Behind the Scenes of Jewish Narratives: Yugoslav Peripheries, Hasidic Shadows and Polish Phantasms

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores how Jewish memory is shaped, transmitted, and reimagined across diverse cultural and geographical contexts. Through case studies ranging from Yugoslav Jewish poetry and Hasidic Yiddish theater to Polish symbolic spaces in Israeli Holocaust discourse, the presentations will examine how narratives of the past continue to shape Jewish identity today. They will analyze the texts produced within these identity frameworks, illuminating the evolving meanings of Jewish memory.
Katarzyna Taczyńska investigates the poetic transmission of memory in the post-Holocaust Yugoslav Jewish diaspora by analyzing how Dina Katan Ben-Zion and Ženi Lebl, both Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Israel, reflect shared experiences in their poetry. Wojciech Tworek explores how Yiddish theater by Hasidic artists in the U.S. and U.K. portrays Eastern European Jewish life and destruction, examining the role of nostalgia in shaping the memory of the Jewish past in 21st-century Hasidic imagination. Jagoda Budzik examines Poland as a symbolic space in Israeli national Holocaust memory, contrasting its role as the “land of death” with Israel as the “land of life,” while also exploring literary works that challenge this binary and contextualizing shifts in Holocaust discourse after October 7.
All presentations explore the role of memory in shaping Jewish identity, focusing on how the past is remembered, narrated, and transmitted through different cultural forms: poetry, theater, and literature. They examine how memory is constructed and reshaped over time – whether through personal experiences, artistic expression, or official narratives – while highlighting the tensions between nostalgia, historical trauma, and contemporary identity.

Sub Unit

• Jewish Studies

Chair

• Oskar Czendze, U of Toronto (Canada)

Papers

• Found in Translation: Memory and Identity in the Post-Holocaust Yugoslav Jewish Diaspora - Katarzyna Taczynska, Inst of Slavic Studies PAS (Poland)

• Nostalgia for the Old Home in Eastern Europe in Contemporary Hasidic Theatrical Plays in Yiddish - Wojciech Tworek, U of Wrocław (Poland)

• Poland as Israel's Antinomy in Contemporary Israeli Post-Holocaust Narratives - Jagoda Budzik, U of Wrocław (Poland)

Discussant

• Oskar Czendze, U of Toronto (Canada)