1890s
A01=Karen Auerbach
Alicja Lewental
Author_Karen Auerbach
Category=DNB
Category=DNBH
Category=NHB
Category=NHD
Catholicism
Conversion
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Gilded Age
Intermarriage
Jewish history
Jewish identity
Jews
Lewentals
Poland
Poles
Polish
Publishing
Women's history
Product details
- ISBN 9780300270839
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 23 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A dynamic history of life in turn-of-the-century Warsaw through the eyes of a young woman and her Jewish family who converted to Catholicism
When Alicja Lewental’s parents came of age in the middle of the nineteenth century, they believed they did not have to choose between two communities, one Polish and the other Jewish. But by the time Alicja was growing up in the 1890s, it seemed that for some Polish nationalists there was little Jews could do to be accepted unequivocally as Poles. As Alicja entered young womanhood and her father, a prominent publisher, became the target of polemics casting him as an outsider in Polish culture, her mother came to believe that only through her daughters’ conversion to Catholicism and marriage to Catholic men could their family achieve acceptance in Polish society. The Lewentals’ lives and their aspirations for belonging played out in Warsaw’s homes, salons, and bookstores in a modernizing city.
Drawing on Alicja Lewental’s diary and other sources, historian Karen Auerbach provides a unique window onto how the Lewentals and their circle navigated a time of increasing ambivalence about the possibility for Jewish belonging to the Polish nation. As exclusionary notions of what it meant to be Polish gained traction in politics, Alicja and her family encountered these ideas in their private lives.
When Alicja Lewental’s parents came of age in the middle of the nineteenth century, they believed they did not have to choose between two communities, one Polish and the other Jewish. But by the time Alicja was growing up in the 1890s, it seemed that for some Polish nationalists there was little Jews could do to be accepted unequivocally as Poles. As Alicja entered young womanhood and her father, a prominent publisher, became the target of polemics casting him as an outsider in Polish culture, her mother came to believe that only through her daughters’ conversion to Catholicism and marriage to Catholic men could their family achieve acceptance in Polish society. The Lewentals’ lives and their aspirations for belonging played out in Warsaw’s homes, salons, and bookstores in a modernizing city.
Drawing on Alicja Lewental’s diary and other sources, historian Karen Auerbach provides a unique window onto how the Lewentals and their circle navigated a time of increasing ambivalence about the possibility for Jewish belonging to the Polish nation. As exclusionary notions of what it meant to be Polish gained traction in politics, Alicja and her family encountered these ideas in their private lives.
Karen Auerbach is associate professor at the University of North Carolina, where she specializes in Jewish history, the Holocaust, and Eastern Europe. She is the author of The House at Ujazdowskie 16: Jewish Families in Warsaw after the Holocaust. She lives in Durham, NC.
