Jews and the Polish Spirit: Lamed-vovnik

“How Close are the Polish Jews to the Polish Spirit!”

The first set of moving images of Kazimierz in a “Jewish” motion picture was contained in an American film—Sidney Goldin’s Bleeding Hearts (1913). Set in fourteenth-century Poland, the film described a “Polish paradise” devoid of persecution, where Kazimierz the Great gave Jews refuge from oppression thanks to Esterke’s intercession. ²¹ By addressing the question of the Jews’ place in Polish lands, this successful movie laid the foundations for further representations of Kazimierz as a symbolic image on the Jewish screen. From then on, the landscape of Kazimierz, with its hills, woods, monuments, and river, appeared repeatedly in Yiddish films, recalling the Esterke myth time after time.

During the 1920s, Leo Forbert was the main filmmaker who used images of Kazimierz and the Vistula to represent his vision of Jewish inclusion in the Polish state-building project. He presented such images in a priod when patriotic films extolling the heroic Polish struggle for independence blossomed. ²² Forbert tried to incorporate a Jewish voice into these Polish silent films in order to create a specifically Jewish nuance.

His ultrapatriotic film, Jeden z 36 (Lamed-vovnik), directed by Henryk Szaro, was shot in late 1925, during the short-lived mild optimism around the so-called Ugoda between the government and the Jewish parliamentary group. ²³ The film, whose title recalled the traditional Jewish legend that the world is supported by thirty-six anonymous righteous people, told about Jewish participation in the Polish uprising of January 1863. Jeden z 36 thus transferred a Jewish motif into a Polish patriotic context and evoked an image of Polish-Jewish brotherhood. ²⁴ However, Forbert’s lamed-vovnik, played by Jonas Turkow, is somewhat Christianized. He carries the weight of others’ sins on his own shoulders and sacrifices his life for the lives of his unfortunate neighbors in a shtetl occupied by the Russians during the January uprising. Shot on location in Kazimierz and in Sandomierz, the landscape images evoked the legend of Kazimierz and Esterke, and celebrated the Jewish commitment to the Polish nation that this historical association had produced.

Reviewing the film, Anatol Stern praised the “exalted symbolism of the subject, which in spite of highlighting the exoticism of the Jewish ghetto, remains pan-national and universal.” ²⁵ In essence, Stern represented de-Judaization as universalism, which he regarded as a step forward on the road to Jewish integration into Polish society.

In general, the Polish press received the film favorably. ²⁶ They applauded the representation of Jewish folkloric motifs, mystic legends, and superstitions, which provided a figurative range of colors in this black-and-white film. ²⁷ Jeden z 36 was widely considered to be the best film made in Poland in that year—a view that gave rise to the seemingly ironic situation in which, as one critic put it, “the best Polish film was... a Jewish one.” ²⁸ Yet, in spite of the film’s attempt to suggest a common Polish-Jewish vision, and in spite of its positive reception, Jeden z 36 did not succeed in creating a perception of a single community embracing Poles and Jews together. Indeed, while the Polish press considered Jeden z 36 a Jewish film no matter how de-Judaized it was, the Yiddish press saw it as a Polish one. Critics writing in Yiddish did not accept the disappearance of the traditional Jew (the death of the lamed-vovnik) or the Christianization of the Jewish tradition. Even the most non-political of Yiddish periodicals, like the popular Ilustrirter magazin, spoke about “so-called ‘Jewish films’” that “do not have much in common with Jewish culture and the Jewish spirit.” ²⁹ As a result, Forbert and Szaro’s film remained in the third space. Nevertheless, Jeden z 36 succeeded economically, suggesting that perhaps there was indeed room for the third space to find expression.

21. J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film between Two Worlds ( Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 33–34; Moving Picture World, October 13, 1913, 1424; “The Bleeding Hearts, or Jewish Freedom Under King Casimir of Poland (1913),” IMDB, accessed April 2, 2015, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342129.↩
22. Tadeusz Lubelski, “Film Fabularny,” in Film, kinematografia, Encyklopedia kultury polskiej XX wieku, ed. Edward Zajicek (Warsaw: Instytut Kultury, Komitet Kinematografii, 1994), 119–20.↩
23. About this political agreement see Paweł Korzec, “Heskem memshelet W. Grabski im haNetsigut haParlamentarit haYehudit,” Gal-Ed 1 (1973): 187–92; Moshe Landa, Mi’ut leumi lohem: Maavak Yehude Polin ba-shanim 1918–1928 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar le-toldot Yisrael, 1986), 209–58; Szymon Rudnicki, Żydzi w parlamencie II Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wydawn. Sejmowe, 2004), 175–88.↩
24. Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 144–45; Natan Gross, Toldot ha-kolno’a ha-Yehudi be-Polin, 1910–1950 (Jerusalem: Hotsaʾat sefarim ʻa. sh. Y.L. Magnes, ha-Universițah ha-ʻIvrit, 1990), 34–36. On the portrayal of the Jews in silent movies in Poland, see Daniel Grinberg, “Obraz i cena asymilacji Żydów w filmach fabularnych i dokumentalnych kina niemego,” in Kwestia żydowska w XIX wieku: spory o tożsamość Polaków, ed. Grażyna Borkowska and Magdalena Rudkowska (Warsaw: “Cyklady,” 2004), 397–98, 400–401, 403.↩
25. Anatol Stern, Kino dla wszystkich: dwutygodnik, poswiecony obronie interesów kinematografji polskiej, December 15, 1925, 11.↩
26. Władysław Jewsiewicki, Przemysł filmowy w Polsce w okresie międzywojennym (1919–1939) (Łódź: Uniwersytet Łódzki, 1951), 33.↩
27. Leo Brun, “Nowy film ‘Czerwony błazen,’” Kino dla wszystkich, November 1, 1926.↩
28. Stefania Heymanowa, “Wszystko możliwe!”, Kino dla wszystkich, February 1, 1926, 5.↩
29. “Vegn der noytkayt fun yidishn film,” Ilustrirter magazin 1 (1927): 37.↩