In spite of the large number of literary works that were written and printed in Yiddish throughout the centuries, it was not considered as a valid language up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Due to a pioneering group of a few Jewish scholars, for whom Yiddish and Yiddishism became an ideological mission, new academic approaches were implemented into the study of Yiddish language, literature and culture. In the second half of the twentieth century a new generation of scholars broadened the range of research while developing new methods of work and training the next generation of experts. At the present time Yiddish studies are a respected academic field in various countries, including Poland, and cannot be overlooked anymore in the context of Jewish studies.

Moshe Sertels was a son of Issachar and Sarah. He was born circa mid-16th century in Prague. He was a teacher and worked as a translator and exegete. Sertels wrote several texts that attracted wide interest. One of them was a work titled Sefer Beer Moshe, a bilingual commentary on the Torah and five megillot. The construction of the text, its clarity and intelligibility, made it an excellent tool for teaching the Torah in cheders (e.g. such usage of this text was noted in the books of the Cracovian brotherhood Talmud Torah). The article presents the figure of the author and his literary oeuvre with particular focus on the Sefer Beer Moshe as a work that served generations of Ashkenazi Jews to enhance their knowledge of the Torah. The author discusses characteristics of the text and underlines several issues in regard to the Yiddish language in the form that was used in Prague at the turn of the 17th century.

The paper focuses on a few topics crucial for the study of medical beliefs and practices among the traditional Ashkenazi population of Eastern Europe. Primarily based on Yiddish memoirs and Jewish memorial books (yizker bikher), published since the last decades of the nineteenth century, it is supported with references to other ethnographic sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish and other languages. A closer examination of this material leads to the conclusion that popular beliefs and practices were not haphazard, but constituted a rich heterogeneous medical system. The analysis casts a new light on help-seeking behaviors and enables better comprehension of their natural and mythological meaning.

Next to an informative function an important element of the contents of the largest and most popular Yiddish newspapers published in Lublin between two world wars, such as Lubliner Tugblat, or Lubliner Unzer Express, was providing sensational news. This included reports and descriptions of the criminal underworld, both Jewish and Christian. Among the most frequently discussed topics of the demimonde were: Polish-Jewish cooperation in criminal acts, depiction of the milieu of thieves, swindlers, pimps, prostitutes, or traffickers in women, as well as vivid portraits of the best known local criminals and reports on their most important “achievements.” Most articles and notes concerned current affairs but historical pieces were published as well, mainly Jakub Waksman’s texts devoted to the history of the Jewish underworld in Lublin at the end of the nineteenth century. The main function of these texts was to offer readers simple entertainment and satisfy their desire to experience the exciting atmosphere of horror and the uncanny. Descriptions of the underworld also served as a warning, as they contained information about common methods of theft, fraud and tricks practised by professional criminals. Such texts also had a didactic dimension as they usually assured that each crime would be discovered and the perpetrators duly punished.

The article explores the dominant representations and images of Argentina present in Warsaw’s interwar Yiddish dailies. Examining articles, reports and advertisements published in Haynt, Der Moment and Hayntige Nayes, the author reconstructs patterns, forms and contexts in which Argentina appeared in the analyzed Yiddish press. By critically looking at the Argentina-themed contents consumed, absorbed and reflected by Polish Jewish readers, the author discusses their knowledge, visions and attitudes towards Argentina formed on the basis of newspapers they read. Various issues of Polish-Jewish Argentinian reality mirrored in the media discourse, reopening already broadly discussed problems of migration, prostitution and crime are discussed. The presence of Argentina in Poland’s Yiddish press is portrayed as an example of wider transnational ties linking Polish Jews in Argentina with their coreligionists in the home country. Focusing on Argentina, a relatively less significant emigration country, the author contributes to the research on Jewish minority discourses.

The article presents various strategies of using the Yiddish language in contemporary Polish “retro” crime fiction, i.e. detective novels that take place before WWII. By analyzing different examples of stylized language used by Jewish characters, the author presents general tendencies of depicting Jews and Yiddish culture in the popular fiction of today’s Poland. The analysis is conducted in the context of Polish literary history in order to trace the development of this literary strategy over time and reflect on the general image of Jewish culture created by the authors of “retro” crime stories.

This article, of mostly compilatory character, is based on selected Czech dictionaries and articles, which explain the presence of Yiddish loanwords in colloquial Czech (including argot, Czech Jewish ethnolect, dialects etc.). The author stresses the specific position of low style Yiddish loanwords (etymological process: /Hebrew/ – Yiddish – German argot – Czech argot – colloquial Czech) in comparison with very formal biblical loanwords of Hebrew origin (etymological process: Hebrew – Old Church Slavonic/Old Greek/Latin – high style Czech). Questionable etymology of some loanwords is also discussed. Apart from the stylistic and etymological analysis, the author presents a semantic view based on ethnolinguistics. The appendix to the article contains a selection of Yiddish loanwords in Czech presented in form of a glossary, in which stylistic differences, etymology, and in some cases equivalents in Polish or German, are mentioned.

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira (1889–1943), Rebbe of the Polish Hasidic group of Piaseczno, was one of the outstanding Jewish mystics of the
twentieth century. In an undated entry in his personal spiritual diary Tsav ve-ziruz, he describes an occasion when he somersaulted at a Torah Scroll dedication ceremony. This remarkable passage, which has gone largely unnoticed in research on the Piaseczno Rebbe, offers a unique insight into R. Shapira’s mystical practices and aspirations. This paper provides a brief survey of literature on Hasidic somersaults and attempts to clarify R. Shapira’s description of his own experience. The nature of this mystical technique is interpreted in the context of other Jewish mystical practices in order to explain on the basis of the theory of syncope, how a somersault can serve as a mystical technique.

This article analyzes the political ideology of the “Young Hebrews” movement which was active in mid-twentieth century Palestine and Israel. This ideology was based on a strict dichotomy between Hebrew national identity and Jewish ethno-denomination, being simultaneously anti-Zionist and nationalist, liberal and determinist. Using typologies of nationalism as its methodological framework, this article argues that the above paradoxes can be understood only in the light of the “Young Hebrews” historiographic foundation myth, and that it was above all a political movement and not an artistic avant-garde, as it is portrayed by standard Israeli scholarship.