Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | American Jewish History

Polish-Jewish Relations in North America, volume 19 of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry.

Article Excerpt
Polish-Jewish Relations in North America, volume 19 of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry. Edited by Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski and Antony Polonsky. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007. xvi + 653 pp.

This sizeable issue of Polin attempts to fill an even more sizeable gap in the scholarship on Polish-American/Jewish-American relations in the United States--and it is a very successful attempt. Editors Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski and Antony Polonsky present a comprehensive introduction and eighteen separate essays, arranged roughly in chronological order, which discuss different aspects of interactions between Polish and Jewish ethnic communities. The introduction provides historical context and traces the development of both communities over the decades. The essays, authored by a plethora of accomplished scholars, focus on sources of tension as well as examples of collaboration; negative stereotypes as well as efforts to change cultural images; and actions of organizations, governments, less formal groups, and individuals that impacted the level and intensity of the relationship in various time periods.

As the introduction explains and as Ewa Morawska's excellent essay eloquently reiterates for 1880-1940, in America both communities followed models of coexistence transplanted from the old country, which included social and economic interaction but distinctly separate cultural and religious identity ("distant proximity") (71). Morawska argues that immigration shifted the balance of power in the relationship and resulted in the increased civic security for the Jews. In the interwar period, Jewish immigrants' and their children's increasing social...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!