FJRP Blog

The “Barefoot Rabbi” and the Evolution of an Iconic Holocaust Photograph

WEBINAR: JUNE 14, 2026
Please join us for a webinar in Polish, English, and perhaps Hebrew, on June 14, 2026, for a gathering of descendants of Olkusz and the Zagłębie region, including Sosnowiec, Będzin, and Dąbrowa Górnicza, a distinct historical region adjacent to Upper Silesia and historically connected with Lesser Poland. This webinar arose from our talks related to a translation to English of the Krzysztof Kocjan book “Jewish Olkusz.” We realized Olkusz descendants are dispersed over the world but possess elements of a common heritage. Our purpose for June 14, 2026 is to create a friendly platform for keeping the memory alive. A brief portion of time will be allotted for webinar attendees to share their story and a few documents (please email haimbeliak@gmail.com in advance to participate).

WEBINAR: Zygmunt Bauman was one of the great social thinkers of our time: the inventor of the idea of “liquid modernity.” Bauman transformed our thinking about the social conditions shaping our lives today. His own life was shaped by the great social forces that scarred the second half of the twentieth century – war, communism, antisemitism, and forced migration (exile from Poland). His work bears the traces of an outsider (Jew?) who knew all too well the enormous impact that social and political forces can have on individuals and whole societies.

WEBINAR: In the early twentieth century, when the dream of Jewish cultural nationalism in the Diaspora was growing among champions for Yiddish, its leading intellectuals included the “Yiddish historians” who helped to uncover the history of East-European Jews. Before the Holocaust, their mission was to discover and present the formative history of a living people to an audience of educated lay leaders, drawing, where possible, on Jewish sources, in order to help build and fortify a Yiddish-speaking nation. After the Holocaust, their mission became to console its surviving remnant with information about the struggle to survive under German occupation. This book makes Yiddish writings by these historians available in English for the first time, with translations by historian Mark L. Smith.

WEBINAR / March 8 at 10 am, Jewish Renewal in Poland’s webinar Freighted Legacies will interview Igor Golyak, the director of the enormously successful play “Our Class.” Igor Golyak is the founder and muse of Arlekin productions. Our webinar will focus on the genesis of this play in its American version. […]