Żydzi na Słowiańszczyźnie – legendy początku
The Jews in Slavonic Culture – Legends of the Origins

Summary/Abstract: The paper is a short study of legends as a form of historical imagination. It presents three legends dealing with the origins of Polish Jewry, one of which is a homiletic exposition of the name polin, Hebrew for Poland, whereas the other two refer to the settlement of Jews in Poland and their relations with the surrounding population. The paper attempts to show, first, the narrative strategy of familiarizing a new place and integrating it with the framework of a given culture and, second, the ways in which modern Jewish and Polish historians incorporated these particular legends into their historical narratives thereby strengthening their own stance of the Jewish Question of their day.

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