In this paper author explores Semyon Dubnov’s position on Zionism and Diaspora Autonomism in the years after he left Soviet Russia in 1921. In particular Horowitz asserts that Dubnov must have been aware of the fact that his ideas were receiving their broadest application not in Eastern Europe, as he hoped, but in Palestine. The paper treats Dubnov’s reaction to this ideological challenge.

Twentieth-century events in Russia and Eastern Europe resulted in complex definitions of Jewish identity and communal relations. When the Soviet Union disbanded, foreign agencies pushed funds and resources to rebuild Jewish communities and institutions. One of the avenues for this funding is the creation and support of academic research centers responsible for training students and scholars. Organizations interested in Russia’s “unaffiliated Jews”and the research centers responsible for the revival of Jewish Studies form unique partnerships that bridge academic and public arenas. Reclaiming Jews who do not identify with Judaism or Jewish culture (unaffiliated Jews) in Russia is a significant goal of some Jewish funding agencies in the United States and Israel. An examination of mission statements by these philanthropic agencies reveals narrow definitions of “Jews”that ignore major contributions from Jewish Studies scholars focused on understanding a diverse population with disparate self-understandings.

The tradition of Jewish studies in Poland has been drastically interrupted by the Second World War and the Holocaust. In the immediate postwar period the process of re-establishing research on Jewish history and heritage was undertaken by the Jewish Historical Commissions and later Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. More examples of the individual and group initiatives can be traced only in the 1970s and 1980s. The real happened in the late 1980s with Krakow as one of the first and main centers of revitalized Jewish studies in Poland. The first postwar academic institution in Krakow specializing in Jewish studies –Research Center for Jewish History and Culture in Poland –was established already in 1986 in the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. More than a decade later, in 2000, it was transformed into the first Poland’s Department of Jewish Studies (Katedra Judaistyki) –now the Institute of Jewish Studies. Nowadays there are more similar programs and institutions –at the universities in Warsaw, Wrocław and Lublin (UMCS). Also other academic centers tend to have at least individual scholars, programs, classes or projects focusing on widely understood “Jewish topics.”Jewish studies in Poland, along with the revival of Jewish culture, reflect the contemporary Polish attitude to the Jewish heritage, and their scale and intensity remains unique in the European context. The growing interest in Jewish studies in Poland can be seen as a sign of respect for the role of Jewish Poles in the country’s history, and as an attempt to recreate the missing Jewish part of Poland through research, education and commemoration, accompanied by slow but promising revival of Jewish life in Poland.

Jewish Studies in Germany reflects the tremendous demographic transformations of the Jewish community since 1990. Yet, this article also posits that non-Jewish Germans too have changed substantially due to immigration and new generational views on the legacy of the Holocaust. As such, Jewish Studies has to communicate the history of the German Jewry to Jews and Gentiles mostly unfamiliar with its rich legacy. It needs to comment on Holocaust memorialization to educate new generations of Gentiles as well as Jewish immigrants, for whom the end of the Cold War bears more significance than the Holocaust. Finally, it needs to be part of new conversations between Christians and Jews that also includes the large Muslim minority in Germany. While the changing audiences in Germany dictate a focus on Jews in Germany, Jewish Studies also needs to embrace a more European perspective reflective of the more comparative and transdisciplinary scholarship abroad. Despite the significant growth of Jewish Studies in Germany over the last two decades, these challenges call for even greater efforts.

In the research on the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-136 CE); one of the central subjects that were given prominent attention was the territorial extent of the second revolt. During all the years of research on this geographical question, two schools of thought were formed. One of them is that of the maximalists, who claim that the revolt spread through the entire Provincia Judaea and even beyond it into neighboring provinces such as Provincia Arabia in the south and Provincia Syria in the north. The second one is that of the minimalists, who restrict the revolt to the area of the Judaean hills and their immediate environs. The role of the Galilee region in the second revolt was discussed in great depth and centered on the question of whether the Galilee had taken part in the revolt. Since 1999, Professor Werner Eck of the University of Cologne focused on the power and range of this revolt from the Roman perspective. His general conclusion was that the second revolt was a central event in the history of the Roman Empire. Large military units participated in the event, which spread all over the province and even beyond. The rebels caused the Romans enormous casualties. They were forced to subdue the revolt savagely, causing the rebels massive losses. The revolt had a strong influence on the Roman Empire, and caused heavy damage to the Roman army that had immediate effects as well as long-term implications. His conclusions were based on a study of a variety of subjects including the archaeological discoveries from Tel Shalem, situated in the Beth Shean Valley, two kilometers south of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi and about 12 kilometers south of Scythopolis. The finds consisted of parts of a bronze statue and a head that was identified as that of the Roman emperor Hadrian, and a monumental inscription which had been inscribed in three lines on an arch that was 11 meters wide. According to W. Eck, these findings testify to the participation of the north, the Jordan Valley and the Galilee in the Second Revolt; and that the “Galilee felt the revolt more than has hitherto been conceded. A decisive battle may have been won here, not far from Caparcotna, the camp of the Second Legion in Judaea”(Eck 1999). This paper will re-examine the evidence from Tel Shalem, and other places in Galilee, mainly the findings from Kh. El-hamam in eastern Galilee, findings that were used to include the Galilee Region in the geographical expansion of the revolt. We will study anew the historical background for the erection of the Tel Shalem inscription, the various epigraphic interpretations, and other evidence and its implications for the study of the revolt. Our study will question some of the broadening assumptions of the revolt, and will leave out Galilee in general, and Tel Shalem in particular, from the geographical scope of the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

This article concerns the events that occurred in Sofia, Bulgaria, in the late 1880s and the early 1890s when the position of the Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria was granted to an Ashkenazi rabbi Szymon Dankowicz (1834-1910). Dankowicz was able to obtain this title thanks to the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) which intensified its activities in Bulgaria after the country had been liberated from the Turkish occupation in 1879 and the Principality of Bulgaria had been formed. The main focus of this article is to present the activities of Dankowicz in Bulgaria as well as the relations between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi Jews in that period as they are depicted in the sources stored in the archives of the AIU in Paris.

The article presents the rare and unknown collection of Rabbis at The National Museum in Krakow. In Poland, ravaged by so many wars and pogroms, such objects are extremely rare. The National Museum in Cracow has a relatively sizeable collection of lithographic portraits of rabbis, composed of 28 items, which were mostly donated by the great benefactors of the Museum, Wacław Lasocki and Władysław Bartynowski. A social position of Rabbi in Jewish community has been described. The names and the biographies of the Rabbis have been established. The information about their lives has been given, together with the descriptions of the portraits. The text is the first scientific information, description and interpretation of these portraits.

K.u.K.Militar-Kommando Krakau (established as a part of Kriegsgraberabteilung) built 400 cemeteries in Western Galicia. For Jewish members of the Austro-Hungarian Army 15 war cemeteries were erected. This paper presents a short historical overview of Jewish military cemetery from Cracow (Miodowa Street) till 1939. This cemetery (no. 387) was a part of Jewish cemetery from 1804. The article also outlines the creation of the monument, which was built on this cemetery in 1937.

The purpose of this article is to present the activities of the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst [hereafter: OD] in Nazi-occupied Krakow during the years 1940-1945. This period includes OD organizations in Krakow’s Jewish district, Kazimierz, in 1940, in the Krakow ghetto in 1941-1943 and in the German concentration camp at Płaszow in 1942-1945. Rounding off these topics is a paragraph touching on the post-war fate of OD officers under Polish law. Trials of OD members were held before the Special Criminal Court [hereafter: SCC] in Krakow in 1945-1947. In discussing the issue, the author has sought to explain the reasons for which Jews joined the OD in light of the moral dilemmas facing OD members. The problems raised in this article are also an attempt to understand the role of the OD in the implementation of the German government’s policy towards the Jews in the years 1940-1945, i.e. for the duration of the Jewish formation’s existence. Holocaust studies lacks sufficient research on the history of the OD in Krakow, and it is therefore very important to fill this gap in the literature. In German-occupied Poland, several terms referring to the Jewish police were used interchangeably. In printed and archival sources, the organization is often called Ordnungsdienst, OD, Jewish Order Service (literal translation from German), Order Service, or, simply, the Jewish police. Its members are commonly called odemani [translation: OD-men] or Jewish policemen.

Given the historical proximity of Polish and Jewish groups, it is possible to identify their mutual interconnectedness. This paper presents one such example of the stereotypical Jewish Mother, in Israel known as a “Polish woman,”both in its sociohistorical and cultural aspect. Drawing from the theory of gendered and stereotypical representations, author traces a changing portrayal of the Jewish Mother on her way from the ghetto penury to middle-class affluence. Embodied by popular characters such as Molly Goldberg, the Jewish mother also became a target of bitter criticism, best rendered in the depiction of Sophie Portnoy—the iconic protagonist of Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint (1967). Feminist re-readings of this popular stereotype offer an interesting insight into its construction and try to explain its viability.