Faithful but transgressive? Political consciousness and patterns of cultural consumption among Jewish youth in Interwar Poland

• In Event: Youth, Culture and Politics among Polish Jews in the 1930s

Abstract

In my paper I will analyze the connection between the political mobilization of the interwar Polish Jewish youth and the way in which it functioned in Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew culture.
In the reality of interwar Poland, all main Jewish political parties (Zionist, Diaspora- oriented nationalists, Socialist and Orthodox) were deeply engaged in a fierce rivalry for influence upon the young generation. Fighting for their political empowerment, opposing both the anti-Semitic and assimilationist policies of the state’s institutions and engaged in an internal ‘kulturkampf’, all of these parties tried to control the cultural consumption of their followers. Jewish political parties, youth movements, as well as the school systems and cultural institutions connected to them, tried to define in which language their young members would speak, which books they would read, what kind of cultural identity they should declare.
Analyzing 100 autobiographies of Jewish youth written for the contests of the YIVO Institute in the years 1932-1939, and drawing examples from sources such as Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew newspapers, school text books and programs, declarations and opinions of Jewish and Polish politicians and cultural activists, I will describe the role of politics in the declared and real patterns of the cultural consumption of Jewish youth.
I will explain what kind of books were read by the members of the most important Jewish political milieus, and will investigate the specific languages and social contexts in which ideas from these books were expressed by young orthodox Jews, Zionists and socialists. I will also discuss place of reading and self-education in the lives of Polish Jewish youth.
At the end of my paper I will confront tensions and differences between the declared ideological and cultural identity of the members of various political movements and their real patterns of cultural consumptions, which often transgressed their political guidelines. I will try to ascertain the extent to which Jewish youth culture “slipped out” from the ideological plans of the Polish government and Jewish institutions, becoming a new, unexpected socio-cultural reality.

author

• Kamil Kijek, Center for Jewish History