Eastern European and Russian Jewish History

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum was born in 1887 to his father Rabbi Hanania Yom-Tov Lipa Teitelbaum, chief rabbi of Sighet, the capital of Maramureş County, Hungary. The father was a Rebbe to his Hasidim, headed the local yeshiva, and was one of the top leaders of Hungarian Orthodoxy. During his childhood, Rabbi Yoel was known as a prodigy but was not destined to continue the family’s Hasidic or rabbinic dynasty, as this role was reserved for his older brother - Rabbi Haim Tzvi. At seventeen, soon after his father’s death and the ordination of his older brother as his successor, the newlywed Rabbi Yoel and his wife were forced to leave Sighet.

They settled in nearby Satmar (Satu Mare) where Rabbi Yoel began gathering a small group of disciples. Several years later he was elected as chief rabbi of the remote village Orshiva, but during World War I he returned to Satmar and established a small yeshiva, dividing his time between Satmar and Orshiva. In 1926 he was elected as chief rabbi of Kroly (Carei) in Transylvania, Romania and two years later he was elected chief rabbi of Satmar. This appointment faced substantial public opposition and it took Rabbi Yoel six years of fierce and scandalous struggle until he eventually took office in 1934. During that waiting period he also tried to run for a rabbinate office in other communities, including that of the Edah Haredit (the ultra-Orthodox community) of Jerusalem.

Rabbi Yoel was known to have a stubborn, controversial and argumentative personality. Wherever he wanted to serve, public debates arose and the newspapers accused him in using improper means during the election process. At the same time, he was also known as a religious zealot, and several extremist Orthodox groups acknowledged him as their spiritual leader. Following his ordination as chief rabbi of Satmar, Rabbi Yoel gained an important leadership role among the extreme-Orthodox, and became known for his unwavering opposition to modernity, Zionism and even to the ultra-Orthodox party Agudat Israel. In the late 1930s, after a long public campaign, he was elected to the leadership of the Central Bureau of the Orthodox Jewish communities of Transylvania. In that position he was able to influence the lives of over one hundred and fifty thousand religious Jews in that region.

In his personal life, Rabbi Yoel suffered a series of tragedies. After losing his father at an early age, he was expelled from his hometown, Sighet. He and his wife could not give birth to a son, and two of their three daughters died young and childless. His chronically ill wife died soon thereafter, as well as Rabbi Yoel’s mother and brother. He married again, but although his wife was young and healthy, she too did not bear him any children. Following this second marriage, Rabbi Yoel and his only daughter became estranged and they hardly spoke until she died, also at a young age. This surviving daughter was also barren meaning that Rabbi Yoel had no grandchildren to succeed him.

During World War II Rabbi Yoel was involved in various rescue operations for refugees who fled Poland. As danger grew, he sought to get a certificate that will allow him and his close family to immigrate to Palestine. Failing that, he abandoned his community and escaped along with a small group of friends from Satmar, but was caught and sent to the ghetto of Cluj. He was spared from being sent to Auschwitz as he was included in the small group saved by Zionist activist Israel Kasztner’s rescue train. He and the rest of the passengers were taken to Bergen-Belsen, where they were detained for a few months. Later the group was released to Switzerland where Rabbi Yoel stayed for a few months. He did not return to lead and to comfort the survivors that returned to Satmar after the Holocaust, nor did he join the relief operations conducted by other rabbis in the refugee camps in Germany.

After his stay in Switzerland, Rabbi Yoel decided to settle in Jerusalem. The leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community, who were aware of his aggressive and argumentative personality, shunned away from him. As a result, the institutions he established failed and he was on the verge of bankruptcy. His only hope to repay his tremendous debt was by raising funds in the United States. Humiliated and destitute Rabbi Yoel was forced to travel to the land he always considered the most hostile and spiritually dangerous environment for Orthodox Jews.

After arriving in the United States, it became clear to Rabbi Yoel that he will never be able to raise enough funds to save his institutions in Jerusalem. Having no place to return to, he decided to settle in New York. Oddly enough, it was in this notorious “New World” that Rabbi Yoel was able not only to establish his own congregation, but also to significantly expand and develop it. Within a few years he attracted a large circle of supporters and devotees and created a congregation which, he claimed, resembled that of an East-European “Shtetel.”

However, in order to succeed in his mission, Rabbi Yoel had to apply significant un-traditional innovations that were inconceivable in the East-European “Shtetel.” He established a Hasidic education system, including one for girls, which introduced secular teachings and summer camps. He also encouraged his followers to go to work or to establish their own small businesses. His delegates cooperated with government and municipal officials who helped the poor Hasidim to get public housing, professional training and social benefits. That innovative spirit was one of the main reasons his Hasidic court grew rapidly and prospered economically. Rabbi Yoel used funds gathered by his adherents to support the Eda Haredit in Jerusalem, and in 1952, just a few years after he was forced to leave Jerusalem, he returned triumphant to be declared president of the Edah Haredit.

One of the reasons for Rabbi Yoel’s unparalleled success, beyond his personal charisma and leadership qualities, was his anti-Zionist and Extreme Orthodox ideology. His views were published in two major books, Va-Yoel Moshe – published in the late 1950s, and Al Ha-Geula Ve-Al Ha-Temura – published after the Six Days War. These books were re-printed numerous times, and new editions are still being printed to this day. The radical ideas expressed in these books still affect and guide the Satmar Hasidic court and some of the other Hungarian courts, as well as some marginal groups of zealots, also known as Neturei Karta.

At the time of his death, in 1979 and still today, Rabbi Yoel was undoubtedly one of the most recognized and influential Jewish leaders in the post-Holocaust era. His community had tens of thousands of Hasidim and the education system he established was amongst the largest in the Jewish world outside Israel. Ideas expressed by Rabbi Yoel have influenced the rest of Orthodox society and thus the Jewish society in general. Today, about forty years after his death, the “Satmar” trademark is still strong and still synonymous with religious zealotry. The spiritual and practical foundations laid by Rabbi Yoel continue to fuel the ever-growing expansion of the Satmar Hasidic court that today has more than a hundred thousand followers worldwide.

This article compares the poetry of two prominent modern writers: Polish-Jewish poetess Zuzanna Ginczanka (Sara Ginzburg, 1917-1945), and Ukrainian Lemko poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych (1909-1937). They are believed (by Yaroslav Polishchuk et al.) to have certain poetic, stylistic, thematic, and literary similarities. The main discourses of their poetic imaginum mundi are studied with the use of a simple formula that includes five components. Tracing the interplay of nature, childhood, religion, and civilization in the development of an image of a holistic personality in their poetry, I analyze their common and differing ideas, images, motifs, and themes. The article also outlines the underlying similarities of both poets, i. e., their otherness, and their references to childhood as a certain place in their poetry.

Focusing on the pivotal 1917–1919 conjuncture in Russia and Ukraine, this paper analyzes the efforts of the divided Jewish nationalist intelligentsia to disseminate new forms of Jewish culture to a mass audience, the reception of these efforts in the former Tsarist empire’s variegated Jewish population, and the intelligentsia’s parallel exploration of other forms of cultural formation less dependent on popular support. Comparing the cultural programs of Hebraism and Yiddishism, it demonstrates important parallels in their cultural visions and highlights their shared belief in the possibility of implanting a secularist, aestheticist intelligentsia culture in the whole of “the nation.” The paper reconstructs both substantial forms of popular openness to this culture and its sociocultural weaknesses. Finally, it examines experiments made by the intelligentsia with alternative routes to cultural transformation: suppression of popular culture, non-market cultural arrangements, cultural revolution through education, and the uses of the state. The paper seeks a fuller understanding both of the roots of interwar cultural programs in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and of the Jewish nationalist intelligentsia’s underlying conception of “culture,” its own authority, and the evolving relationship between these conceptions and the realities of East European Jewish social, cultural, and political life from the 1890s onward.

ערב רב: פנים וחוץ בוויכוח הפרנקיסטי הוא ספר מרתק וחדשני החושף את סיפורה הייחודי של התנועה הפרנקיסטית, תנועה יהודית אפיקורסית שצמחה בפולין והתפשטה במרכז אירופה במחצית השנייה של המאה ה-18.

בעיני רוב היהודים פרנק היה 'משיח שקר' ידוע לשמצה. בעיני נוצרים נאורים ומיסיונרים מילנריסטים היה יהודי-נוצרי ואדם חופשי בדעותיו, שלו קשרים מסתוריים והוא משתמש במגיה ובמאגרי עושר סודיים. עבור מאמיניו היה למבשר שחרור מן המסגרות המקובלות המדכאות של מגדר, הלכה, מעמד, משטר ודת.

התנועה הפרנקיסטית עוררה הדים והיתה סלע מחלוקת גם בקרב גורמים דתיים ופוליטיים לא יהודיים: יוזף השני, קתרינה הגדולה, גתה, קזנובה ואחרים. תורותיו של יעקב פרנק, מנהיג התנועה, הציבו אתגר בפני היהדות הנורמטיבית, אך גם בפני האסלאם וזרמים בנצרות. הספר מברר מחלוקות פנימיות ביהדות המודרנית אך דן גם ביחסים בין יהודים לסביבתם במאות ה-18–ה-19.

ערב רב מבוסס על מקורות פנימיים שחיברו פרנק ומאמיניו, על מקורות יהודיים פולמוסיים אנטי פרנקיסטיים, ועל מקורות שכתבו גורמים לא יהודיים בני הזמן. דרכו המוקצנת של יעקב פרנק עוררה עניין רב בו ובתנועתו, ולקורא מוגש ניתוח מעמיק של פרשה היסטורית ייחודית זו.
המחבר, ד"ר פאבל מצ'ייקו מן האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, חוקר את תולדות היהודים בפולין-ליטא בעת החדשה. נולד בוורשה וקיבל תואר דוקטור מאוניברסיטת אוקספורד. פרסומיו הרבים זיכו אותו בפרסים, במלגות ובמענקי מחקר רבים. שימש מרצה אורח באוניברסיטאות שונות, בארצות הברית, בצרפת, בגרמניה ובפולין.

The following article is an excerpt from a chapter of our forthcoming book: "The Shpoler Zeida – The Life, Legends, and Descendants of the Grandfather of Shpola."  The chapter is entitled: "Mysteries of the Shpoler Zeida Family."

Our decade-long genealogical research has been a dedicated pursuit to construct a family tree for a figure of profound importance in Chassidic history. This individual, born three centuries ago, is Yehuda Leib of Shpola (c. 1725–1811), a revered tzaddik known as the Saba Kadisha (Hebrew for “Holy Grandfather”) or the Shpoler Zeida (Yiddish for “Grandfather of Shpola”). His influence and teachings have left an indelible mark on Chassidic history, making our research all the more significant.

Our research has led us to identify over 5,500 descendants of the Shpoler Zeida. However, our journey was not without its share of enigmas and complexities. The intricate web of family connections, the gaps in historical records, and the challenge of verifying oral histories have all contributed to the depth and complexity of our research.

A particularly intriguing challenge was the discovery of fifteen families who claimed descent from the Shpoler Zeida, yet the specifics of their lineage remained unknown.  This lack of documentation has veiled their proud heritage in a cloak of uncertainty, shrouding their connection to the Shpoler Zeida in mystery.  As their lines of descent from the Shpoler Zeida were unknown, we have come to refer to them as the “Mystery Families.”

This article delves into the intriguing mystery of the Beletsky family (including the Belasco, Bell, Bruskin, Gellard, Goldberg, and Polis branches), who claim descent from the Shpoler Zeida.  The mystery involves how their earliest known Beletsky ancestor, Leiba Beletsky (1782–1846), and his wife, Risya (1789–bef. 1848), are connected to the Shpoler Zeida.

In this comprehensive research study on the Beletsky family's descent from the Shpoler Zeida, we painstakingly traced family records, cross-referencing them with historical documents and oral histories.  We believe that the available historical and genealogical evidence is sufficient to support the Beletsky family’s plausible line of descent from the Shpoler Zeida through his son Yaakov and the marriage of Yaakov’s daughter Risya to Leiba Beletsky and to connect them to the Shpoler Zeida family tree.

Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė ? V i l n i u s A c a d e m y o f A r t s P r e s s , 2 0 1 0 A M A C A t A L o g u e UDK 726(474.5)(06) Si91 S p o n s o r s o f t h e C a t a l o g u e Lithuanian State Science and Studies Foundation Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania The Cahnman Foundation Directorate for the Commemoration of the Millennium of Lithuania

The article examines the interwar period in the life and work of two architects, Usher Chiter (1899–1967) and Elyukim Maltz (1898–1973), both graduates of the Odessa School of Architecture.During that time the architects were doing work for the Mendele Moicher Sforim All-Ukrainian Museum of Jewish Proletarian Culture in Odessa. Based on documents and visual materials from a number of museums and archives located in Ukraine, Russia and Israel, as well as on private collections (including those of families of architects from Moscow, where Chiter and Maltz moved in the late 1920s),the author attempts to trace and reconstruct the two architects’ research expeditions across the former Pale of Jewish Settlement. A total of seven field trips were conducted in Podolia and the Soviet part of Volhynia – with the aim of collecting materials and exhibition items for the museum and of making nature drawings and watercolors showing Jewish sites, such as synagogues, cemeteries and residential buildings. This empirical approach exemplifies the method of preserving and representing disintegrating Jewish shtetls, commonly practised during the interwar period. The work of both architects is viewed through the prism of musealization of Jewish heritage in the early Soviet period which was closely connected to the formation of state ideology and its transition from «building of the national identity» to class paradigm and atheistic upbringing.

סיפורה של חסידות קרלין, אחת החסידויות הראשונות, הוא מן המרתקים בתולדות החסידות. חסידות זו שמה דגש על עבודת ה' ברגש ובגוף, על האמת, על הענווה ועל התנגדות ליומרנות אינטלקטואלית. היא הייתה הראשונה שהעמידה בראשה 'ינוקא', בן של צדיק בעודנו ילד, ואף חזרה על תקדים זה כעבור כמה דורות. היא עודדה עלייה לארץ ישראל שנים לפני הציונות ואף תמכה בהגירה ממזרח אירופה לאמריקה זמן רב לפני מלחמת העולם  שנייה, בניגוד לעמדתם של רוב רבני התקופה. משפחת אדמו"ריה כמעט שנכחדה בשואה, אך היא הצליחה להמשיך ולהתקיים ושרדה התפלגויות ומתחים. צאצאים של חסידי קרלין נטלו ונוטלים חלק פעיל בצדדים מגוונים של חיי  יישוב והמדינה, והיא עצמה, על ארבעת פלגיה, ממשיכה לקיים חיי דת תוססים בישראל ובעולם.
כספינה מיטלטלת: חסידות קרלין בין עליות למשברים הוא מחקר רחב יריעה ראשון על חסידות זו. אף שהאדמו"רים עומדים במרכז הדיון, הספר מאיר גם את דמויותיהן של הנפשות הפועלות מסביבם: נשותיהם, בני משפחתם,  פעילים והעסקנים. הספר משלב עיון מחקרי ותיאור סיפורי ומציג ניתוח מעמיק של אמונות וערכים לצד התנהגויות אנושיות, אישיות וחברתיות. עלילתה של חסידות קרלין ראשיתה במאה השמונה עשרה ואחריתה בימינו אלה, תחילת המאה העשרים ואחת.

This study analyzes controversies and public attitudes concerning the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)
and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. The research question is: Which factors affect attitudes toward the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera in contemporary Ukraine? This article employs comparative and regression analyses of surveys commissioned by the author and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2009 and 2013 to determine the effects of regional and other factors on attitudes toward these organizations and the OUN-B leader. The study shows that regional factors and perceptions of these organizations' involvement in mass murder were the strongest predictors of the views concerning the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera. Their public support is strongest in Galicia and weakest in the East and the South, in particular, in Donbas and Crimea, two major conflict areas since the “Euromaidan.”

תיקון שבתי צבי / יונתן מאיר. ההרצאה מבקשת להציג תמונה מורכבת ביחס לשבתי צבי, מכתיבתו הקבלית של נתן העזתי על המשיח הנפוּל, דרך ניסיונות תיקון נשמתו בידי הבעש"ט, ועד לשילובו בנרטיב הלאומי בידי זלמן שז"ר וחוקרים שבאו אחריו. יהא זה ניסיון למשוך קו במחשבה ובהיסטוריוגרפיה היהודית העומד מנגד לתפיסת הצרה בדבר "משיח שקר"

This review essay on Jewish "traditionalism" (Hasidism, musar, Orthodoxy,etc.) argues that, notwithstanding a past tendency among historians to magnify secularist trends within modern East European Jewry, several new works suggest a revitalization of traditionalism in the region during the modern era.

History in general and the study of religious fundamentalism in particular, as well as the ongoing conflicts between various Muslim groups in the Middle East, teach us not only the importance of religious identity but also about the lengths that those who seek to hold on to a specific identity are prepared to go. This article addresses one minor manifestation of this vast phenomenon.

From the mid-19th century onward, Hungarian Jews began to acquire a unique religious and social identity that set them apart from other European Jews. Its single most distinctive feature was the formal separation between Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Jews, almost as if they belonged to two different “Jewish churches.” For the first and only time in Jewish history, the Orthodox Jews were able to administer their own communities in accordance with halachic laws and were no longer forced to compromise with non-Orthodox Jews.

Following WWI, Transylvania, a former Hungarian district, was annexed to Romania. Consequently, its Jews were cut off from their Hungarian homeland, which had previously enabled them to establish their own Jewish identity. Reluctant to lose their distinct characteristics, they sought and received governmental permission to establish communities and institutions in accordance with their former lifestyle. This led to the establishment of a religiously and culturally autonomous enclave within which the Jews of Transylvania, many of whom were Orthodox, led their public life differently from all the other Romanian Jews.

This article focuses on the development of the separate Orthodox institutions and communities in Transylvania. It surveys the characteristics and inner conflicts of Transylvanian Orthodoxy. It then proceeds to demonstrate how the unique set of circumstances that evolved during the interwar period facilitated the strengthening of Orthodoxy’s radical wing, which I call Extreme Orthodoxy, which sought to establish itself as an enclave within an enclave.

This sector’s achievement, however, ended with catastrophic results. The uncompromising leaders of this ultra-conservative, anti-Zionist and separatist camp hampered the efforts of other Orthodox leaders to prepare for the impending Holocaust. This, consequently, led to the almost complete annihilation of North-Transylvanian Orthodox Jewry. Nevertheless, the radical ideas of Transylvania’s Extreme Orthodoxy endured, and after the Holocaust were disseminated throughout the Jewish world by the camp’s best known survivor and its prominent spokesman – Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe.

Die Warschauer Anhänger des jüdischen Pseudomessias Jakob Frank und die Glaubensenthusiasten um die St. Petersburger Prophetin Ekaterina Tatarinova pflegten kirchliche und ausserkirchliche sowie rabbinische und nichtrabbinische religiöse Praxen zugleich. Aus vergleichender lebensweltlicher und mikrohistorischer Betrachtung entwickelt die Autorin das Konzept der "situativen Religiosität", um die Selbstverortungsstrategien dieser Gläubigen zu beschreiben. Das Konzept bricht das vorgelagerte Verständnis von hoogenen religiösen Identitäten auf und zeigt die Gleichzeitigkeit mehrfacher religiöser Identitäten als besonderes Phänomen der Epoche am Vorabend der religiös pluralistischen Industriegesellschaften, ohne diese Identitäten als marginal, deviant oder korrupt zu lokalisieren.

The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints (Czech: Hřbitovní kostel Všech Svatých), part of the former Sedlec Abbey in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic.
The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have, in many cases, been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.

Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a coat of arms of the House of Schwarzenberg, and the signature of František Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance.

In 1278, Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to the Holy Land by King Otakar II of Bohemia. He returned with a small amount of earth he had removed from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. The word of this pious act soon spread and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site throughout Central Europe.

In the mid 14th century, during the Black Death, and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century, many thousands were buried in the abbey cemetery, so it had to be greatly enlarged.

Around 1400, a Gothic church was built in the center of the cemetery with a vaulted upper level and a lower chapel to be used as an ossuary for the mass graves unearthed during construction, or simply slated for demolition to make room for new burials.

After 1511, the task of exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel was given to a half-blind monk of the order.

Between 1703 and 1710, a new entrance was constructed to support the front wall, which was leaning outward, and the upper chapel was rebuilt. This work, in the Czech Baroque style, was designed by Jan Santini Aichel.

In 1870, František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the bone heaps into order, yielding a macabre result.
The signature of Rint, also executed in bone, appears on the wall near the entrance to the chapel.

Yakov Leshchinsky’s 1928 essay, here translated from the Yiddish, provides the first cross-national analysis of the migration and class transformation of world Jewry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It draws on diverse and widely scattered official and historical sources in German, Polish, Russian, Yiddish and other languages. A careful, complex and empirically grounded work, it helped to boost Leschinsky’s scholarly reputation. Before long, its author was routinely referred to as “the father of Jewish demography” and “the dean of Jewish sociologists.”

Tje article resumes the history of the study of Judaism in Prague and explains the motives behind the foundation of the Prague Centre for Jewish Studies in January of 2012. The article contains the resumé of the activities of the Centre as well as the list of the participants of its First Annual Conference.

Przedmiotem artykułu są dzieje krakowskiego Stowarzyszenia Izraelitów Postepowych w  okresie międzywojennym. Stowarzyszenie to posiadało, od 1861 r. własną synagogę (Tempel) i skupiało dużą część żydowskiej inteligencji. Wcześniejsze badania na temat środowiska postępowego w okresie międzywojennym koncentrowały się głównie na działalności Ozjasza Thona (1870-1936), który był kaznodzieją i rabinem synagogi postępowej. Celem artykułu jest opisanie działalności organizacji, która zatrudniła Thona i w ramach której funkcjonował on podczas swojego pobytu w Krakowie.
W artykule opisano organizację stowarzyszenia i strukturę jego władz (zarządzane było wg. statutu z 1912, zarząd liczył 15 osób), jego finanse (głównym źródłem przychodu były opłaty za miejsca, głównym wydatkiem pensje funkcjonariuszy religijnych), oraz scharakteryzowano jego członków (ich liczba wynosiła w omawianym okresie ok. 450-480).
Przez cały okres międzwojenny liturgia w Templu pozostawała relatywnie tradycyjna. Zwracano w niej dużą uwagę na elegancję i decorum, a największą innowacją był mieszany damsko-męski chór który śpiewał podczas wszystkich nabożeństw. W omawianym okresie w Templu organizowano, poza regularnymi nabożeństwami szabatowymi i świątecznymi, także polskie uroczystości patriotyczne oraz syjonistyczne.

Poza Thonem w Templu pracowało także dwóch innych kaznodziejów: Samuel Schmelkes, a później Hirsz Pfeffer. Stowarzyszenie postępowe zatrudniało także m.in. kantorów (kolejno byli to: San Dywiński, Ignacy Dembitzer, Dawid Taffel, Lazar Schӓchter), dyrygenta chóru (Izrael Fajwiszys, Izaak Lust), śpiewaków i śpiewaczki. W artykule scharakteryzowano działalność wszystkich tych osób.

Materiał źródłowy wykorzystany w artykule obejmuje, obok źródeł archiwalnych i prasy, także wywiady z osobami pamiętającymi przedwojenny Tempel.

The end of the First World War brought both a nationalist transformation
of political space and discourse in East-Central Europe,
as well as a revolutionary wave, originating in Russia, that radically
challenged the existing order. The article analysis how Jewishnational
activists saw these developments as opportunities and
challenges and aimed to become part in the shaping of a new
world. Concentrating primarily on the discussions and political
practices of the socialist-Zionist Poale Zion movement, it intends
to expand the discussion over the supposed triumph of nationalism
in the context of the ‘Wilsonian moment’ at the end of the
First World War, asking in what form the communist promise of
universal freedom represented a viable alternative. As the British
Balfour Declaration lead to a supposed awakening of Palestineoriented
feelings of national belonging, the revolution represented
a counter-proposal for emancipation in Central and
Eastern Europe in the experience of many activists. The article
follows a number of Jewish revolutionary activists looking at
how their framework of political practices determined how they
perceived the dual promises of national and social liberation and
what consequences they drew from this. Where circumstances
allowed a close cooperation between them and the wider labour
movement – both in respect to revolutionary policies and defence
against anti-Jewish violence – activists tended to progressively
reject concepts of national unity and perceived the fate of the
Jewish working class to be bound to that of the communist movement;
a number of them subsequently began rejecting concepts
of national belonging and national politics. The article analyzes at
how this process was understood and discussed by both the
radicals and their opponents, who often interpreted this revolutionary
activism as a rejection of the nation as such.

ethnic distinction 'as both versions can lead to intolerance, undermining the aims of liberalism. Hence the arguments in this book will rely more on the differentiation between liberal and illiberal forms of nationalism' (p. 5). The problem this reviewer has with the term, however, is not the use of liberal or illiberal, but attaching it to the word 'nationalism'. Indeed, what is striking if we contrast Michnik, Havel and Zajac against Rydzyk, Sla´dek and Slota is the liberalism of the former trio as opposed to the illiberalism of the latter group. Auer might retort that those differences are demonstrated in their respective attitudes towards their nations. Of course he would be correct, but the contrasts go further than questions of the nation. Michnik, Havel and Zajac have a more tolerant liberal attitude on a whole range of issues and towards different social minorities not just those based on ethnicity. Rydzyk, Sla´dek and Slota's disdain was not just reserved for Jews, Germans, Hungarians and Roma, but for all minorities and liberals in general.

A late Chabad text attributed to Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn speaks of the Maskilim in the following way: “All the maskilic writers, their students, and their students’ students take every chance to disparage the honor of Hasidism and its princes (that is, Chabad) and to belittle the value of their service to the ethical and financial good of the Jewish people." Even though some Maskilim did see Chabad as a particularly dangerous form of Hasidism, it is hard to accept the impression left by Chabad historiography that the Maskilim saw only the negative elements of Chabad – in fact they presented the group in a decidedly and uniquely positive light – even if their own motives in doing so were clear. The portrayal of Chabad in maskilic literature is important on three counts: first, because these images commanded a central place within the self-consciousness of Maskilim over different periods; second, because the hasidic movement itself adopted certain elements of those maskilic portrayals; and third, because these portrayals influenced – and continue to influence – scholarly understandings of Hasidism. The article presents a few of those images which frequently appear throughout the nineteenth century.

מאמר מקיף על יסוד החברה הקדושה "מחזיקי הדת" – מטרותיה והשיגיה
המאבק על הצביון והשליטה על קהילות ישראל בגאליציה
שהתחילה לפני 140 שנה בשנת תרל"ז
An article about the founding of the organisation Hachzikei Hadas 140 years ago in 1837, its objectives and achievements, and the struggle for the control over the running and the structure of the Jewish communities in Galitzia.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively explore marketing issues for foreign industrial companies of large, small and medium size entering emerging markets (EMs), particularly transition economies in Eastern Europe. The vast majority of current studies about emerging markets focus only on defining suitable strategies related to large consumer goods corporations.

Design/methodology/approach
The research adopted a multiple case study approach. Five Italian companies belonging to different business-to-business industries that have entered emerging countries in Eastern Europe were selected for investigation.

Findings
Empirical analysis uncovered recurring issues related to: institutional factors causing market uncertainty and instability; difficulties in building a sales network; a need for product adaptation to guarantee satisfactory performance; choices related to communication, branding and trade fairs; and considerations about competition and first mover advantage. Results can be interpreted as an extension of the analysis of institutional voids by Khanna and Palepu (1997).

Research limitations/implications
The study is based on the analysis of five case studies of companies operating in specific emerging markets, namely in Eastern Europe Countries (EEc) Further research based on different samples and different emerging countries is needed before generalizing results.

Practical implications
The study shows that the main institutional void affecting business-to-business companies entering emerging markets (EEc) is the lack of locally developed sales and after-sales networks. This institutional void slows the entry process of business-to-business companies in EMs. Given these constraints, from the perspective of business-to-business SMEs, it may be fruitful to pursue niche positioning in EMs.

Originality/value
The study analyzes emerging markets opportunities and entry strategies from the business-to-business marketing perspective, uncovering the most critical issues.

גילגולו של ספר תורה יקר מפז שכתב הרה"ק רבי משה מפשעווארסק זי"ע עבור הרה"ק רבי מרדכי מנעשכיז זי"ע ונרכש לימים במחיר עתיק עבור כ"ק מרן מהר"י מבעלזא זי"ע
The history of a sacred Torah scroll written by the famous scribe Rabbi Moshe of P'shevorsk and purchased at a later date for a complete fortune on behalf of the Mittler Belz Rebbe

Looking beyond Poland's internationally lauded new Jewish museums, this article asks how Jews are represented in longer-standing folk and ethnographic museums whose mandates have been to represent the historical culture of the Polish nation. How have such museums navigated growing internal pressures to incorporate Jews and reconsider the boundaries of "Polishness" alongside external pressures to rethink the function and approach of ethnographic museology? Based on three museums that have taken three different approaches to Jewishness-what we call cabinet of Jewish curiosities, two solitudes, and ambivalent externalization-we assess the roles played by inherited discourses and structures as well as human agents within and beyond the museum. We illuminate how social debate about the character of the nation (and Jews' place in it) plays out in museums at a moment in their transition from nineteenth-to twenty-first-century paradigms and how a distinctively Polish path toward a "new museology" is emerging in conversation with and resistance to its Western counterparts.

KEYWORDS: critical curating, ethnographic exhibitions, heritage, Jews, multiculturalism, Poland

Príchod židov do obce Len málo dnes vieme o židovskej komunite v Pečovskej Novej Vsi a to aj napriek tomu, že jej dejiny v obci siahajú až do 17. storočia. V tejto kapitole sa pokúsime zosumarizovať dostupné informácie z knižných prameňov a z internetu. Naším prínosom bude štúdium listín rodiny Péchy uložených v MOL Budapešti a samotné zhromaždenie dostupných informácií o židovskej komunite v obci.

Mapping of the arrival of Jews in the village. We don't know much about the Jewish community in Pecovska Nova Ves, even though its history in the village dates back to the 17th century. In this chapter, we will try to summarize available information from books and the internet. Our contribution will be to study the documents of the Péchy family deposited in MOL Budapest and to gather the available information about the Jewish community in the village.

Reproducing the complexity of the situation that Poles and Jews found themselves in, as well as the entanglement of relations and differing attitudes, requires taking into account both perspectives. In this regard, "Night Without End" leaves something to be desired. Despite the fact that the authors draw on accounts of Polish witnesses, one gets the impression that the Polish (especially peasant) voice is barely heard in these analyses, functioning rather to complement and as an additional source for the reconstruction of the Jewish narrative.

This approach has serious consequences: the experience of Polish eyewitnesses in the countryside is removed from the context of the occupation and its specific conditions. Historian Mary Fulbrook has emphasized that the act of violence always takes place in a specific topographical and social context, and applies to all who found themselves in its vicinity. The question of Polish attitudes and their motivation would help to illuminate the social situation in which the inhabitants of a given county found themselves in under occupation. Complementing the narrative with a more careful reading of Polish (and especially peasant) testimonies would permit a more complete and more nuanced picture. The potential for drawing on the Polish wartime experience as a context that illuminates Polish-Jewish relations is shown in two chapters by Karolina Panz and Tomasz Frydel.