EEPXXX10.1177/0888325414550361East European Politics and SocietiesUnderhill / Re-Judaizing the Polish (Studies) Landscape 550361research-article2014 East European Politics and Societies and Cultures Volume 28 Number 4 November 2014 693 –703 © 2014 SAGE Publications Re-Judaizing the Polish 10.1177/0888325414550361 http://eeps.sagepub.com hosted at (Studies) Landscape: http://online.sagepub.com The Doikeyt Model Karen Underhill University of Illinois at Chicago Taking as its starting point the radical transformation of the Polish cultural and historical landscape that has resulted from Poland’s post-1989 Jewish revival, this article presents a proposal for a substantial reconfiguration of nationally and philo- logically based university departments and programs in Central and East European Studies—one that reimagines Polish Studies, Russian Studies, and other Slavic Studies programs as inherently multilingual, culturally pluralistic spaces of encoun- ter, and that effects changes to degree requirements and language requirements that reflect this post-national shift in perspective. Making reference to the concept of doikeyt or “hereness,” a cultural and political attitude promoted within the pre– World War II Jewish world, particularly within Bundist and Yiddishist discourse, that saw Jewish culture and languages as native to Eastern Europe—as belonging in Poland and in Russia—the author asks specifically whether Jewish languages (Yiddish and Hebrew) and courses in Yiddish culture, and by extension other “minority” languages and cultures, should have a place within the curriculum and course requirements that contribute today to a degree or a major in Polish Studies, Russian Studies, or other European literature and language programs traditionally structured around the study of one dominant language and culture. Keywords: Post-National; Polish Studies; Polish Jewish Studies; Jewish Revival; Curriculum Development n the past twenty-five years since the 1989 transition to democracy, the Polish Ilandscape—physical, cultural, and scholarly—has been transformed by the Jewish revival; by the emergence of new narratives that emphasize Jewish belonging in Poland—now, in the past, and in the future. The new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened its doors in April 2013 on the site of the Rapoport memo- rial to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, offers an architectural metaphor for this paradigm shift, projected into the urban landscape of Poland’s capital city (Figure 1). The museum building, begun in 2007, now fills a previously empty space in the heart of Warsaw—a space of loss that, together with the monument, spoke to the heroism of the Warsaw ghetto fighters, to the murder of Warsaw’s Jews and the destruction of East European Jewish culture in Poland and Europe, and to the ago- nizing absence left in its wake. Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on May 16, 2015 694 East European Politics and Societies and Cultures Figure 1 Photo of the Museum (MHPJ) facing the Ghetto Heroes Monument, Warsaw Photo: Wojciech Kryński/ Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The positioning and sheer size of the new Museum testify to the massive shift in emphasis that has taken place within narratives of the Jewish past and present of Poland. Architecturally, the building, designed by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki, honors, interacts with, and to some eyes overshadows the monument, making a strong visual statement about the changing place of holocaust memory within the longer picture of Polish/Jewish1 memory and history. In these new nar- ratives, Poland or Polin, understood expansively as the lands of the historical Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, including what would become the Russian Pale of Settlement, is no longer to be understood only as a place of Jewish death and destruction but rather primarily as a place of one thousand years of Jewish life: Poland as the European homeland of Ashkenazi Jewish culture, and the birthplace of modern Jewish culture and consciousness in at least four languages: Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, and Russian. The symbolic emphasis in the new narratives shifts from the memorial to the bridge—between the Jewish past and the Jewish future— that stretches across the terrible rupture of the Holocaust, brought by all of six years in that long history. Within the space of the new museum, this concept is realized as a literal bridge that connects two areas of the museum at the level of the second floor, stretching across an irregular chasm that cuts through the center of the museum building (Figure 2). Indeed, it can be argued that throughout the pro- cess of uncovering and renarrating the Jewish past and present, present-day Poland—including the country’s landscapes and cityscapes, growing sections of Polish society, and institutions and individuals in Poland devoted to preserving Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on May 16, 2015 Underhill / Re-Judaizing the Polish (Studies) Landscape 695 Figure 2 Interior bridge in the main atrium, Museum of the History of Polish Jews Jewish heritage and to rebuilding Jewish life—is itself becoming a living bridge between the Jewish past and the Jewish future. Also in these maturing narratives, periods before and after the defining rupture or chasm of the war years become periods of shared Polish and Jewish history and life. Emphasis shifts from witnessing (trauma); to transmitting heritage, knowledge, and Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on May 16, 2015 696 East European Politics and Societies and Cultures memory—to future generations: to Jews from America, Israel, and countries world- wide, who have lost contact with their European Jewish past; to a diverse and grow- ing population of Jewish Poles; and to new generations of non-Jewish Poles, many of whom are learning to see Jewish heritage and history as an integral part of their own Polish heritage. The return to narratives of Jewish belonging in Poland still rings queerer in the Jewish world outside of Poland than it does within Poland itself, but in fact it repre- sents an interesting confluence of needs in both Polish and Jewish communities—as nations and collectivities, and as communities of scholarship, whose members are exploring myriad forms of post-national identity and participation. Two national groups, whose representatives had for centuries developed discourses of Polish or Jewish identity (or, indeed, Polish-Jewish identity) from positions of disenfranchise- ment, subjugation, and existential threat are now faced with the (still-disorienting) responsibility of developing narratives of national or post-national group identity from positions of sovereignty, enfranchisement, and power. That shift, elegantly delineated by Peter Beinart in his book The Crisis of Zionism2 with regard to the international Jewish community, applies differently and powerfully to the situation of Poland following its transition to democracy. Younger generations in a wide range of Polish, Jewish, and Jewish/Polish milieux consider how to frame their own and their communities’ engagements with the world intellectually and politically from positions of power, and from within dominant scholarly and political discourses, while often seeking to preserve or recuperate elements of that idealistic past that was crucially formative for the self-definition of both nations: the proud legacy of strug- gling for sovereignty, democracy, and national and individual dignity. Within Polish and Jewish communities worldwide, the Jewish pasts of Poland, and physically, the diverse Jewish landscapes of Poland, have become an important terrain on which this ethical challenge is being addressed. Certainly within Poland the choice to explore Poland’s Jewish past signifies resis- tance to the inherited, pre-transition model of Poland as an ethnically homogeneous, Polish Catholic nation-state. In this context, repairing the erasure of Jewish history not only strives to right a wrong done to the memory and the dignity of the Jewish people and civilization that perished. It also contributes to and coincides with an affirmation of alternative models of association and identification that are becoming increasingly important within Poland today: civic identities, European and global identities, and affiliation with intellectual, political, artistic and philosophical com- munities that are not bound by political borders, or for whom existing religious and ethnic definitions have become irrelevant or insufficient. For Jewish organizations, philanthropic foundations and individuals from outside Poland that are engaged in the revival, the narration of Poland as a place of Jewish belonging—in the past and in the future—is similarly part of a larger exploration of alternatives to a model of post–World War II Jewish identity that has been supported for half a century by the twin pillars of the Holocaust and Zionism. For Polish/Jewish communities in Poland Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on May 16, 2015 Underhill / Re-Judaizing the Polish (Studies) Landscape 697 themselves, the Jewish revival represents quite simply the return of Jewish life and cultural expression, in all its diversity, to the public sphere. This confluence of needs within Polish and Jewish communities has contributed substantially to the re-Judaization of the Polish landscape over the past 25 years; and to the vitality of Poland’s Jewish revival as an international project, involving indi- viduals and institutions beyond the Polish,