Provincial Jews and Warsaw’s Jewish Ethnographers

 Presentation by Sarah Zarrow

Tuesday, September 9, 4:00 p.m., Kovno Room

In what was to become new Polish capital, what role was Yiddish given by those who were attempting in their work to form an image of the Polish Jew, an image made for both Jewish and non-Jewish consumption? How did Varsovian Jews look at Jews in “the provinces,” especially with regard to language? And what changes can we observe in Warsaw in this time period, vis-à-vis Yiddish?

This paper discusses the conceptions of the Yiddish language as evidenced in Warsaw-based ethnographic work before the First World War. Beginning with a discussion of Warsaw’s Jewish museum, it turns to the “Ludoznawstwo Żydowskie” column in the journal Wisła, which ran from 1897 to the early 1920s. It demonstrates that many Jewish ethnographers would rather have put some distance between Jews “in the provinces” and Jews in Warsaw, evident in their implicit and explicit attitudes towards language use in particular. Intent on proving the ways in which Jews in Polish lands belonged properly to Polish civilization, pre-WWI Polish Jewish ethnographers used their work to explore Polish Catholic attitudes towards Jews and to present an image of the Polish Jew that was cosmopolitan and Polish-speaking.

Sarah Zarrow, a doctoral candidate at NYU and a 2013-14 Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Graduate Research Fellow at the Center for Jewish History, will deliver the seminar. A formal response to Sarah’s seminar will be offered by Professor Natalia Aleksiun, Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History at the Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Touro College. This event intended for an academic audience; space is limited.

RSVP to Chris Barthel at cbarthel@cjh.org or 212.294.8324