The Klezmer Revival in Poland as a Contact Zone

2020 ◽  
pp. 461-476
Author(s):  
Magdalena Waligórska
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Contact Zone ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Jewish Heritage

This chapter analyzes the general phenomenon of the revival of klezmer. It explains the klezmer revival as the most visible and controversial aspects of the popular surge of interest in the Jewish past, traditions, and heritage that unfolded over the last two decades in post-Holocaust and post-communist eastern Europe. It also mentions the various scholars that labelled the klezmer revival in different degrees of scepticism, such as “Jewish space,” “virtual Jewishness,” “redemptive cosmopolitanism,” or “post-Jewish culture.” The chapter discusses the Jewish heritage revival in Poland that addresses the lack of spiritual intensity in modern society. It notes the new surge of philosemitism in Polish cultural production that is merely a new incarnation of antisemitism and has a harmful or violent aspect.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.

Rediscovering Traces of Memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber ◽  
Chris Schwarz ◽  
Jason Francisco
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Local People ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Bear Witness

The present-day traces of the Jewish past in Poland are complex. Jewish life lay in ruins after the Holocaust. Much evidence of ruin remains, but there are also widespread traces that bear witness to the elaborate Jewish culture that once flourished there, even in villages and small towns. One also sees places where Jews were murdered by the Germans in the war: not only in death camps and ghettos, but also in fields, forests, rivers, and cemeteries. After the war, forty years of communism suppressed even the memory of the destroyed Jewish heritage. Today, by contrast, the historic Jewish culture of Poland is increasingly being memorialized, by local Poles as well as by foreign Jews. Synagogues and cemeteries are being renovated, monuments and museums are being set up. There are festivals of Jewish culture, hasidic pilgrims, and Jewish tourists; and local people who rescued Jews during the war are being honoured. In rediscovering the traces of memory one also finds clear signs of a local Jewish revival. This extensively revised second edition includes forty-five new photographs and updated explanatory texts. Together they suggest how to make sense of the past and discover its relevance for the present. This book will appeal to everyone concerned with questions of history, memory, and identity.

The Revival of Jewish Life

2018 ◽  
pp. 162-182
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber ◽  
Chris Schwarz ◽  
Jason Francisco
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The People ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Democratic Freedom

This chapter talks about the people who are creating and maintaining projects that memorialize both the Jewish life that existed in Polish Galicia for centuries and the enormity of the Holocaust during which it was destroyed. It discloses the public acknowledgment of the Jewish heritage that has been ongoing since Poland regained its democratic freedom in 1989, which led to the revival of Jewish life. It also describes the main Holocaust memorial in Kraków, which is comprised of symbolic abandoned chairs scattered through an entire city to highlight the Jewish absence. The chapter mentions non-Jewish Poles who have become aware of the past in Poland that included Jews and Jewish culture. It details post-Holocaust Poland in the 1970s that was severely restricted and in danger of facing extinction as 90 percent of Holocaust survivors had emigrated.

“Making Antifascist Politics Visible”

2021 ◽  
pp. 245-266
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
The State ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Music ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
Musical Embodiment

In the course of the 1970s, membership of the Jewish communities dwindled further, yet Jewish music continued to strive due to the presence of the Leipziger Synagogalchor, which kept prewar repertoires alive and exposed an ever-wider audience to them. As such, Jewish music slowly entered the mainstream and moved “out of the ghetto,” as Werner Sander had expressly called for in his very first programs. But this course was also turning into a Jewish heritage music, a mode of cultural production in the present with recourse to the past, singled out for protection, nourishment, and even enshrinement. Financially supported by the state, the Leipziger Synagogalchor also became a musical embodiment of the “success” of the GDR’s antifascist course. In reality, the choir, which consisted of non-Jewish singers, represented the presence of absence, a substitute for a culturally striving Jewish life.

Next Year in Drohobych

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen C. Underhill
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Polish Culture ◽  
Bruno Schulz

In Israeli director Yael Bartana’s 2007 film Mary Koszmary—meaning “Bad Dreams” or “Nightmares”—a young Polish politician delivers a resounding speech to an empty, crumbling, communist-era Stadion Dziesięciolecia in Warsaw. The speech, he says, is an appeal: “This is a call. . . . It is an appeal for life. We want three million Jews to return to Poland, to live with us again. We need you! Please come back!” This article considers the powerful and perhaps disturbing premise of these lines and explores their possible meanings in a contemporary Polish context. What can it mean for Poles and Polish culture to need Jews—and in particular, to need those Jews who can never return? The complex phenomenon of Jewish memory in Poland and Eastern Europe cannot be contained within specific, present-day borders—whether of geography or of academic discipline: similar dynamics to those Bartana has identified in Poland exist throughout the region. Thus, against the background of Bartana’s film, the article considers the growing phenomenon and importance of local Jewish festivals in Poland and present-day Ukraine, focusing in detail on two specific festivals: the annual festival “Encounters with Jewish Culture,” held in Chmielnik, Poland, and the biannual Bruno Schulz Festival in Drohobych, Ukraine. The analysis explores ways that the memory of Polish Jews—and more specifically the figure of the absent Polish Jew—can function as a central element in the construction of new, communal Polish and Ukrainian narratives since the fall of Communism.

scholarly journals Philosophical Reflection of the Concept of Borders in Modern Culturechinese Performing

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (SPE3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Du Ying ◽  
A. V. Kuznetsova ◽  
G. N. Kalinina
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Integrative Model ◽  
Science Knowledge ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Frontiers Of Science ◽  
Science And Culture ◽  
Intercultural Integration

Objective: philosophical reflection problems of the frontiers of science, knowledge and creativity in the modern intercultural integration; rationale for new interpretations and understanding of the concept "border" providing an integrative model for science and culture, which, in turn, implies the unacceptability of Orthodox approaches, and rigid demarcation between different spheres of cultural production. This explains the need to develop a "rational-reflexive culture" that meets the new demands of modern society.

Place in Modern Jewish Culture and Society

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Production Of Culture

Notions of place have always permeated Jewish life and consciousness. The Babylonian Talmud was pitted against the Jerusalem Talmud; the worlds of Sepharad and Ashkenaz were viewed as two pillars of the Jewish experience; the diaspora was conceived as a wholly different experience from that of Eretz Israel; and Jews from Eastern Europe and “German Jews” were often seen as mirror opposites, whereas Jews under Islam were often characterized pejoratively, especially because of their allegedly uncultured surroundings. Place, or makom, is a strategic opportunity to explore the tensions that characterize Jewish culture in modernity, between the sacred and the secular, the local and the global, the historical and the virtual, Jewish culture and others. The plasticity of the term includes particular geographic places and their cultural landscapes, theological allusions, and an array of other symbolic relations between locus, location, and the production of culture. This volume includes twelve chapters that deal with various aspects of particular places, making each location a focal point for understanding Jewish life and culture. The text sheds light on the vicissitudes of the twentieth century in relation to place and Jewish culture. The chapters continue the ongoing discussion in this realm and provide further insights into the historiographical turn in Jewish studies.

The Art of Cantorial Singing in the Polish Territories

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Bożena Muszkalska
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Southern Germany ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
East European ◽  
General Overview ◽  
Foreign Universities

This chapter gives a general overview of the development of cantorial singing in the Polish lands. It discusses eastern Europe as the youngest when it came to the traditions of synagogue music. It also explains how eastern Europe is rooted in the Middle East and its direct origins lie in the medieval traditions of the Ashkenazi community in southern Germany. The chapter focuses on Poland and its pre-partition borders that became an important centre of Jewish culture, and the art of hazanut. It discusses the east European hazanim that were characterized by great mobility, which was the result of their studying with a hazan who did not live locally, of their attending Polish or foreign universities, and of travelling long distances with their meshorerim.

The Carved Wooden Torah Arks of Eastern Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bracha Yaniv
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Artistic Development ◽  
Jewish Art ◽  
Visual Metaphors ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
Religious Understanding

The carved wooden Torah arks found in eastern Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were magnificent structures, unparalleled in their beauty and mystical significance. The work of Jewish artisans, they dominated the synagogues of numerous towns both large and small throughout the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, inspiring worshippers with their monumental scale and intricate motifs. Virtually none of these pieces survived the devastation of the two world wars. This book breathes new life into a lost genre, making it accessible to scholars and students of Jewish art, Jewish heritage, and religious art more generally. Making use of hundreds of pre-war photographs housed in local archives, the author develops a vivid portrait of the history and artistic development of these arks. Analysis of the historical context in which these arks emerged includes a broad survey of the traditions that characterized the local workshops of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. The author provides a detailed analysis of the motifs carved into the Torah arks and explains their mystical significance, among them representations of Temple imagery and messianic themes — and even daring visual metaphors for God. Fourteen arks are discussed in particular detail, with full supporting documentation; appendices relating to the inscriptions on the arks and to the artisans' names will further facilitate future research. The book throws new light on long-forgotten traditions of Jewish craftsmanship and religious understanding.

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