Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust

Referring to the cohort of Polish Jewish historians before the Holocaust that constitute her main topic, Natalia Aleksiun writes, "When they dreamt about Poland, they were dreaming as Jews" (p. 12). Aleksiun thus summarizes the position of a remarkably productive group of scholars. At the heart of this masterful collective biography is the interplay between a historian's obligation to academic objectivity and the engagement with the larger communities to which the historians belong. In Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust, Aleksiun takes a seemingly limited topic and develops it into a thought-provoking study that forces us to confront the purpose of scholarship and questions of national identity.Aleksiun adopts a loosely chronological but more thematic approach. Readers first encounter a detailed review of nineteenth-century historiography, then learn more about the professional training of the core group of historians Aleksiun describes, including Szymon Askenazy, Mojżesz Schorr, Majer Bałaban, Ignacy Schiper, and Emanuel Ringelblum, with special attention to the "Polish orientation" (p. 64) of Galicia. She considers how these historians entered Polish academic life and how they engaged the public, both Jewish and Polish, in their work. Aleksiun concludes with an examination of the themes these historians addressed. Throughout, she explains how this group of historians both professionalized the field and used their work to help build a "decidedly Polish Jewish identity" (p. 262).Aleksiun's work focuses on how these historians joined the academic mainstream, thus marking them as part of an intellectual class relatively few attained, while also reaching out to a larger public. Her work thus bridges a class divide, making it both more comprehensive than her subject would indicate and relevant to those interested in a broader social history. The public these historians hoped to reach included academics in Poland's largest cities and the readers of the Yiddish press in small towns. They hoped for greater tolerance on the part of their academic peers while they also showed younger Jews just how connected they were to the histories of the towns in which they lived. Aleksiun sets out "to retrieve the lost contours of a Jewish communal consciousness—one forged across numerous divisions" (p. 4), and, though she cannot answer all of our questions about the issues she raises, she succeeds admirably. Her work evaluates the influence of these scholars fairly and positively. Though some of their work might not have been widely read, she also notes the number of students enrolled in their classes and the work of institutions such as YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute).More significantly, she reviews thoroughly these scholars' participation in what we would call public history, examining their roles as writers, speakers, politicians, secondary school teachers, archivists, and curators. These scholars employed history in many different contexts—whether they were speaking in the Sejm, writing in the Jewish press, working to educate the rabbinate, or lecturing to community groups. She encourages us to consider what these historians thought about the role of Jews in Poland but also about how their audiences received what amounted to a new interpretation of Polish Jewish history, one that explained the role of Jews in these communities more clearly and completely than had previously been done. Aleksiun writes that these historians focused on three different areas: local histories, Jewish-Gentile relations, and the history of Jewish communal institutions. Though often divided ideologically themselves, these historians made a case for Jews' "equal civic status" in Poland (p. 216). This had two effects that only seem contradictory—their work bound Jews to Poland while also outlining Jewish political, social, cultural, and economic difference. That these effects seem contradictory is only a sign of our failure to recognize the complexity of Jewish life as it is lived among others. Aleksiun's work is an eloquent response to simplistic notions of exclusive national identity, whether expressed a hundred years ago or today.Aleksiun's scholars were engaged in both an "intellectual project" and a "political mission" (p. 215) on behalf of the Jewish nation. This mission was apparent inside the classroom as well, since, like all teachers, they sought to train students to examine topics in need of further attention. Requirements sometimes included work on family genealogy or study of the Jewish communities of students' hometowns (pp. 125, 231). Local studies, seen as building blocks in the development of an emerging historiography, were especially important. History, in both its academic and popular versions, is an example of another area of cultural life in which Jews demonstrated a level of belonging to the Polish community even as they asserted a national difference they rightfully defended.Given the circumstances of the day, it is hard to imagine these scholars could have taken any other position toward their place as Jews in Poland. We must also admit that our own personal backgrounds are never easily separated from our scholarship. Aleksiun grounds any concern about this issue in a richly detailed account of how and why these historians built a solid historiography that allowed young Jews to identify as Jews in Poland while teaching others about their neighbors. Her work offers us a model, showing us how we can and should admit how our own backgrounds affect our work. This model is based in prodigious research, in a mastery of the sources (in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and German) that very few other scholars can match. For all of Aleksiun's emphasis on the ways these scholars reached out to the public, scholarship like that on display here has its own power that should not be underestimated. While not written for a popular audience, Aleksiun's influential work will guide our thinking about the place of Jews in early twentieth century Poland. More generally, Aleksiun implicitly asks us to think about the effect of the writing of history in other contexts. Readers will end up considering how other historiographies—of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union or of slavery in the United States, for example—continue to affect our political life.One of this book's many strengths is that, in telling of the writing of history, Aleksiun reviews that history as well. This is a remarkable volume that students of the field will refer to often, both for views of the field's significant figures and for Aleksiun's straightforward portrayal of their commitment to both scholarship and community. Researchers in related fields will find Aleksiun's description of these scholars' limited professional prospects all too familiar (p. 129). The interplay between objectivity and community also resonates both individually and institutionally, precisely because private donors and community organizations play such an important role in the creation of endowed positions, archives, libraries, and museums.Though a wide-ranging text, Conscious History inevitably leaves some issues unaddressed. For example, Aleksiun's tight focus on Jews in Poland does not leave room for even a brief discussion of the development of Jewish history as a field in other contexts, such as in the United States. In addition, and most lamentably, few sources for the study of the personal lives of these scholars remain, and so Aleksiun is not able to delve closely into their biographies. Instead, she has relied on their work to tell the story of their community in Poland, honoring their professionalism and their memory.