"Nusekh Poyln" and the "New Jewish Man" : the image of the Jewish communist in Yiddish literature of post-war Poland

After World War II, the Communist regime took over power directly after the liberation of Poland in 1945. Jewish survivors, having stayed in the country for a certain period of time, tried to revive their multilingual cultural life. Literary works of writers in that community are a fascinating testimony of their struggles: how to be loyal to the Socialist state (condition sine qua non to take part in the official cultural life) on the one hand, and on the other how to express their feelings, thoughts and convictions which they could not and did not want to ignore. Their struggles can be observed on the sample of the three most important motifs of postwar Polish-Yiddish literature: the Holocaust, Communism itself, and Polish-Jewish relations. The article discusses selected literary works of the most prominent Polish-Yiddish writers, whose main character or lyric subject is the ‘new Jewish man’ shaped according to the Communist principles. The author attempts to answer the question of what the most important features of a personality formed by Communist doctrine are, and also to learn about the circumstances of the communist world in which that literary hero lives. Close reading of the programmatic literary pieces of some Communist writers also enables observing whether and how Polish Jewish Communists managed to find a compromise between the mutually exclusive Communist internationalism and their attachment to Yiddish-language culture, and how they reacted when information of Stalinist crimes came to light and their party comrades turned the blade of antisemitism against them. The ambitious project to build a new model of secular progressive Yiddish culture (the so-called ‘nusekh Poyln’), failed to bring the expected results. In spite of concerted attempts to meet the unrealistic demands of Socialist Realism, it soon transpired that Polish-Yiddish literature under Communism was unable to deal with the lack of space afforded by Communist ideology for mourning its murdered nation or with the spasms of unease that were the reaction to the periodic antisemitism in the non-Jewish environment

„Tłomacke 13“ in Erinnerungen von Schriftstellern und Journalisten jiddischer Sprache

Die moderne jiddische Literatur ist eine relativ junge Erscheinung – sie besteht erst seit der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jhd.s, und die ersten professionell geführten kulturellen Einrichtungen, die ihre Entwicklung fördern sollten, entstanden erst zu Anfang des 20. Jhd.s. Der Jüdische Schriftsteller- und Journalistenverband wurde im Jahre 1915 gegründet und entwickelte bis zum Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkrieges eine rege Tätigkeit. Der Verbandssitz in der Warschauer Straße Tłomackie 13 wurde schnell zu einem legendären Ort. „Tłomacke 13“ war somit nicht nur eine Adresse, sondern wurde auch als Synonym für eine populäre soziokulturelle Einrichtung gebraucht. Der Ort und die Einrichtung, die er verkörperte, wurden auch ‚die Bude‘ („di Bude“) genannt. Der Beitrag versteht sich als Versuch, die Rolle von „Tłomacke 13“ im damaligen jüdischen Kulturleben zu rekonstruieren, wie sie die Schriftsteller – Stammgäste jenes Lokals –, unter denen sich Persönlichkeiten wie Zusman Segalovič, Ber Rozen, Naxmen Majzil, Mixal Vajxert oder Melex Ravič befanden, verstanden hatten.Modern Yiddish literature is a relatively new phenomenon – it has existed since the second half of the 19th century. The first professional institutions, which aimed to stimulate its developing, came into being only at the beginning of the 20th century. The Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists was established in 1915 and it developed vivid activity until the outbreak of the Second World War. The Union’s headquarters in Warsaw in 13 Tlomatske Street became very quickly an extremely popular place. Thus, „Tłomatske 13“ meant both the address of the Union as well as the legendary socio-cultural institution. The paper tries to reconstruct the role, which the Tlomatske 13 played in the Jewish cultural life at that time, as it was remembered by the Yiddish writers – guests of the Union’s place such as Zusman Segalovitsh, Ber Rozen, Nakhmen Mayzil, Michał Weichert or Melekh Ravitsh.Nowoczesna literatura jidysz jest zjawiskiem młodym – istnieje od drugiej połowy dziewiętnastego wieku, a pierwsze profesjonalne instytucje, które miały stymulować jej rozwój, zostały założone dopiero na początku dwudziestego wieku. Związek Pisarzy i Dziennikarzy Jidysz powstał w roku 1915 i do wybuchu II wojny światowej prowadził niezwykle ożywioną działalność. Jego siedziba przy ul. Tłomackie 13 w Warszawie szybko stała się legendarnym miejscem. A zatem „Tłomackie 13“ to nie tylko adres, ale także synonim popularnej instytucji kulturalno-społecznej. Artykuł jest próbą odtworzenia jego roli w życiu ówczesnej kultury żydowskiej, jak postrzegali ją pisarze – stali bywalcy lokalu, wśród których byli Zusman Segałowicz, Ber Rozen, Nachmen Majzil, Michał Weichert, czy też Melech Rawicz. &nbsp

Dwujęzyczność, dwukulturowość, literatura : casus Kalmana Segala

The author compares two (Polish and Yiddish) versions of two stories writen by Kalman Segal (1917-1980) - a bilingual, modem Polish-Jewish writer who translated his works from Yiddish into Polish by himself. The pictures of a little jewish town (shtetl) in both tales are slightly different. The shtetl in Polish version is described in a more detailed way. This is connected with the writer’s tendency towards explanation of jewish culture to a Polish reader. The paper discusses different ways in which Segal translated symbols of his culture

"The purebred aces", or Samuel Jakub Imber's look at Polish-Jewish relations

Samuel Jakub (Shmuel Yankev) Imber (1889–1942), a Yiddish and Polish poet and critic, can be regarded as the spiritual father of modern Yiddish poetry in Galicia. He wrote also for Polish- ewish press, trying to improve the image of Jews in the eyes of their Polish fellow citizens. This matter was a major concern already in his long poem Esterke (1911), one of the high points of Imber’s oeuvre in which he called for a harmonious coexistence of Jews and Poles. In the 1930s, when antisemitism was on the rise in Poland, Imber published two collections of articles in Polish: Asy czystej rasy [The Purebred Aces; 1934] and Kąkol na roli [The Weed in the Fields; 1938], in which he sought to counteract the ways in which Jews had been portrayed by the Polish nationalist press. The article discusses the significance of the poem Esterke and of selected texts from both collections of articles

BRAF and TERT mutations in papillary thyroid cancer patients of Latino ancestry.

Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is the second most commonly diagnosed malignancy in U.S. Latinas and in Colombian women. Studies in non-Latinos indicate that BRAF and TERT mutations are PTC prognostic markers. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and clinical associations of BRAF and TERT mutations in PTC Latino patients from Colombia. We analyzed mutations of BRAF (V600E) and TERT promoter (C228T, C250T) in tumor DNA from 141 patients (75 with classical variant PTC, CVPTC; 66 with follicular variant PTC, FVPTC) recruited through a multi-center study. Associations between mutations and clinical variables were evaluated with Fisher exact tests. Survival was evaluated with Kaplan-Meier plots. Double-mutant tumors (BRAF+/TERT+, n = 14 patients) were more common in CVPTC (P = 0.02). Relative to patients without mutations (n = 48), double mutations were more common in patients with large tumors (P = 0.03), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.01), extra-thyroid extension (P = 0.03), and advanced stage (P = 6.0 × 10-5). In older patients, TERT mutations were more frequent (mean age 51 years vs 45 years for wild type TERT, P = 0.04) and survival was lower (HR = 1.20; P = 0.017); however, given the small sample size, the decrease in survival was not statically significant between genotypes. Comparisons with published data in US whites revealed that Colombian patients had a higher prevalence of severe pathological features and of double-mutant tumors (10 vs 6%, P = 0.001). Mutations in both oncogenes show prognostic associations in Latinos from Colombia. Our study is important to advance Latino PTC precision medicine and replicates previous prognostic associations between BRAF and TERT in this population

The HABP2 G534E polymorphism does not increase nonmedullary thyroid cancer risk in Hispanics.

Familial nonmedullary thyroid cancer (NMTC) has not been clearly linked to causal germline variants, despite the large role that genetic factors play in risk. Recently, HABP2 G534E (rs7080536A) has been implicated as a causal variant in NMTC. We have previously shown that the HABP2 G534E variant is not associated with TC risk in patients from the British Isles. Hispanics are the largest and the youngest minority in the United States and NMTC is now the second most common malignancy in women from this population. In order to determine if the HABP2 G534E variant played a role in NMTC risk among Hispanic populations, we analyzed 281 cases and 1105 population-matched controls from a multicenter study in Colombia, evaluating the association through logistic regression. We found that the HABP2 G534E variant was not significantly associated with NMTC risk (P=0.843) in this Hispanic group. We also stratified available clinical data by multiple available clinicopathological variables and further analyzed the effect of HABP2 on NMTC presentation. However, we failed to detect associations between HABP2 G534E and NMTC risk, regardless of disease presentation (P≥0.273 for all cases). Therefore, without any significant associations between the HABP2 G534E variant and NMTC risk, we conclude that the variant is not causal of NMTC in this Hispanic population

The role of cultural heterogeneity in strengthening the link between family relationships and life satisfaction in 50 societies

We argue that the importance of family relationships for individual well-being varies across societies as a function of a society’s degree of cultural heterogeneity. To examine the role of family relationships, we analyzed the responses from 13,009 participants in 50 societies on their life satisfaction across societies varying in their levels of historical and contemporary cultural heterogeneity. Such heterogeneity creates differences in the frequency of interacting with unfamiliar groups, which leads families to become more central to their members’ satisfaction with life. Multi-level analyses showed that historical and contemporary cultural heterogeneity moderated the pattern such that greater historical or contemporary cultural heterogeneity of society promoted a stronger positive relation between family relationship satisfaction and individual life satisfaction. Our results also revealed that the moderating role of historical cultural heterogeneity was more reliable than that of contemporary cultural heterogeneity. These findings demonstrate the importance of societal demography in shaping people’s psychological processes in different historical periods, suggesting a universal, trans-historical cultural process.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Role of Cultural Heterogeneity in Strengthening the Link Between Family Relationships and Life Satisfaction in 50 Societies

We argue that the importance of family relationships for individual well-being varies across societies as a function of a society’s degree of cultural heterogeneity. To examine the role of family relationships, we analyzed the responses from 13,009 participants in 50 societies on their life satisfaction across societies varying in their levels of historical and contemporary cultural heterogeneity. Such heterogeneity creates differences in the frequency of interacting with unfamiliar groups, which leads families to become more central to their members’ satisfaction with life. Multi-level analyses showed that historical and contemporary cultural heterogeneity moderated the pattern such that greater historical or contemporary cultural heterogeneity of society promoted a stronger positive relation between family relationship satisfaction and individual life satisfaction. Our results also revealed that the moderating role of historical cultural heterogeneity was more reliable than that of contemporary cultural heterogeneity. These findings demonstrate the importance of societal demography in shaping people’s psychological processes in different historical periods, suggesting a universal, trans-historical cultural process