Who Will Say Kaddish?: A Search for Jewish Identity in Contemporary Poland

Who Will Say Kaddish? is an exploration of the fragile resurgence of Jewish life and identity in post-Communist Poland. By the eve of the Holocaust, Poland was home to the second largest Jewish population in the world. By war's end, its Jews had been exterminated and their once-vibrant culture all but destroyed.

In this book Larry Mayer and Gary Gelb, themselves descendants of Polish Jews, explore reports that Jewish life is being rekindled in modern Poland. What they discover are three generations of Jews-Holocaust survivors and
their children and grandchildren-with differing historical perspectives. As survivors' descendants learn of their hidden Jewish heritage through deathbed revelations, a compelling drama about personal identity unfolds. Mayer and Gelb chronicle a new chapter in the life of Poland's Jewish community as the present generation seeks to celebrate its members' recent freedom and to honor the rich traditions of their forebears.

Through interviews, photography, reportage, and personal memoir Who Will Say Kaddish? creates a sociocultural portrait of the multilayered community of renewed Jewish life and tradition in Poland that has emerged since the fall of the Communist regime in 1989.

Author: Larry Mayer
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 06/01/2002
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.93lbs
Size: 10.28h x 8.26w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9780815607199