Antony Polonsky

Eugenia Prokop-Janiec

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska

Slawomir Jacek Zurek

Since the Enlightenment, the cultural creativity of Polish Jews has found expression not only in Hebrew and Yiddish, but increasingly in Polish. There has been mutual and dynamic interaction between the cultural systems, but, until the end of communism, the trilingual Jewish culture of Poland was little studied. In this volume, scholars from Poland, the United States, Israel, Italy, and Argentina investigate writers from across this spectrum and consider how they saw their Jewish (and sometimes Polish) identity, and what they thought of the authors in the other linguistic or cultural camps. Together, their essays constitute the first examination of Jewish literatures in Poland from the point of view of both linguistic and geographical diversity. The interwar years serve as the reference point, but material on the period before World War I and after 1945 is also included. The book comprises six sections. There is new research on Jewish literature in Polish, including discussions of less widely known works by Janusz Korczak and Julian Stryjkowski. Polish-Yiddish-Hebrew literary contacts are then reviewed, with important pieces on Y.L. Peretz's early work, the translation of Hayim Nahman Bialik's poetry into Polish, the influence of Polish writers on Sholem Asch's early plays, and the reception of Yosef Opatoshu's novels in interwar Poland. The next section explores the images of Poles and Poland in the work of Jewish writers and of Jews in the work of Polish authors, for instance in the work of the Hebrew Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon and the Polish writer Stanislaw Vincenz. The subsequent section looks at avant-garde art and modern ideologies, with discussions of Bruno Schulz's graphic works and why communism appealed to some Jewish writers. Discussion then moves to questions of identity, with a special focus on Julian Tuwim, one of the greatest Polish poets, an assimilated Jew attacked by Polish nationalists on the one hand and Yiddishists on the other. The last group of essays in the collection looks at different 'exiles, ' understood both literally and metaphorically and encompassing works created in Poland, Israel, and Argentina. In spite of this wide range of themes, the coverage of the topic is not exhaustive: there are still very few studies of Polish-Hebrew literary contacts, and although more has been written about Yiddish writers in Poland there are still areas requiring a comparative perspective. This is a major study of topics which have rarely been discussed in English, especially Jewish literature written in Polish. The articles should appeal to all students of literature, and particularly to those interested in Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew creativity understood as a rich cultural polysystem. CONTRIBUTORS Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Maria Antosik-Piela, Dorota Burda-Fischer, Nathan Cohen, Ofer Dynes, Karolina Famulska-Ciesielska, Ellen Kellman, Zuzanna Kołodziejska, Ber Kotlerman, Anna Kuligowska-Korzeniewska, Aviv Livnat, Piotr Matywiecki, Alina Molisak, Joanna Nalewejko-Kulikov, Władysław Panas, Ireneusz Piekarski, Eugenia Prokop-Janiec, Laura Quercioli Mincer, Gil Rabak, Shoshana Ronen, Maxim D. Shrayer, Dariusz Konrad Sikorksi, Perla Sneh, Monika Szabłowska-Zaremba, Bella Szwarcman-Czarnota, Karolina Szymaniak, Miriam Udel, Karen Underhill, Bożena Wojnowska, Marzena Zawanowska, Sławomir Jacek Żurek.

Jewish Writing in Poland

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 28

Devoted to collecting the finest Jewish writing from around the world, the Jewish Writing in the Contemporary World series consists of anthologies, by country, that are designed to present to the English-speaking world authors and works deserving international consideration. As a series, the books permit a broad examination of the international crosscurrents in Jewish thought and culture.øContemporary Jewish Writing in Poland brings together the works of a broad range of modern Jewish writers, most of whom remained in Poland after the Second World War. Although the Nazi genocide wiped out nearly all of the Jewish population in the country, the aftermath of the war has not stifled Jewish writing in Poland but has given it a different direction. A complex body of literature describes Jewish life before the war, documents the Holocaust, and wrestles with its legacy?particularly the difficulties of living in a country where it occurred.

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska

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