The Last Generation of Jews in Poland / / Efraim Shmueli; ed. by Gila Shmueli.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Academic Studies Press Complete eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Shmueli, Efraim,
• HerausgeberIn: Shmueli, Gila,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Academic Studies Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (338 p.)

he book, based on memories of a native son and the research of a scholar, is an amalgam of descriptions and discussions, peppered with conversations, personal observations and an acute observer’s reflections, focused on the fabric of life in the city of Lodz and its vicinity. The author describes the “court” of the Hasidic Rabbis of Alexander, with which his family was affiliated, the rival camps of Hasidim and Zionists, industrialists and laborers, struggles with the Polish authorities, and more. Detailed chapters are dedicated to a description of studies at a modern Jewish-Zionist high school (Gymnasium) – its exhilarating goals, directors and teachers, to the Lodz poet Yitzhak Katzenelson before and during the Holocaust, and to life in a small Polish shtetl. The concluding chapter “Return to Poland” examines the cities and towns described earlier in the book, as well as Breslau-Wroclaw, where the author had completed his rabbinic and university studies in 1933, as they appeared to him during his visit in 1982, nearly fifty years after his departure from Europe for Israel. The author's aim was to produce a portrait, sympathetic, intimate, but also knowledgeable and critical, of a generation that did not have the time to take stock of itself before its obliteration. He has thus rendered palpable the experiences and quandaries of many of his contemporaries.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Content -- Editor’s Preface -- Author’s Introduction -- Chapter 1. The World of Polish Jews -- Chapter 2. Pilgrimage to the Rebbe -- Chapter 3. Holiness and its Heirs -- Chapter 4. Inside Lodz -- Chapter 5. Lodz Economy and Politics -- Chapter 6. Sanctity and Sin -- Chapter 7. A Town and its Ẓaddik -- Chapter 8. Portrait of a Ḥasidic Rebbe (Admor) -- Chapter 9. Farewell to Aleksander -- Chapter 10. A Hebrew High School in its Heyday -- Chapter 11. My Teachers -- Chapter 12. With the Poet Yiẓḥak Katzenelson -- Chapter 13. The Holocaust Poet -- Chapter 14. A Small Town in Poland -- Chapter 15. Return to Poland -- Chapter 16. Poland’s Five Great Changes—and One Fixation -- Notes -- Glossary -- About the Author— Efraim Shmueli (1908–1988) -- List of Photographs -- Index