Yiddishkayt | poland

Helix Project 2013

Our newest initiative immerses students in the beauty and complexity of Jewish cultural history and creates a richer, fuller, more inclusive view of Jewish life and history.

Today in Yiddishkayt… March 5 Birthday of Rosa Luxemburg, Revolutionary Philosopher Rosa Luxemburg was born on March 5, 1871 in Zamość, the youngest of five children. Her family lived near the old market square, not far from the home of Y.L. Peretz. She became politically active at a young age and while she finished the gymnasium in Warsaw at the top of her class, she was denied a medal because of her “oppositional attitude toward the authorities.” In 1889, she moved to Zurich where she met exiled Russian revolutionaries and her partner, Leo Jogiches, with whom she...

Today in Yiddishkayt… February 20 Birthday of Meir Balaban, Jewish Historian Meir Balaban (Majer Bałaban in Polish spelling) was born on February 20, 1877 in Lemberg, (later Lvov, Lwów, and today Львів, Ukraine). In 1900, Balaban began his studies in history at the city’s university. He studied under Ludwik Finkel, author of a classic bibliographic work on Polish history and editor of the leading journal Kwartalnik Historyczny (History Quarterly). It was in that journal that in 1903, Balaban published the first annotated bibliography of historical literature on Jews in...

Today in Yiddishkayt… February 17 Birthday of Ossip Dymov (Yosef Perelman), Yiddish Writer Yosef Perelman was born on February 17, 1878 in Białystok. In 1902, Perelman graduated from the Forestry Institute in Saint Petersburg where he earned a degree in land surveying. He took an interest in literature and began writing under the pseudonym Ossip Dymov, named after a character in Anton Chekhov’s classic short story “Grasshopper.” His literary career began as a columnist for a Saint Petersburg weekly called Театр и искусство (Theater and...

Today in Yiddishkayt… February 15 Birthday of Irena Sendler, Polish Resistance Member & Savior of Children in Warsaw Ghetto Irena Sendler (Sendlerowa in Polish) was born Irena Krzyżanowska to a Polish Catholic family in Warsaw on February 15, 1910. Her father, a physician, died from typhus that he contracted during an epidemic in 1917. He was the only doctor in his town of Otwock (about 15 miles southeast of Warsaw) who would treat the poor, mostly Jewish community suffering with this disease. After his death, the Jewish community offered to pay for...