Revisiting Poland's Jewish "lucky charms"
As small as a coin or bigger than a person, Jewish figurines are ubiquitous in Poland. Tourists pick up these ornaments – which function as toys, good luck charms or nostalgic objets d'art – at souvenir stalls in Krakow, Gdansk or Warsaw; locals buy them in restaurants, gas stations and department stores.
Erica Lehrer, the Canada Research Chair in Post-Conflict Memory, Ethnography, and Museology, is currently in Krakow curating Souvenir, Talisman, Toy an exhibition and international, intercultural dialogue project that seeks to understand and debate the popularity and meaning of the controversial figurines.
“The goal of the project is to showcase the long history and variety of cultural, religious, economic, and political influences on the figurines, and to foster dialogue among different perspectives on their meaning,” says Lehrer, who is the director of Concordia’s Centre for Ethnographic Research & Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence (CEREV).
“We’re experimenting with how curators can use exhibitions as sites to learn from the public, rather than only teaching them.”
Traditionally made of wood or clay, the figurines are now commonly made of plasticine, metal or ceramic. Today they often hold coins; small portraits of Jews counting money are also popular. These depictions hark back pre-World War II Poland, when Jewish figurines were carved as part of Christian rituals associated with Christmas or Easter. After the war, the new communist state encouraged a practice of "secular" folk carving. “Carvers were representing the Jewish neighbours they remembered,” says Lehrer. “With the rise of Jewish tourism in the 1990s, the form became a tourist souvenir, for Jews and non-Jews.”
"The figurines represent a mix of memory, myth, and magical thinking," Lehrer says. She adds that they are important because they are a point of major contention between local Poles and foreign visiting Jewish tourists, who often are offended by the what they see as anti-Semitic representations of Jews counting money.
Since its launch last Sunday, Souvenir, Talisman, Toy has garnered significant press attention, including articles in most major Polish newspapers. Lehrer has also been interviewed several times by Polish radio and TV stations.
The bilingual (English-Polish) exhibition, featuring over 200 Polish Jewish figurines from collections in Europe, Israel, and North America, is currently on display until July 14 at the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Krakow as part of the city’s 23rd annual Jewish Culture Festival. Visitors are encouraged to record their thoughts and responses in notebooks throughout the exhibition, or in recorded interviews.
There will also be two panel debates; one of them, a comparative discussion titled “Little Black Sambos, Cigar Store Indians... and Lucky Jews with Coins? Minorities, Kitsch, and Stereotypes on Both Sides of the Atlantic,” will feature Concordia University faculty members Heather Igloliorte (Art History) and Monica Patterson (CEREV/History Banting Fellow). Concordia University students Lauren Ramsey (Honours, Public History) and Lizy Motowski (Honours, English & Creative Writing) are serving as assistants to the exhibition project alongside a team of Polish student-volunteers.
The project, which received a major grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), grows out of Lehrer’s work at CEREV, and was workshopped by her students in a Fall 2012 Public History course.
Related links:
• Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence
• More about Dr. Lehrer’s research on Poland’s Jewish figurines
• Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Krakow
• Jewish Culture Festival
• "Concordians abroad: Souvenir, Talisman, Toy in Krakow, Poland" - NOW, July 18, 2013