Żydzi Wschodniej Polski. Seria VIII, Artyści żydowscy

Abstract

The present volume brings together the proceedings of the 8th Conference “Jews of Eastern Poland,” organized in 2019, which focused on “The Worlds of Jewish Artists from Central and Eastern Europe. Biographies – Legacies – Literary Histories.” The Conference began on 6th May, 2019, in the Lecture Hall of the Łukasz Górnicki Library (Książnica Podlaska), 14 a M. Skłodowskiej-Curie Street. The event was co-organized by the Chair in Philological Studies “East – West,” in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Białystok; the Scholarly Society “Oikoumene”; and the Sleńdzińscy Gallery in Białystok. The Organizing Committee was headed by Professor Jarosław Ławski (UwB) and Łukasz Zabielski, PhD (Książnica Podlaska). The scholars from Poland, Ukraine and Great Britain discussed the following thematic fields: - The world of Jewish Artists in the 19th and 20th centuries: their histories and artistic achievements. - Jewish artists from Białystok and parts of Eastern Poland. - Jewish artists from Eastern and Western Europe, and from America: their migrations, collaborations, and returns. - Rosa Raisa: her biography and artistic achievements. - Jewish artists in their local communities: musicians, painters, actors, singers, photographers, etc. - The Eastern European Jewish world in the imagination of contemporary Western and American artists. - Jewish artists during the Holocaust. - The role of art in the reflection of Jewish thinkers. - The memory of Jewish art in the literature of the 19 th and 20th centuries. - Festivals of Jewish culture and a contemporary form of commemorating the Jewish world. Twenty-one scholars from Białystok, Cracow, Warsaw, Ivano-Frankovsk, Oxford, Lublin, Gdańsk, Katowice, Słupsk and Suwałki took part in the Conference sessions. This year, the Conference’s patron was Rosa Raisa (Róża Bursztyn, Rosa Burchstein), who was born in 1896 in Białystok and died in 1963 in Los Angeles. Raisa spent several years in the town on the river Biała, then moved to Italy, and soon became a famous opera singer, performing in Naples, Parma, Philadelphia, London, Chicago, and Milan (La Scala). In the paper titled “Rosa Raisa – the Life of an Artist,” Joanna Wildowicz outlined Raisa’s biography and presented a radio interview with the prima donna, in which the Białystok years are recalled with nostalgia. The first day of the Conference was divided into two parts: after the early plenary sessions and lunch, the participants continued their discussions in the Sleńdzińscy Gallery (Waryńskiego Street, the building of an old synagogue), and then took part in the walking tour “Following the Traces of Białystok’s Jews,” guided by Iza Szymańska. In the Gallery, the participants were welcomed by Director Joanna Szczygieł-Rogowska, who presented various Judaica from the institution’s repository. On the second day, the Conference proceedings continued again in the Łukasz Górnicki library, starting with the panel “The Remembrance of Jewish Culture in Poland and Eastern Europe,” chaired by Professor Jarosław Ławski. The discussions centered not only on the history of Polish-Jewish relations but also on the current political tensions between Poland and Israel. The panel was followed by the presentation of eight papers. The conference ended with coffee, snacks, and less formal but still fruitful talks. The papers included in the present volume are grouped in three parts: “I. Female Artists” (presenting writers and singers); “II. Writers” (analyzing Polish and American literature); and “III. Beyond Words: Paintings and Sounds” (focusing mainly on painters from Central and Eastern Europe). The volume was edited by Professor Jarosław Ławski, who coordinates the project “Jews of Eastern Poland,” and Joanna Wildowicz, MA, a reader at the University of Białystok. The 9th Conference “Jews of Eastern Poland,” this time dedicated to “The Jewish Child,” will be organized from 18th to 19th May, 2020, in Białystok.