Abstract

One of the influential figures among Polish-Jewish writers in the first half of the twentieth century was Jakub Appenszlak (1894–1950)—an editor, author, essayist, theatre critic, translator, and community worker. I would like to focus on three of his texts in different genres. What such different forms as verse, novel, and manifesto have in common is the issue of identity—the complicated relation between Polish identity and Jewishness. Appenszlak, though deeply involved in Zionism, claimed that Polish culture was naturally dear to Polish Jews since the Polish language was also the language of Jewish literature and daily life as well as a being a system of signs and symbols which constituted the imagined Polish-Jewish community, so close to Polish Jews' hearts. Those signs and symbols can also be the models for shaping the modern Jewish national awareness.

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