Działalność konspiracyjna Żydów w Krakowie jako reakcja na niemiecką politykę Zagłady

This article presents a detailed history of what the underground resistance of Krakow’s Jews consisted of during the Second World War. It incorporates examples of different types of passive resistance applied as well as the history of illegal organisations that undertook aid activities and Jewish partisan actions. The activities of the partisans in the Krakow forests is scrutinised, together with how contact networks and the production of illegal documents were organised. The article contains a comprehensive analysis of the greatest military achievement of Krakow Jews, known as “attack on Bohemia”, which was remembered as a momentous occasion. Finally, the article shows the evo-lution of the idea of resistance to the Germans and their anti-Jewish policy among Jewish youth.

‘Frightening proportions’

This article deals with Rabbi Meir Kahane’s assimilation doctrine, an under-studied aspect of previous published research on Kahane. The present study suggests that this doctrine is catalysed by a palingenetic myth of decline and rebirth, which also catalyses Kahane’s ideology. By proposing this, this article aims to offer a new perspective on the understanding of what drives Kahane’s ideology. It is further suggested that Kahane’s palingenetic myth is in part built around a myth of ‘intraracial antagonism’ between the American Jewish Establishment (AJE) and the ‘common Jew’. Following Bruce Lincoln’s theory of myth, it is here contended that Kahane’s assimilation doctrine is presented as ‘ideology in narrative form’. The study surveys the alleged causes and effects of assimilation, and what solutions Kahane presents to put an end to it. Among the alleged causes, Kahane singles out the AJE’s purported gutting of Jewish religious education, which is said to have alienated Jewish youth from their religion. Aside from curtailing Jewish continuity, Kahane for example identifies Jews engaging in social causes that allegedly run counter to Jewish interests as one alleged effect of assimilation. To end assimilation Kahane promotes a solution of campaigning in Jewish communities to ultimately put a stop to intermarriage, to instil hadar and ahavat Yisroel among Jews by the means of a regenerated Jewish educational system, and to encourage Jews to ‘return’ to Israel.

The Quest for Israeli Identity: the Rise and Decline of the Sabra Myth

This article analyzes an attempt to construct a new identity for Jews born on the territory of the Mandatory Palestine, the so-called Sabras, between the First and Second World Wars. The characteristic features of this identity included the deliberate brutality, the combination of peasant labor with the skills of armed self-defense, collectivism and a conscious break with the diaspora past. The external attributes of the sabras were the wearing of simple but comfortable clothes of the inhabitants of the kibbutzim and the cultivation of Hebrew. Sabras become a role model for Jewish youth who arrived in Israel and those who were already born here. The attractiveness of the sabra’s image was enhanced through advertising posters, cinematography, and literature. This model of identity is of interest as an attempt to return to the origins of Hebrew history, as well as to raise a generation of “new Jews” devoid of any shortcomings that complicated the life of Jews in exile. The artificiality of this model and its isolation from Israeli realities were among the main reasons that led to the collapse of the myth of the super-sabra. At the same time, this myth laid the foundations for a different perception of the Jews both by themselves and by the world community, contributing to the victory of Israel in the war of independence.

Bible translation and the centrality of the synagogue

This chapter analyzes Zunz’s Bible translation, situating it within the context of Zunz’s critique of the traditional Ashkenazic system of Jewish education that he experienced personally. Zunz’s assessment of Moses Mendelssohn and his vision for Jewish education that steers a middle path between the “sham Enlightenment“ of Jewish youth and the “blind faith” of older Jewish traditionalists are presented. The role of gender in Jewish education and the centrality of the synagogue in Zunz’s Bible translation project are explored. Zunz’s Bible translation is set in relation to that of his teacher, the Bible critic Wilhelm De Wette as a way of comparing liberal German Protestantism and liberal German Judaism in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. It is shown how Zunz uses Protestantism and Catholicism as exemplary categories aligning his vision of Judaism with Protestantism while rejecting forms of Judaism that he deems “Catholic.”

Mapping the History of Child Holocaust Survivors

This chapter examines some key areas of the history of Jewish youth in Europe during and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, paying particular attention to the significant shifts in the field over the last decade. It discusses how the field has been changing and expanding as a result of historians’ recognition of children’s agency with the rise of child-oriented historiography, and the late postwar tsunami of child survivors’ testimonies. It focuses on specific aspects of Jewish children’s history beginning with the ghettoization process, life on the Aryan side in Nazi-occupied Europe, Jewish disabled children, the universe of concentration camps and extermination centers, and the aftermath of the war.

Kazania dla młodzieży żydowskiej w Galicji

The book contains a selection of eighty eight sermons (so-called exhortations) for the Jewish youth, which were written in Galicia at the end of the 19th century and in the first decades of the 20th century. They constituted part of religious education of Jewish students who attended secular primary and secondary schools. The authors of the sermons were teachers such as Natan Szyper, Arnold Friedman or Samuel Wolf Guttman who was the preacher of the progressive synagogue in Lviv.