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This chapter considers five a priori issues: what Jews are, the status of the Exile (galut), how Jews fit into history, which metahistory to choose, and metahistory as destiny. Anyone who sets out to write about Jewish history — no matter what period or place — confronts these basic questions about the enterprise before actually undertaking the task. One's position on these fundamental problems creates a framework within which the research will be presented and by which the narrative will be significantly affected. Before the development of postmodern consciousness, the engagement of Jewish historians with these issues was usually oblique and tacit, their positions typically presented as part of the conclusions of their research. However, it is now apparent that these positions represented prior assumptions that, in part, guided that research, and influenced its interpretation and presentation.

This chapter studies Robert Liberles's Salo Wittmayer Baron: Architect of Jewish History (1995). Salo Baron became one of the foremost Jewish historians of the twentieth century and one of the pioneers of academic Jewish studies in the United States. Baron's life was that of a scholar, and included in Liberles's work is a fine attempt to sort out the academic politics which served as a background to his appointments and sojourn at the Jewish Institute of Religion and, later, in the Miller chair of Jewish history and institutions at Columbia University. Liberles places this story properly in the context of the transfer of Judaic scholars and their scholarship from Europe to the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. He also places proper emphasis on the novelty of Jewish history studied in the context of a non-Jewish institution of higher education. And, further, the author chronicles and analyses Baron's ambitions to be heard and respected by the Jewish community beyond the academy and to influence that community through his more popular writings as well as his leadership of such organizations as the Conference on Jewish Social Studies and the American Jewish Historical Society.

This chapter talks about the Jewish historians who looked to the German Jewish experience as the paradigm for the transformation of European Jewry. It reviews the pioneers of Reform Judaism and practitioners of Wissenschaft des Judentums as the key actors in Jewish development. It also explains how Jewish historians constructed a model of change in which new ideas radiated outwards from Berlin and slowly diffused throughout Europe. The chapter considers Jewish historians who looked at developments in Germany from the perspective of liberal states like Britain, France, and the Netherlands, which was problematic as the German states were not in the vanguard of change. It describes the course of Jewish transformation in central Europe that reflected the backward nature of the states in the region.

This chapter examines how the generation born about 1910 found propitious conditions for the creation of a ‘Jewish school’ of Polish literature. Life, including their most inner life, was lived through the Polish language. Yet this life was marked by unexpectedly strong Jewish features. Jews had certainly made themselves felt in Polish literature much earlier. Already at the turn of the century, writers of Jewish descent played an important role in the intellectual elite. Their role was to increase considerably in independent Poland. However, those who desired assimilation had to abide by the tacit understanding that they were not to explore their Jewish experience, at least not in their literature. Thus, the first intellectuals to surface as identifiably Jewish in their work were critics and historians; then came poets. Yet prose writers were significantly absent. Novelists base the substance of their work on their life experience, particularly the experience of youth; the Polonized Jews preferred to leave their past in the dark.

This chapter turns to King Jan III Sobieski’s factor Jakub Bezalel — known from the sources mainly as Becal (Becall). Becal was one of these elevated court Jews. He was exceptional in that he was one of the few Jews whose biography appeared in the Polski słownik biograficzny. He is also mentioned in the works of Polish historians, most often in the context of the Grodno Sejm of 1692–1693, during which he was accused of blasphemy. In the works of Jewish historians he is represented as a member of a persecuted group who, in unfavourable circumstances, managed to attain high positions through their personal merits and talents.

This chapter details the career of Ezra Mendelsohn, a preeminent scholar of modern Jewish history, who died in Jerusalem on May 12, 2015. One of the founding editors of Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Mendelsohn taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until he retired in 2002 at the age of 62, after which he taught for several years at Boston University, worked on various historical projects, and served for eight years as one of the editors of Zion, the Hebrew-language periodical of Jewish history. His books include Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915–1926 (1981), which shows how Poland transformed into a country that enabled Jewish nationalism to thrive; The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (1983); and Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art (2002), which was translated into Hebrew in 2006 and was awarded the prestigious Bialik Prize in 2008.

This chapter provides an obituary for Teresa Prekerowa, one of the most prominent and well-respected contributors to these pages. Official recognition of her heroism and devotion was long delayed. The Polish Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy refused her membership, as they had refused it to others, on the grounds that they did not consider rescuing Jews to be a valid form of participation in the Polish underground struggle. It was only in 1985, after she had gained prominence through the publication of her first book, that she was awarded the title 'Righteous among the Nations' by Yad Vashem. Prekerowa turned to the historian's trade later in life, and although she never gained formal academic qualifications or held a formal post, she had a great deal more influence on students and colleagues alike than many an academic with an impressive list of diplomas. She wrote two books and numerous articles of the highest standard, and was an energetic and knowledgeable participant in all the debates and discussions that have animated the question of Polish–Jewish relations over the past few decades.

This chapter centers on Lev Levanda's Seething Times: A Novel from the Last Polish Uprising, which was described as a colorful and artistically flawed novel that covering the events of the Polish uprising of 1863 to 1864. It elaborates on Seething Times's recognition by contemporary Jewish historians, including John D. Klier and Brian Horowitz, who underscore its documentary value. It also talks about the city of G. (Grodno) and the city of N. (Vilna), where Seething Times is set and spans the period from summer 1861 to summer 1864. The chapter mentions Jules Perets, one of Levanda's characters, who wondered if liberated Poland would be fairer towards its people. It points out how Seething Times presents a decisive answer to the question of what a Jew should do when one has chosen the path of enlightenment and realized one's humiliating inequality.

This chapter reviews three biographical works on Jewish historians and historiography. These are “Shmuel Ettinger: Historian, teacher and public figure,” by Yaakov Barna, “Elias Bickerman as a Historian of the Jew,” by Albert I. Baumgarten and “Prophets of the Past: Interpreters of Jewish History,” by Michael Brenner. This chapter analyzes the impartiality and objectivity of the historians in their accounts of the Jewish experience and the presentation of men and events as part of universal history and not as a link between the Hebrew Scriptures and the rabbinic period.