
An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish
culture back to life in Poland today Since the early 2000s, Poland
has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by
non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all things
Jewish. Klezmer music, Jewish-style restaurants, kosher vodka, and
festivals of Jewish culture have become popular, while new museums,
memorials, Jewish studies programs, and Holocaust research centers
reflect soul-searching about Polish-Jewish relations before,
during, and after the Holocaust. In Resurrecting the Jew, Genevieve
Zubrzycki examines this revival and asks what it means to try to
bring Jewish culture back to life in a country where 3 million Jews
were murdered and where only about 10,000 Jews now live. Drawing on
a decade of participant-observation in Jewish and Jewish-related
organizations in Poland, a Birthright trip to Israel with young
Polish Jews, and more than a hundred interviews with Jewish and
non-Jewish Poles engaged in the Jewish revival, Resurrecting the
Jew presents an in-depth look at Jewish life in Poland today. The
book shows how the revival has been spurred by progressive Poles
who want to break the association between Polishness and
Catholicism, promote the idea of a multicultural Poland, and resist
the Far Right government. The book also raises urgent questions,
relevant far beyond Poland, about the limits of performative
solidarity and empathetic forms of cultural appropriation.
Through much of its existence, Quebec's neighbors called it the
"priest-ridden province." Today, however, Quebec society is
staunchly secular, with a modern welfare state built on lay
provision of social services a transformation rooted in the "Quiet
Revolution" of the 1960s. In Beheading the Saint, Genevi ve
Zubrzycki studies that transformation through a close investigation
of the annual Feast of St. John the Baptist of June 24. The
celebrations of that national holiday, she shows, provided a venue
for a public contesting of the dominant ethno-Catholic conception
of French Canadian identity and, via the violent rejection of
Catholic symbols, the articulation of a new, secular Quebecois
identity. From there, Zubrzycki extends her analysis to the
present, looking at the role of Quebecois identity in recent
debates over immigration, the place of religious symbols in the
public sphere, and the politics of cultural heritage issues that
also offer insight on similar debates elsewhere in the world.
Through much of its existence, Quebec's neighbors called it the
"priest-ridden province." Today, however, Quebec society is
staunchly secular, with a modern welfare state built on lay
provision of social services a transformation rooted in the "Quiet
Revolution" of the 1960s. In Beheading the Saint, Genevi ve
Zubrzycki studies that transformation through a close investigation
of the annual Feast of St. John the Baptist of June 24. The
celebrations of that national holiday, she shows, provided a venue
for a public contesting of the dominant ethno-Catholic conception
of French Canadian identity and, via the violent rejection of
Catholic symbols, the articulation of a new, secular Quebecois
identity. From there, Zubrzycki extends her analysis to the
present, looking at the role of Quebecois identity in recent
debates over immigration, the place of religious symbols in the
public sphere, and the politics of cultural heritage issues that
also offer insight on similar debates elsewhere in the world.
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