Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments It seems almost impossible after so many years of working on this project, which has gone through numerous transformations and alterations, to remember and give full credit to all the people who helped me. This book represents the culmination of a long journey, along which I have been most fortunate to have had the support of a number of individuals, institutions, and fellowships. I must begin by thanking my parents, to whom this book is dedicated. Ruth and Lawrence Kobrin have always supported and nurtured my quest for knowledge. Their boundless love, along with the countless hours of babysitting when I ventured on research trips, made the completion of this project possible. The seeds for this book were planted when I heard Professor Nancy Green at Yale College give a talk concerning comparative Jewish migration and her growing frustration over her inability to find good bagels, let alone bialys, in Paris. But this writing would never have come to fruition had it not been for the wonderful teachers I encountered along the way. From the moment I stepped into David Ruderman’s and Paula Hyman’s classrooms as aYale undergraduate, I was inspired by their passion for teaching and commitment to rigorous scholarship. At the University of Pennsylvania, I thank Michael Katz, Deborah Dash Moore, Ewa Morawska, and Israel Bartal for introducing me to new ways of thinking about the process of migration and East European Jewish history. I am especially grateful to Benjamin Nathans, Deborah Dash Moore, David Ruderman, and Beth Wenger, whose thoughtful comments and exacting academic standards helped me see this project to its completion. Benjamin Nathans’s incisive questions, sage advice, and steady encouragement pushed me to rethink how one effectively narrates a transnational history of East European Jewry. But my early drafts would not have crystallized into this book without the constant support, and sage advice of Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore. I thank them for including me in their X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS series and their gentle prodding. Together they demonstrated to me how one negotiates with grace between the conflicting demands of scholarship, family life, and a commitment to Jewish communal life. My postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and New York University not only provided me the opportunity to work closely with Paula Hyman and David Engel, but also afforded me the time to expand my research, improve my Polish, and learn from many distinguished faculty members, most notably Laura Engelstein, Matthew Frye Jacobson, and Timothy Snyder. My colleagues in Yale’s Religious Studies’ Department and in New York University’s Hebrew and Judaic Studies Department—Ivan Marcus, Shannon Craigo-Snell, Hasia Diner, Gennady Estraikh, Steve Fraade, Christine Hayes, Tony Michels, Jonathan Ray, and Ludger Viefhues—welcomed me and engaged me in stimulating discussions that helped me to refine my overall project. Procuring documents for this transnational study was a daunting challenge but was made much easier by the tireless and generous efforts of many archivists and librarians around the world. I am very grateful to Gennady Pasternak at Tel Aviv University, who found space for me to look through the rich collection of the Goren-Goldstein Center for the Study of Diaspora Jewry at Tel Aviv University. I did not have the opportunity to meet the late Chen Merhavia of the National Library’s Rare Book and Manuscript Division, but had it not been for his efforts, I could not have completed this project. Professor Merhavia tirelessly devoted himself to amassing materials related to Bialystok, his birthplace, for a work he planned to write that would bring to life the vitality and diversity of Bialystok’s Jews as it assessed this city’s significance to the broader modern Jewish experience. Soliciting documents over the course of a lifetime from friends, colleagues , and acquaintances, Merhavia left no stone unturned in his search for information about Bialystok. As I gathered from his close friend Menachem Lewin, Merhavia was a most exacting scholar who envisioned his planned book on Bialystok as the crowning achievement of his life’s work. I only hope that the following pages do justice to his dream. In Buenos Aires, Silvia Hansman graciously helped me navigate through Fundacion IWO’s rich collections. At the YIVO XI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Institute for Jewish Research, Zachary Baker, Herbert Lazarus, Yeshayu Mettle, and Dina Abramowicz z”l all patiently addressed my queries. In Warsaw, Natalia Aleksiun, Yale Reisner, and Helise Lieberman helped...