Climbing Sinai

This entry is cross-posted at the JPS Blog.

About a week ago, the Jerusalem Post reported about a recent attempt to revive the Jewish religious literary tradition in Krakow, Poland.  Today, fewer than 1,000 Krakow residents identify with the Jewish community.  Yet before the Holocaust, the city was home to 80,000 Jews – and some of the greatest religious writings to come out of Eastern Europe from the early modern period onward were written by the rabbis of Krakow.  Haviv Rettig Gur reports:

The new Polish-language book Dovev Siftei Yeshenim (The Utterings of the Lips of the Sleepers), written by Krakow’s Rabbi Boaz Pash, is an effort to bring back to life the voices of the city’s rabbinic tradition in the place where it all happened. The book is a collection of interpretations on the weekly Torah portion written by some of the greatest rabbis Krakow ever produced.

“Everyone has heard about the rabbis and sages of Krakow, but who can quote them?” asks Pash. “What member of the current generation that is living and growing up in Poland can open their books? This book and others of its kind represent an attempt to meet that need.”

The book begins with 15th century scholar Rabbi Yom Tov Milhausen, and continues with such luminaries of the Jewish bookshelf as the 16th century giant Rabbi Moshe Isserles, better known as the Rama, and the 17th-century halachist Rabbi Yoel Sirkas, the Bach.

(Interestingly, Dovev Siftei Yeshenim is coming on the heels of a possible re-publication of a German edition of Mein Kampf! That’s irony for ya.)  The publication of this book is indicative of a larger trend in Polish Jewish life:

The book, like Pash’s rabbinic work, are funded by the Shavey Yisrael organization, one of the groups at the forefront of the quiet rekindling of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.

“Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, more and more young Poles are rediscovering their Jewish roots and expressing a desire to draw closer to the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” according to the Israel-based chairman of Shavey Yisrael, Michael Freund.

“At the same time, Jewish communal life in Poland is gradually gaining strength. We cannot turn our backs on these exciting historic developments and must do everything we can to facilitate them,” Freund said in a statement announcing the publication of Dovev Siftei Yeshenim.

I’m thrilled that they’re publishing this book in Polish, so it will be accessible to Polish Jews and non-Jews alike.  At the same time, however, I’d love to see an English translation of the book.  It sounds like an absolute gem.

- Naomi

This entry is cross-posted at the JPS Blog.

Here’s an interesting, and controversial, bit of news:  According to the Telegraph, German-Jewish leaders are supporting an effort by historians to publish Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Germany, for the first time since World War II.  (I’m assuming that the edition would be in German, though the article didn’t say so explicitly.)  According to the Telegraph, this “scholarly edition would be accompanied by a critical introduction and footnotes challenging Hitler’s assertions under the proposal by Munich historians.”  So why has this become such a major issue now, over 60 years later?

The German state of Bavaria, in which Hitler wrote the mix of ideology and memoir while serving a four-year jail sentence for his failed 1923 coup attempt, has a 70-year exclusive copyright on publishing the book, which it has used to maintain an effective ban.

This copyright is due to expire at the end of 2015, leading to fears of a free-for-all among unscrupulous publishers.

Bernhard Gotto, spokesman for Munich’s Institute of Contemporary History, which has historians working on the scholarly edition, said this was why it was important that historians got in first with their critical editions.

“We do not want obscure publishers profiting from this book,” Mr Gotto said. “We think historians need this scholarly edition, which would lead to a demystification of the book.”

The German Finance Ministry has responded by insisting that it will try to find a way to extend the book’s copyright and prevent its publication.

Now, I’m not a fan of censorship by any means.  And while I can’t help but feel uneasy about the ready availability of hate literature, I do agree with the position of Stephen Kramer, the general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany:

“An aggressive and enlightening engagement with the book would doubtless remove many of its false, persisting myths.”

Additionally, in this day and age, Mein Kampf is readily available on the internet anyway, in every language imaginable.  So I think that we could definitely do with a critical, scholarly edition that would combat the book’s hatred and falsehoods.  This is pretty controversial stuff, though, so I’m not necessarily wedded to my own opinion.  Would anyone like to sound off on the issue?

-Naomi