Polish Jewish Culture Beyond the Capital

HALINA GOLDBERG is a professor of music and chair of the Department of Musicology at Indiana University–Bloomington. She is the author of Music in Chopin’s Warsaw, editor of a special issue of the Musical Quarterly devoted to Jewish culture and music, and director of the digital project Jewish Life in Interwar ŁÓdź.  NANCY SINKOFF is a professor of Jewish studies and history and academic director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, at Rutgers University–New Brunswick in New Jersey. She is the author of From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History and Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands.

“This splendid collection of essays breaks new ground in the study of Polish Jews and their cultural engagements. They redraw the map, bring centers and peripheries into unexpected relations, delineate cultural spaces in novel ways, and treat topics never before considered with a bracing freshness.” - Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator, Core Exhibition, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews) “This splendid collection of essays breaks new ground in the study of Polish Jews and their cultural engagements. They redraw the map, bring centers and peripheries into unexpected relations, delineate cultural spaces in novel ways, and treat topics never before considered with a bracing freshness.” - Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator, Core Exhibition, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews) "Polish Jewish life and culture has always been regional, diversely reflected in a multitude of centers from shtetlekh to urban working-class districts to provincial capitals. In this fascinating volume, leading scholars of Polish Jewry present original essays on the varieties of Jewish culture that once flourished in and around Poland." - Jeffrey Veidlinger (author of In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The 1918–1921 Pogroms in Ukraine and the Onset of the Ho) "Polish Jewish life and culture has always been regional, diversely reflected in a multitude of centers from shtetlekh to urban working-class districts to provincial capitals. In this fascinating volume, leading scholars of Polish Jewry present original essays on the varieties of Jewish culture that once flourished in and around Poland." - Jeffrey Veidlinger (author of In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The 1918–1921 Pogroms in Ukraine and the Onset of the Ho)

• A Note on Place Names, Personal Names, and Transliterations Introduction, Halina Goldberg and Nancy Sinkoff Part I: Tradition and Rebellion Chapter 1: "'A Holiday that Applies to Everyone': Ararat Kleynkunst Theater and the Challenge of Populist Modernism," Zehavit SternChapter 2: "Elkhonen Vogler, Forgotten Poet of Yung-Vilne, in Vilna and the Litvak Borderlands," Justin CammyChapter 3: "Scandalous Glass House: On Modernist Transparency in Architecture and Life," Bożena ShallcrossChapter 4: "Jewish Expressionism between Discourses of Revival and Degeneration: The Yung-yidish Group," Małgorzata Stolarska-FroniaPart II: Performers and AudiencesChapter 5: "The Theatrics of Bais Yaakov," Naomi SeidmanChapter 6: "A Spectacle of Differences: Bracha Zefira's Tour of Poland in 1929," Magdalena KozłowskaChapter 7: "Music of 'the Foreign Nations' or 'Native Culture': Concert Programming in Interwar LwÓw as a Discourse about Jewish Musical Identities," Sylwia Jakubczyk-ŚleczkaChapter 8: "From Lodzermensz to Szmonces and Back: On the Multidirectional Flow of Culture," Marcos SilberPart III: Maps and SpacesChapter 9: "The Layered Meanings of an Unbuilt Monument: KrakÓw Jews Commemorate the Polish King Casimir the Great," Alicja Maślak-MaciejewskaChapter 10: "Mapping Modern Jewish KrakÓw: Women-Cultural Production-Space," Eugenia Prokop-JaniecChapter 11: "Movie Theaters and the Development of Jewish Public Space in Interwar Poland," Ela Bauer Chapter 12: "The Politics of Jewish Youth Movement Culture in Interwar Poland's Eastern Borderlands," Daniel Heller Appendix Acknowledgments BibliographyNotes on Contributors Index