Description
An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish culture back to life in Poland today
Since the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all things Jewish. Klezmer music, Jewish-style restaurants, kosher vodka, and festivals of Jewish culture have become popular, while new museums, memorials, Jewish studies programs, and Holocaust research centers reflect soul-searching about Polish-Jewish relations before, during, and after the Holocaust. In Resurrecting the Jew, Genevieve Zubrzycki examines this revival and asks what it means to try to bring Jewish culture back to life in a country where 3 million Jews were murdered and where only about 10,000 Jews now live.
Drawing on a decade of participant-observation in Jewish and Jewish-related organizations in Poland, a Birthright trip to Israel with young Polish Jews, and more than a hundred interviews with Jewish and non-Jewish Poles engaged in the Jewish revival, Resurrecting the Jew presents an in-depth look at Jewish life in Poland today. The book shows how the revival has been spurred by progressive Poles who want to break the association between Polishness and Catholicism, promote the idea of a multicultural Poland, and resist the Far Right government. The book also raises urgent questions, relevant far beyond Poland, about the limits of performative solidarity and empathetic forms of cultural appropriation.
About the Author
Genevieve Zubrzycki is professor of sociology and faculty associate of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, where she also directs the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia. She is the author of The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland and Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec.
Reviews
"Winner of the Vucinich Book Award, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies"
"Winner of the Rachel Feldhay Brenner Award, The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America"
"[A] significant study that offers readers an accessible analysis of what is undoubtedly a central topic in the Jewish existence in Poland today."---Emma Zohar, Jewish Culture and History
Book Information
ISBN 9780691237237
Author Genevieve Zubrzycki
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press