{"product_id":"9781874774747","title":"Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 16","description":"Scholarship  on the civilization of Polish Jews has tended to focus on elite culture and  canonical literature; even modern Yiddish culture has generally been  approached from the perspective of ‘great works’. This volume of Polin focuses on the less explored  but historically vital theme of Jewish popular culture and shows how,  confronted by the challenges and opportunities of modernity in the late  nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it blossomed into a complex  expression of Jewish life. In addition to a range of articles on the period  before the Second World War there are studies of the traces of this culture  in the contemporary world. The volume as a whole aims to develop a fresh  understanding of Polish Jewish civilization in all its richness and  variety.        Subjects discussed in depth include klezmorim and Jewish recorded music; the development of Jewish theatre  in Poland, theatrical parody, and the popular poet and performer Mordechai  Gebirtig; Jewish postcards in Poland and Germany; the early Yiddish popular  press in Galicia and cartoons in the Yiddish press; working-class libraries  in inter-war Poland; the impact of the photographs of Roman Vishniac;  contemporary Polish wooden figures of Jews; and the Kraków Jewish culture  festival. In addition, a Polish Jewish popular song is traced to Sachsenhausen,  the badkhn (wedding jester) is rediscovered in present-day Jerusalem, and  Yiddish cabaret turns up in blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and reggae garb.        There are also translations from the work of two writers previously  unavailable in English: excerpts from the ethnographer A. Litvin’s pioneering  five-volume work Yidishe neshomes (Jewish Souls) and several chapters from the autobiography,  notorious in inter-war Poland, of the writer and thief Urke Nachalnik.        As in earlier volumes of Polin substantial space is also given to new research into a variety  of topics in Polish Jewish studies. These include the origins of antisemitism  in Poland; what is known about the presence of German forces in the vicinity  of Jedwabne in the summer of 1941; and the vexed question of Jews in the  communist security apparatus in Poland after 1944.        The review section includes an important discussion of what should be done  about the paintings in Sandomierz cathedral which represent an alleged ritual  murder in the seventeenth century, and an examination of the ‘anti-Zionist’  campaign of 1968.","brand":"Michael C. Steinlauf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47453979115838,"sku":"9781874774747","price":1515.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/files\/9781874774747.jpg?v=1715044702","url":"https:\/\/exclusivebooks.co.za\/products\/9781874774747","provider":"Exclusive Books Online","version":"1.0","type":"link"}