Project MUSE®: Polin Studies in Polish Jewry - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Polin Studies in Polish Jewry.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 28, (2016) through current issueLatest Articles: Polin Studies in Polish JewryTWOProject MUSE®Polin Studies in Polish Jewry2516-86810268-1056Latest articles in Polin Studies in Polish Jewry. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979781
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Around twenty years ago, and in a first for this yearbook, the main section of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 18 was dedicated to 'Jewish Women in Eastern Europe'. ChaeRan Freeze and Paula Hyman stated in their introduction that 'the study of Jewish women is still in its infancy'.1 Quoting the pioneering works of Joan Scott, they identified the 'near absence of social history' in scholarly writing on the Jews in eastern Europe as an important contributing factor in obscuring 'the social experience of Jewish women'. As a result, they argued, this absence and the failure to write Jewish women's history from the 'bottom up', which in other disciplines had generated a mass of information and rich debate about women's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallIntroduction2026-01-16text/htmlen-USIntroduction2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®758442026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16An Inheritance of Dreams
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979782
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Our dead do not want to remain in our dreams as individuals, mythical figures; they want to dissolve inside us, so that our fear is stilled and we learn how to wander and withdraw, to be free, to reclaim reality from the prison of the present moment.This is a micro-history of dreaming focused on one Jewish family from seventeenth-century Żółkiew (Zhovkva). In an intimate manuscript, an educated Jewish man named Yehuda Katz wrote about what dreams meant to him, his mother Frieda, his father Nisan, and his sister Henna, and what he hoped dreams would mean to his descendants. The members of the Katz family may have been exceptionally interested in dreams, but their attitudes were also informed by early modern Jewish
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallAn Inheritance of Dreams2026-01-16text/htmlen-USAn Inheritance of Dreams2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®994852026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Penis: Recipes and Kabbalistic Masculinity in the Early Modern Ashkenazi World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979783
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An anonymous eighteenth-century manual of practical advice titled 'Minḥat ya'akov' contains short instructional texts that guide its readers through the meanders of emotional and physical well-being. Amongst its semi-alphabetically arranged medical recipes, under the letter kuf, it includes a short piece of advice on how to prevent keri, an emission of semen, sometimes nocturnal, mostly unwanted, and always spiritually polluting:
To be saved from seminal emissions, there is a wonderful remedy for you: before going to sleep, study either a lot or a little, to be able to adjure with the words of Torah. Recite the Shema [prayer] with intense concentration, but do not stop at any of the words until sleep strikes you.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallThe Rise and Fall of the Jewish Penis: Recipes and Kabbalistic Masculinity in the Early Modern Ashkenazi World2026-01-16text/htmlen-USThe Rise and Fall of the Jewish Penis: Recipes and Kabbalistic Masculinity in the Early Modern Ashkenazi World2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1419712026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Demons, Dybbuks, and a Water Medium: Possession in Early Twentieth-Century Warsaw
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979784
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Warsaw, 3 March 1914. As night fell, thousands packed into the courtyard at 35 Nalewki Street. A crush of people had gathered there, in the beating heart of Jewish Warsaw, to witness the public exorcism of a dybbuk, a possessing spirit, from the body of a young woman.1 The dybbuk, however, failed to appear, and after a long wait the disappointed crowd dispersed. Just down the street, at 38 Nalewki, close to 100,000 copies of the Yiddish newspaper Der moment had been printed that morning and sent off for distribution across Warsaw and further-flung locales.2 On page 5, tucked in alongside regional news and advertisements for theatre performances, readers could find a detailed account of a seance that several
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallDemons, Dybbuks, and a Water Medium: Possession in Early Twentieth-Century Warsaw2026-01-16text/htmlen-USDemons, Dybbuks, and a Water Medium: Possession in Early Twentieth-Century Warsaw2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1524162026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16After Death: Identity, Tradition, Ethics, and the Dead Jewish Body in Poland
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979785
<p></p>
In early 1942 a group of Orthodox Jewish activists wrote a letter to the chairman of the Judenrat of the Warsaw ghetto objecting to the ill-treatment of Jewish corpses. The authors described the handling of such bodies as totally abhorrent: 'No longer does death free [a person] from the difficulty of life anymore, but the moment he dies and the tragedy of his life comes to an end, the tragedy of his death begins.'1 The dead Jewish body was a central feature of everyday life during the Holocaust. As death rates soared, a question arose concerning the ethics and economics of burial: which deceased bodies would receive a 'proper' Jewish burial and which would not? During the past three decades, in the context of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallAfter Death: Identity, Tradition, Ethics, and the Dead Jewish Body in Poland2026-01-16text/htmlen-USAfter Death: Identity, Tradition, Ethics, and the Dead Jewish Body in Poland2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®856602026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16The Jewish Body in Polish Modernist Prose, 1918–1939, and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Tradition
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979786
<p></p>
The first Polish novel to discuss Jewish issues, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz's sentimental romance Levi and Sarah; or, The Jewish Lovers (1821), contains a letter from the merchant Moses with the following descriptions of his daughter, Sarah, and her proposed husband, the learned talmudist Jankiel: 'Her waist as slender and supple as that of a woodland doe, large eyes as bright as stars, ruby lips, teeth like ivory';1 'I know that you have an adult son, and that he is ugly, hunchbacked and, with no offence to you, a rather frightful sight.'2 These descriptions of the beautiful Jewish woman and the ugly talmudist placed side by side employ contrasting aesthetic and stylistic codes: an idealized image and a high style
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallThe Jewish Body in Polish Modernist Prose, 1918–1939, and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Tradition2026-01-16text/htmlen-USThe Jewish Body in Polish Modernist Prose, 1918–1939, and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Tradition2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1362202026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16The Female Body in Polish Jewish Women's Writing, 1880–1918
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979787
<p></p>
When he realized that we were alone, he took me in his arms and sat with me on a sofa. He held me so tightly that I couldn't free myself. It was very pleasant. Just when I realized it was getting to the ultimate point, and he wouldn't let me go but wanted it to happen, I cried out: 'Oh God! Save me!'At that moment I was really scared and I really wanted to be saved. So, he left without completing the act. A few days later, I arranged matters so I would again be alone. I then wrote him a card asking him to come over. So, it happened. I crossed the Rubicon. I did it to spite everyone.1The description of her first experience of sexual intercourse that Lola Salc, a character in Honest Women by the Galician author
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallThe Female Body in Polish Jewish Women's Writing, 1880–19182026-01-16text/htmlen-USThe Female Body in Polish Jewish Women's Writing, 1880–19182026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1167552026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Homoerotics and Self-Censorship in the Early Poetry of Shmuel Yankev Imber
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979788
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In this chapter I will analyse some neglected aspects of the work of the Galician poet and critic Shmuel Yankev (Samuel Jakub) Imber (1889–1942?), who produced a considerable amount of poetry from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1920s. When reading it, attention is immediately drawn to motifs rare in the Yiddish literature of the period, above all the strongly expressed queer1 image of love, especially prominent in his first volume of poetry, What I Sing and Say (1909).2 This chapter does not seek to uncover hitherto unknown biographical facts or to reveal Imber's homosexuality but rather to examine his early work in the context of the social conditions that, first, contributed to the publication of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallHomoerotics and Self-Censorship in the Early Poetry of Shmuel Yankev Imber2026-01-16text/htmlen-USHomoerotics and Self-Censorship in the Early Poetry of Shmuel Yankev Imber2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1448732026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16The Experience and Perception of Sport among Jewish Boys and Girls in Interwar Poland
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979789
<p></p>
In A Study of the Psychology of Young Jews, published in 1932, Abram Perelman, an educator and head of a Jewish high school in Łódź, claimed: 'The field of [physical] education did not previously exist among Jews; as a consequence, there has occurred not only physical decline but also a lack of discipline. Such discipline is an essential condition for collective life.'1 However, for young Jews growing up in interwar Poland, this was no longer the case, and, by the early 1930s, it had become important not only to care for the soul but also for the body. Sport and exercise filled the leisure time of many young Jews. Participation in such activities not only improved their physical health but also influenced their
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallThe Experience and Perception of Sport among Jewish Boys and Girls in Interwar Poland2026-01-16text/htmlen-USThe Experience and Perception of Sport among Jewish Boys and Girls in Interwar Poland2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®988282026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16'I decided to be silent': Dina Pronicheva, Theatre, and Trauma in Wartime and Post-War Soviet Ukraine
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979790
<p></p>
'I decided to be silent' stated Dina Pronicheva (née Mstislavskaya; 1911–77) in January 1946, during the trial of fifteen members of the German police for their role in the massacre at Babyn Yar in Kyiv. Having jumped into the ravine before the Germans began shooting, she then had to survive the soldiers' attempts to make sure everybody was dead. She described how one soldier stepped on her chest and arm with his hobnailed boots, but she made no sound: she 'decided to be silent'.1 Such extraordinary willpower gives pause for thought: how does one simply choose not to react at such a harrowing moment? While medical studies may show how the body can survive moments of acute stress, Pronicheva's ability to convince
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmall'I decided to be silent': Dina Pronicheva, Theatre, and Trauma in Wartime and Post-War Soviet Ukraine2026-01-16text/htmlen-US'I decided to be silent': Dina Pronicheva, Theatre, and Trauma in Wartime and Post-War Soviet Ukraine2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1015732026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Marriage as Froyen-handl: Jewish Marital Practices in the Early Twentieth Century
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979791
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The married woman and the prostitute have often functioned as polar opposites in social understanding.1 The former is seen as the ideal of womanhood, embodying piety and purity; the latter is a 'fallen woman', who functions outside the structure of the family and is involved in the commercialization of sex. Yet in east European Jewish society at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the eyes of the working class, marriage and prostitution shared some similarities which were widely accepted, while the intellectual elite criticized both as economic transactions used purposefully by women to improve their material situation. Commentators on the Jewish cultural scene at the time noted these and other similarities
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallMarriage as Froyen-handl: Jewish Marital Practices in the Early Twentieth Century2026-01-16text/htmlen-USMarriage as Froyen-handl: Jewish Marital Practices in the Early Twentieth Century2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1143842026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Gendered Mobilization: The Jews of Galicia and the Outbreak of the First World War
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979792
<p></p>
The grandmothers and mothers sat outside on their porches during those hours to rest after the day's work. They talked to their hearts' content, about making a living and about the pleasure [they derived] from their children and grandchildren. They told legends and stories. I passed through the street that led to the synagogues and study houses, on my way home. The setting sun, all crimson, sent golden rays of light onto the street and its houses. The entire street was lit up with precious light, 'the light of the seven days' [Isa. 30: 26]. I never felt such pleasantness in all the days of my life. I tasted the emanations of the seventh heaven. I was totally encompassed by splendour and happiness. I felt as if the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallGendered Mobilization: The Jews of Galicia and the Outbreak of the First World War2026-01-16text/htmlen-USGendered Mobilization: The Jews of Galicia and the Outbreak of the First World War2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1411432026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16The Roles of Women and Men in Jewish Homes for the Elderly in Poland before 1939
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979793
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In the first half of the nineteenth century the Jewish population of the provincial towns and cities of eastern Europe still followed the time-honoured model of charity that consisted chiefly in the giving of alms, which reached various indigent groups in roundabout ways. Older people who were still physically and mentally able participated in community life in much the same way as other adult members of the community. If they lived in a familiar environment, then, in accordance with the ethics of Judaism, they could count on support in their everyday activities not only from their families but also from their neighbours and fellow members of their confraternity, guild, or prayer group. The situation of those who
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallThe Roles of Women and Men in Jewish Homes for the Elderly in Poland before 19392026-01-16text/htmlen-USThe Roles of Women and Men in Jewish Homes for the Elderly in Poland before 19392026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1001242026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16'To the masses both foreign born and native': The Birth-Control Politics and Activism of Ernest Lilien and Herman Rubinraut
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979794
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In discussions of the politics of birth control and birth-control activism in the early twentieth century and in most of the historiography of the period, family planning has been understood as a woman's issue.1 In such countries as the United States and Great Britain, the idea and practice of limiting births by means of contraception was mainly propagated by female activists. The most acclaimed of them, such as Margaret Sanger in the United States and Marie Stopes in England, became not only international key figures in the movement but also symbols of its activity.2 However, in the Polish lands and the Polish diaspora and also among Polish Jews, men were at the forefront of birth-control politics and activism. It
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmall'To the masses both foreign born and native': The Birth-Control Politics and Activism of Ernest Lilien and Herman Rubinraut2026-01-16text/htmlen-US'To the masses both foreign born and native': The Birth-Control Politics and Activism of Ernest Lilien and Herman Rubinraut2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1069922026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Fatal Alliances: The Entanglement of Antisemitic and Anti-Feminist Dynamics of Exclusion in Germany and Poland
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979795
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On yom kippur, 9 October 2019, the heavily armed Stephan Balliet attempted to enter the synagogue in the town of Halle in the eastern part of Germany with the clear aim of killing as many Jews as possible. When this was prevented by his inability to force open the synagogue doors, he shot a woman passer-by. He subsequently proceeded to a kebab shop where he expected to find Muslims and shot another person. He live-streamed his actions on the internet and made comments during the attacks, expressing his belief that the Holocaust had never happened. He then proceeded to observe that 'feminism is the cause of declining birth rates in the West, and those declining birth rates are the reason for mass immigration. And
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallFatal Alliances: The Entanglement of Antisemitic and Anti-Feminist Dynamics of Exclusion in Germany and Poland2026-01-16text/htmlen-USFatal Alliances: The Entanglement of Antisemitic and Anti-Feminist Dynamics of Exclusion in Germany and Poland2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1578572026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16The Carnival and the Trickster: A Case Study of the Horodziej Pogrom, July 1920
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979796
<p></p>
The pogrom in Horodziej (Haradzyeya), a shtetl near the Zamirye railway station in Nowogródek Voivodeship in the former Minsk Guberniya (Belarus), took place between 9 and 15 July 1920 and is described in the report of an unnamed representative of the Jewish Committee for Aid to War Victims (Evreiskii Komitet Pomoshchi Zhertvam Voiny; EKOPO).1 The report was compiled on 26 and 27 July 1920, immediately following the tragic events in the town. It is, in general, very similar in structure and form to the reports about the pogroms in neighbouring Ukraine, detailing the loss of Jewish life, injuries, and the theft of and damage to property, but it differs in one crucial detail: it describes in an extremely graphic
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallThe Carnival and the Trickster: A Case Study of the Horodziej Pogrom, July 19202026-01-16text/htmlen-USThe Carnival and the Trickster: A Case Study of the Horodziej Pogrom, July 19202026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®728512026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16'Intimate Dispossession': The Theft of Jewish Clothes during and after the Holocaust
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979797
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Apoloniusz puźniak was just 9 years old when, in mid-July 1942, he was rounded up on the streets of Józefów, a small shtetl in south-eastern Poland, and forced, along with thirty men, to bury corpses in the nearby forest. After Hamburg Reserve Police Battalion 101 had shot around 1,500 of Józefów's Jews, amounting to nearly 75 per cent of the town's Jewish population and around half of all its inhabitants, the place was so deserted that almost nobody was left to bury the dead. Covering this number of bodies with soil took three whole days. Most vivid in Apoloniusz's memory, however, was what he found the second morning, when he showed up to continue the work. The rows of corpses that had been fully clothed the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmall'Intimate Dispossession': The Theft of Jewish Clothes during and after the Holocaust2026-01-16text/htmlen-US'Intimate Dispossession': The Theft of Jewish Clothes during and after the Holocaust2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1245572026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Bodies in the Ground: Holocaust Mass Graves in Eastern Europe as Jewish Presence
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979798
<p></p>
The Last Journey, Those Who Are Going to Death, Shadows of Those Murdered: there are a number of names for a sculpture at the Yama, at the intersection of Zaslawskaya Street and Melnikaite Street in Minsk, that commemorates the killing of more than 5,000 Jews on 2 March 1942 in the Minsk ghetto. The sculpture consists of twenty-seven, slightly larger than life-size human figures descending a steep slope into a circular ravine: ghetto inmates about to be killed in a shooting pit that is now marked by rough cobblestones filling a circle about 35 yards in diameter (Figure 1). Even one of the main authors of the sculpture, renowned architect Leonid Levin, was not able to settle on a title for the work, offering the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallBodies in the Ground: Holocaust Mass Graves in Eastern Europe as Jewish Presence2026-01-16text/htmlen-USBodies in the Ground: Holocaust Mass Graves in Eastern Europe as Jewish Presence2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1341132026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16The Body in Sarah Schenirer's Diary
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979799
<p></p>
Sarah schenirer (1883–1935) was the initiator and founder of the Beit Ya'akov (Bais Yaakov) movement, which was a revolution in Jewish education for girls from Orthodox communities.1 She was born in Kraków and educated at a Polish primary school. She deepened her knowledge of Judaism at home, while also attending public lectures on philosophy, literature, and women's emancipation in Polish. She worked as a seamstress and completed further training in Vienna. In 1910 she was married to a man she did not love, and the union ended in divorce in 1913. During this period she developed a desire to act in the public sphere, primarily to improve the education of Orthodox Jewish girls. After the outbreak of war she left
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallThe Body in Sarah Schenirer's Diary2026-01-16text/htmlen-USThe Body in Sarah Schenirer's Diary2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1154532026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16'Her path is the future': The 'Woman Question' in Rakhel Faygnberg's Journalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979800
<p></p>
In 1929 the Warsaw daily Der moment invited its readers to name their favourite Jewish writer. They were asked to provide a justification for their choice in a few sentences, and the most interesting responses were to be printed in the newspaper. More than 600 people participated in the survey, submitting the names of over forty writers, providing a revealing picture of the paper's readership and its literary preferences. The results reveal a certain conservatism among its readers: Yitzhok Leib Peretz won the poll (ninety-three votes), followed by Hillel Zeitlin (eighty-five), Sholem Asch (fifty-seven), Zusman Segalovich (fifty-five), and Sholem Aleichem (forty-five). Some authors were clearly not regarded as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmall'Her path is the future': The 'Woman Question' in Rakhel Faygnberg's Journalism2026-01-16text/htmlen-US'Her path is the future': The 'Woman Question' in Rakhel Faygnberg's Journalism2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®1020862026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Sara Ala Gołębianka: Social Worker, Contributor to Ewa, Warsaw Ghetto Nurse
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979801
<p></p>
According to Monika Szabłowska-Zaremba, 'the female journalists who wrote for the Polish Jewish interwar press have in large part been forgotten. The world, and human memory, have treated them callously.'1 Although there have been several articles published on the subject of Ewa, a Polish Jewish weekly with a Zionist orientation published between 1928 and 1933, which championed equal social and legal rights for women, there is very little information available about many of the women associated with it, and some have not been written about at all.2 One of them was Sara Ala Gołębianka.Gołębianka (1904–43), also known by her married name, Sara Alicja Gołąb-Grynberg, was a pioneering social worker in Warsaw. She was
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallSara Ala Gołębianka: Social Worker, Contributor to Ewa, Warsaw Ghetto Nurse2026-01-16text/htmlen-USSara Ala Gołębianka: Social Worker, Contributor to Ewa, Warsaw Ghetto Nurse2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®788572026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Betrayed By Her Own Body: Non-Normative Gender Identity in the Writings of Krystyna Modrzewska
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979802
<p></p>
From the dawning of consciousness, I felt trapped in an otherness that for a long time I was unable to understand, I could not define it, baulked at calling it by name, one of those implied by the books I sought out secretly in my father's study.I lived with this uncertainty, not knowing for many years if it was reality or illusion, a deformity, monstrosity, or punishment.Krystyna modrzewska (1919–2008) is an almost unknown figure, even in Poland. Few studies to date have been devoted to either her life or her work. However, she left behind a substantial body of literature, including a post-war memoir, novels published in the 1960s, and a series of autobiographical accounts written towards the end of her life.1
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallBetrayed By Her Own Body: Non-Normative Gender Identity in the Writings of Krystyna Modrzewska2026-01-16text/htmlen-USBetrayed By Her Own Body: Non-Normative Gender Identity in the Writings of Krystyna Modrzewska2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®937942026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Piłsudski Was a Democrat: An Exchange between Joshua Zimmerman and Andrzej Brzeziecki
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979803
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You write that there is a striking contrast between the lack of knowledge about Józef Piłsudski in today's English-speaking world and the importance attached to him during his lifetime. Why is this so?To a large degree, the paucity of knowledge about Piłsudski today, outside of Poland, is the result of the fact that Piłsudski's principal achievement from 1918 to 1921—the creation and defence of an independent democratic Poland that formed a bulwark against the spread of communism and fascism—was eclipsed by events that followed his death on 12 May 1935: the disappearance of Poland from the map of Europe in 1939, the catastrophe of the Second World War, and the Soviet occupation of Poland that followed. Sealed
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallPiłsudski Was a Democrat: An Exchange between Joshua Zimmerman and Andrzej Brzeziecki2026-01-16text/htmlen-USPiłsudski Was a Democrat: An Exchange between Joshua Zimmerman and Andrzej Brzeziecki2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®926472026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Preface
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979805
<p></p>
Volume 38 of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry has as its theme 'Gender and the Body in East European Jewish History'. It explores the lasting impact of religious and esoteric traditions on Jewish practices around the body, gender, and sexuality, including fasting, libido, possession and demonic interference, and burial. It asks how the Jewish body was construed in fiction, ego-documents and (queer) poetry, how Jewish youth thought about sport, and how impersonating diverse identities during the Second World War became a matter of survival. It engages with the intersection of communal as well as state-related concerns, such as the panic over 'White Slavery', gender-dependent perceptions of warfare, care for the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallPreface2026-01-16text/htmlen-USPreface2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®84302026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16Note on Editorial Conventions
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979807
<p></p>
Political connotations accrue to words, names, and spellings with an alacrity unfortunate for those who would like to maintain neutrality. It seems reasonable to honour the choices of a population on the name of its city or town, but what is one to do when the people have no consensus on their name, or when the town changes its name, and the name its spelling, again and again over time? The politician may always opt for the latest version, but the hapless historian must reckon with them all. This note, then, will be our brief reckoning.There is no problem with places that have accepted English names, such as Warsaw. But every other place name in east-central Europe raises serious problems. A good example is Wilno
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/722/image/coversmallNote on Editorial Conventions2026-01-16text/htmlen-USNote on Editorial Conventions2026-01-162026TWOProject MUSE®67722026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-16