FOSTERING A VIBRANT RENEWAL OF JUDAISM IN POLAND
Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland Present
Freighted Legacies (Dziedzictwa obarczone):
The Culture and History of Jewish Interactions in Poland
January 21, 2024
10AM PST / 12PM Chicago / 1PM New York
6PM London / 7PM Warsaw / 8PM Tel Aviv
WATCH THIS FULL WEBINAR HERE
The Concerns of Polish Progressive Judaism's Foremost Leader Rabbi Ozjasz Thon (1870-1936)
A Suddenly Familiar Voice
Professor Shoshana Ronen’s presentation based on her book, A Prophet of Consolation on the Threshold of Destruction will introduce us to the remarkable Polish Progressive Rabbi Ozjasz (Joshua) Thon. Until recently the legacy of Rabbi Thon’s intellectual and lived experience was shrouded by the Holocaust and subsequent events, most importantly the establishment of the state of Israel. Now, Rabbi Thon’s significance emerges for Diaspora communities committed to their national identity and to Jewish cultural and political Zionism. Today’s Jewish world may be astounded to learn that the largest number of Progressive Jews in the world once lived in pre-World War II Poland. Polish Jewry’s dilemmas and lessons are relevant to our moment. In Thon’s thinking Poland’s Progressive Jews would aspire ideologically/religiously to situate between the classical German Jewish reform and the Russian Jewish Haskalah. By following the long and complex career of this pre-Holocaust leader we will learn much about Progressive Polish Jewry. Dr. Ronen will introduce us to the remarkable pulpit orator, parliamentarian, Hebraist, Zionist polemicist and rabbi of the Krakow Temple Synagogue from 1896 – 1935.
Tempel Synagogue-Krakow
This webinar will be in Polish and English simultaneously. Enable the Interpretation mode and choose the preferable language after joining the meeting.
WATCH THIS FULL WEBINAR HERE
PRESENTER
Professor Shoshana Ronen teaches at the Hebrew Studies Department in the University of Warsaw, and was the head of this department (2009-2021). She is the author of In Pursuit of the Void: Journeys to Poland in Contemporary Israeli Literature (2001); Nietzsche and Wittgenstein: In Search of Secular Salvation, (2002); Polin – A Land of Forests and Rivers: Images of Poland and Poles in Contemporary Hebrew Literature in Israel (2007), A Prophet of Consolation on the Threshold of Destruction: Yehoshua Ozjasz Thon, an Intellectual Portrait (2015), and the co-editor of Polish and Hebrew Literature and National Identity (2010), A Romantic Polish-Jew: Rabbi Ozjasz Thon from Various Perspectives (2015), and The Trilingual Literature of Polish Jews From Different Perspectives: In Memory of I. L. Peretz (2017). Currently, she is working on a research called “The Diasporic Turn in Contemporary Hebrew Literature”.
She is interested in modern Hebrew literature, Jewish thought, and modern philosophy. Particularly she is dealing with questions like: The Holocaust in Hebrew literature, Jewish philosophical and theological thinking after Auschwitz; women in Judaism and Hebrew literature, memory, identity and nationhood in modern Hebrew literature, and the diasporic turn in Modern Hebrew literature.
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