Mobilizing the Shtetl: Betar and the Quest to Transform Small-Town Jewish Life in Interwar Poland

Ruth Gay Seminar in Jewish Studies Inaugurated in 2008 thanks to a major gift from the family of Ruth Gay, the Ruth Gay Seminar in Jewish Studies was established in honor of Ruth Gay (1922-2006), the noted American Jewish historian and writer. This series is given by scholars who use the YIVO Archives and wish to share their research with the public. Admission: Free

Throughout the 1930s, Jewish political movements in Warsaw set out to transform the hearts and minds of Jewish youth in small towns across Poland. Among these urban activists were the leaders of Betar, the youth movement of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Revisionist party. Armed with longstanding stereotypes about shtetl life, Betar leaders were certain that bringing “modernity” and “progress” to these towns would mobilize their youth for the Zionist cause. Drawing on YIVO’s collection of youth autobiographies from the 1930s, and previously unexamined correspondence between Betar’s headquarters in Warsaw and its small-town outposts, Daniel Heller (McGill University) reveals the tensions that arose between these urban activists and the young Jews they sought to transform. 

About the Speaker

Daniel Kupfert Heller is an assistant professor of Jewish history in McGill University’s Department of Jewish Studies. His work appears in the Journal of Israeli History and a forthcoming volume of Kwartalnik Historii Żydów. He is currently completing a book manuscript based on his dissertation, “The Rise of the Zionist Right: Polish Jews and the Betar Youth Movement, 1922-1935.”