Space and Belief: Toward a Geography of Hasidism

A presentation by Marcin Wodziński

Wednesday, November 5
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Room 5307
The Graduate Center, CUNY

The aim of this lecture is to suggest potential sources, approaches and conceptual frames in which one could research chrono-spatial aspects of Hasidism and, more generally, any modern religious movement. Is it true that Hasidism dominated most of East European Jewry already by the end of the eighteenth century? How could we measure it? What were the borders of Hasidic influence? When, how and why did they change? Which Hasidic dynasties were strongest?

Prof. Marcin Wodziński, a Polish historian and linguist, has been associated for many years with the University of Wrocław where he had completed his graduate studies specializing in the history and culture of Polish Jews. He is now Professor of History and Literature and, since 2005, Director of the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław. His special fields of interest are social history of the Jews in nineteenth-century Poland, regional history of the Jews in Silesia, and Jewish sepulchral art.

He has been active for a long time in the academic endeavors and gatherings inside and outside Poland relating to Jewish history and culture, and has published extensively on related topics. Some notable among the books that Prof. Wodziński has written: Haskalah and Hasidism in the Kingdom of Poland: A History of Conflict (Polish, 2003; English, 2005), Hasidism and Politics: The Kingdom of Poland (Polish, 2008; English, 2011), The Graves of Tsadikim in Poland (Polish, 1998), and Bibliography on the History of Jews in Silesia (German, 2004). Additionally, he is the co-editor of the Bibliotheca Judaica series which is published by Wrocław University Publishing. Marcin Wodziński also serves as the chief consultant for history at the newly opened ​Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw​ He also is one of an international team of scholars writing the forthcoming New History of Hasidism​