In Poland at the turn of 19th and 20th century a modernizing Jewish family appears quite frequently in anti-Semitic and non-anti-Semitic “Jewish novels”. In both cases a Jewish family is presented in rather pejorative light as a point of reference to a Polish family. In such comparison Polish culture and Poles are presented as a more attractive, more civilized and that is why their way of living is followed by the Jews. Jewish families try to undergo the process of assimilation but their effort are depicted in rather pejorative or even ridiculous way.

There are some Jewish heroes presented as a role model, but they only prove the role. There is a huge gap between Poles and Jews who have to make an effort to change their personality and behaviour according to Polish expectations.

In anti-Semitic novels a description of the process of modernization and assimilation of Jews had to prove its negative consequences. Jews were treated as enemies and novels’ plot revealed their main goal – the conquest of Poland. This kind of writing can be also seen as a warning against mix marriages to prevent Polish society from the integration with Jews, who are presented as the main threat of homogeneity of Polish nation.

The author analyses Isaac Leib Peretz’s play Bay nakht afn altn mark (A Night in the Old Marketplace) through the lens of the ambivalences of the carnival, which give rise to various transgressions of socio-political and cultural, as well as metaphysical and existential, orders. The carnival category positions Peretz’s drama in the dialectic of beginning and end, and it suggests the violation of the existing normative order in order to expose the tension between the traditional world of the shtetl and the modernity that is impinging on it. Moreover, the carnival spectacle reveals metaphysical and historiosophic dimensions, since it tackles the question of the human condition, which is defined by the opposition of life and death and is entangled in the course of history.

* Artykuł powstał przy wsparciu finansowym POB Heritage w ramach Programu ID.UJ (edycja specjalna I).

Translated by Jessica Taylor-Kucia

The influx of Eastern European Jewry into London stirred controversy within British society and within the Anglo-Jewish community. Newly arrived Jews became part of the debate over the “alien problem,” which resulted in the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905. This paper will examine the disputes over the poverty and “dirtiness” of Jewish immigrants in the context of the British imperial and racial discourse. The aim is to show how the controversy over the poverty of immigrants and the sanitary conditions of the Jewish quarter exposed deeper social anxiety over the position of the British Empire. The paper will focus on accusations against Jews from Eastern Europe of impoverishing and polluting the “heart of the Empire,” thus contributing to the collapse of the ideals of British progress and superiority.

The article presents the childhood years of Jewish female students of the medical department of the Kyiv Higher Courses for Women, as described in their own autobiographies. The study of their autobiographical images of childhood reveals transformations in the relationships between parents and daughters in Jewish families in the modern period, the variability of the home upbringing of girls, and the obligatory component of their education. The admission of daughters to the educational institutions determined by their parents symbolized the end of childhood.

Translated from Ukrainian by Mariia Maletska

This study aims to reconstruct the self-perception of the Karaite community in Vilnius during 1913–1939. The research is based on a review of two Karaite periodicals, Караимскоеcлово (Karaite Word), published in Russian from 1913–1914, and Myśl Karaimska (Karaite Thought), published in Polish from 1924–1939. Both periodicals served to develop national selfawareness and a spiritual revival of the whole Karaite nation by covering history, politics and literature. In Karaimskoye Slovo, Karaites identified themselves as Israelites; in Myśl Karaimska, some high-level representatives openly emphasized their Turkic origins. State and institutional discrimination against the Jewish population had become a major issue over the years, creating a volatile platform for change while breaking with the eternal sense of Karaite identity as people of Israel. This paper contributes to the literature on the history of the Karaite community in Vilnius in the early decades of the twentieth century.

The article explores the genre of immigrant narrative, comparing two early-twentieth century novels written by the Jewish-American writers Mary Antin and Anzia Yezierska with a contemporary novel penned by the Chinese-American author Jean Kwok. Taking adaptation theory (Sanders 2006 and Hutcheon 2006) as a starting point, I examine how Kwok’s novel adapts, revises, and reimagines a familiar pattern across time and cultures in order to make it representative of Chinese Americans. The analysis draws attention to experiences of Chinese immigrant women, their class membership and socio-economic status.