Promised Lands: Jews, Poland, and the Land of Israel

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska is Professor of Comparative Literature at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. Her books include A Shtetl of Various Dreams (2006), My Home Used to Be There... Memorial Books of Jewish Communities (2009, co-editor), Jewish Presence in Absence: The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland 1944-2010 (2014, co-editor), Jewish Writing in Poland (2016, co-editor). She has translated more than 20 books from English and Yiddish into Polish. In 2004 she received the Jan Karski & Pola Nirenska Award for her research on Yiddish literature and language.

Israel Bartal is Avraham Harman Professor (Emeritus) of Jewish History, and the former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2006-2010). He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and one of the founders of Cathedra, a leading scholarly journal on the history of the Land of Israel. Among his numerous publications are: The Jews of Eastern Europe. 1772-1881 (2005, 2006), To Redeem a People: Enlightenment and Nationalism in Eastern Europe (2013) [Hebrew] and Tangled Roots: The Emergence of Israeli Culture (2020).

Jagoda Budzik is an Assistant Professor at the Taube Department of Jewish Studies (University of Wrocław, Poland). She is the author of the book Eretz Sham. Poland in the writings of the third post-Holocaust generation in Israel (in press). Her work combines elements drawn from three major disciplines of literature, cultural and memory studies.

Uriel Gellman is a faculty member at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, where he holds the Marcell and Maria Roth Chair in the History and Culture of Polish Jewry. His fields of interest include the social and cultural history of Jews in Eastern Europe, especially the history of Hasidism, Jewish Orthodoxy, popular religion, and the Haskalah. He is the author of The Emergence of Hasidism in Poland (2018) and co-author of Hasidism: A New History (2018).

François Guesnet is Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. He holds a PhD in Modern History from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg im Breisgau, and specializes in the early modern and 19th century history of Eastern European, and more specifically, Polish Jews. He has held research and teaching fellowships at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), the University of Oxford and Dartmouth College and is co-chair of the editorial board of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry.

Yifat Gutman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her research focuses on memory activism and reconciliation in and after conflict. She also examines memory laws, historians’ involvement in peace agreements, and alternative memorial ceremonies. She is the author of Memory Activism: Reimagining the Past for the Future in Israel-Palestine (2017) and co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism and of Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Society (2010).

Hanna Lerner is Head of the School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on comparative constitution making, religion and democracy, global governance and international labor rights. Her interest in history and art centers around the work of the painter, illustrator, film-maker, graphic designer and social activist Henryk Hechtkopf. She is the author of Making Constitutions in Deeply Divided Societies (2011) and co-editor of Global Justice and International Labour Rights (2016), Constitution Writing, Religion and Democracy (2017), and Comparative Constitution Making (2019).

Antony Polonsky is Chief Historian of the Global Educational Outreach Program, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw and Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University. He is co-chair of the editorial board of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, and the author of many published works, the most recent being The Jews in Poland and Russia, volume 1, 1350 to 1881; volume 2 1881 to 1914; volume 3 1914 to 2008 (2010, 2012), published in 2013 in an abridged version The Jews in Poland and Russia. A Short History.

Wiesiek Powaga was born in Poland. He settled in London in 1981. After graduating with a degree in philosophy at King’s College, London, he worked as a carpenter, translator, correspondent for a music magazine and senior editor for the UK publisher Marshall Cavendish. He has published translations of Polish prose such as the anthologies Deadalus Book of Polish Fantasy (1996) and Modern Polish Short Stories (1996), and books by numerous Polish authors and poets. His discovery of Ksawery Pruszynski’s involvement in the UN “Partition Plan” of 1947 is the background to his Polin Vol. 35 contribution.

Scott Ury is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and Director of the Eva and Marc Besen Institute for the Study of Historical Consciousness and Senior Editor of History & Memory. He is currently the Weinstock Visiting Lecturer of History at Harvard University. His publications include Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry (2012), and several co-edited volumes including, Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism (2021).