Who Will Say Kaddish?: A Search for Jewish Identity in Contemporary Poland (Religion) (Hardcover)

Who Will Say Kaddish?: A Search for Jewish Identity in Contemporary Poland (Religion) By Larry Mayer Cover Image
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Description


Who Will Say Kaddish? is an exploration of the fragile resurgence of Jewish life and identity in post-Communist Poland. By the eve of the Holocaust, Poland was home to the second largest Jewish population in the world. By war's end, its Jews had been exterminated and their once-vibrant culture all but destroyed.

In this book Larry Mayer and Gary Gelb, themselves descendants of Polish Jews, explore reports that Jewish life is being rekindled in modern Poland. What they discover are three generations of Jews-Holocaust survivors and
their children and grandchildren-with differing historical perspectives. As survivors' descendants learn of their hidden Jewish heritage through deathbed revelations, a compelling drama about personal identity unfolds. Mayer and Gelb chronicle a new chapter in the life of Poland's Jewish community as the present generation seeks to celebrate its members' recent freedom and to honor the rich traditions of their forebears.

Through interviews, photography, reportage, and personal memoir Who Will Say Kaddish? creates a sociocultural portrait of the multilayered community of renewed Jewish life and tradition in Poland that has emerged since the fall of the Communist regime in 1989.

About the Author


Larry N. Mayer is a writer and teacher. His articles have appeared in Hadassah and the Boston Phoenix. The son of Polish Holocaust survivors, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gary Gelb's photographs have appeared in Hadassah, Moment, Money, and Smart Money. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.


Product Details
ISBN: 9780815607199
ISBN-10: 0815607199
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Publication Date: June 1st, 2002
Pages: 208
Language: English
Series: Religion