Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis

Glenn Dynner, Ph.D., Brandeis University, is Professor of Religion and Chair of Humanities at Sarah Lawrence College. He is author of Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Yankel's Tavern: Jews, Liquor and Life in the Kingdom of Poland (Oxford University Press, 2014).François Guesnet, Ph.D., Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, is Reader in Modern Jewish History at University College, London. His publications include Polnische Juden im 19. Jahrhundert (Böhlau 1998), Der Fremde als Nachbar (Suhrkamp 2009), numerous articles, and several edited volumes.

This excellent collection of essays pays a fitting tribute to Antony Polonsky who has been instrumental to the field of Polish-Jewish history for almost four decades as a teacher, scholar, and founding editor of POLIN: Studies in Polish Jewry...This complex and dynamic history [of Warsaw] is analysed in twenty-four chapters that range from the economic history of the early modern Jewish mercantile elite to the cultural history of clothing decrees to the religious history of Warsaw’s rabbis to the intellectual history of the city’s Jewish historians during the interwar era. Students and established scholars wishing to conduct research on Warsaw’s Jewish history will turn to this volume as an indispensable first source for some of the most recent research in the field."-- Michael Meng, Clemson University, ZfO JECES 66 (2017) 2, pp. 261-263."Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis" is an impressive collection of twenty five scholarly essays devoted to Warsaw and its Jewish community, from the earliest (mostly illegal) Jewish settlements in the Polish capital in the sixteenth century to the destruction and reconstruction of the Jewish community in the twentieth century." -Dr. Milosz K. Cybowski, Pol-Int (2015)

• Notes on the ContributorsIntroductionPART ONE: THE RISE OF THE METROPOLISIllegal Immigrants: The Jews of Warsaw, 1527–1792 Hanna WęgrzynekMerchants, Army Suppliers, Bankers: Transnational Connections and the Rise of Warsaw’s Jewish Mercantile Elite (1770–1820) Cornelia AustIn Warsaw and Beyond: the Contribution of Hayim Zelig Slonimski to Jewish Modernization Ela BauerThe Garment of Torah: Clothing Decrees and the Warsaw Career of the first Gerer Rebbe Glenn DynnerFrom Community to Metropolis: The Jews of Warsaw, 1850–1880 François GuesnetAn Unhappy Community and an even Unhappier Rabbi Shaul StampferDistributing Knowledge: Warsaw as a Center of Jewish Publishing, 1850–1914 Nathan CohenIn Kotik’s Corner: Urban Culture, Bourgeois Politics and the Struggle for Jewish Civility in Turn of the Century Eastern Europe Scott UryHope and Fear: Y. L. Peretz and the Dialectics of Diaspora Nationalism, 1905–1912 Michael Steinlauf“Di Haynt-mishpokhe”: Study for a Group Picture Joanna Nalewajko-KulikovA Warsaw Story: Polish-Jewish Relations during the First World War Robert BlobaumThe Capital of “Yiddishland”? Kalman WeiserThe Kultur-Lige in Warsaw: A Stopover in the Yiddishists’ Journey between Kiev and Paris Gennady EstraikhEnduring Prestige, Eroded Authority: the Warsaw Rabbinate in the Interwar Period Gershon BaconFrom Galicia to Warsaw: Interwar Historians of Polish Jewry Natalia AleksiunNegotiating Jewish Nationalism in Interwar Warsaw Kenneth B. MossPART TWO: DESTRUCTION OF THE METROPOLIS AND ITS AFTERMATHThe Polish Underground Press and the Jews: The Holocaust in the Pages of the Home Army’s Biuletyn Informacyjny, 1940-1943 Joshua D. Zimmerman“The Work of My Hands is Drowning in the Sea, and You Would Offer Me Song?!”: Orthodox Behaviour and Leadership in Warsaw during the Holocaust Havi DreifussThe Warsaw Ghetto in the Writings of Rachel Auerbach Samuel KassowStories of Rescue Activities in the Letters of Jewish Survivors about Christian Polish Rescuers, 1944-1949 Joanna B. MichlicThe Politics of Retribution in Postwar Warsaw: In the Honor Court of the Central Committee of Polish Jews Gabriel N. FinderThe End of a Jewish Metropolis? The Ambivalence of Reconstruction in the Aftermath of the Holocaust David EngelThe Reconstruction of Jewish Life in Warsaw after the Holocaust: A Case Study of a Building and Its Residents Karen AuerbachIn Search of Meaning after Marxism: The Komandosi, March 1968, and the Ideas that Followed Marci Shore“Context is everything.” Reflections on Studying with Antony Polonsky Yohanan Petrovsky-ShternIndex