FAMILIARIZATION WITH THE POLISH DIASPORA. SELECTED LEGENDS OF THE MEDIAEVAL JEWS

There is no need to prove the significant role played by legends, myths and stereotypes in the history of the world. Also in the Polish lands, we can find many stories connected with the history of the Jews. There is still no comprehensive study on legends concerning Jews in mediaeval Poland, but we already have the book by Haya Bar-Itzhak, a professor of Comparative Hebrew Literature at the Haifa University.1 An exception here may be the well-known legend about the love affair between King Kazimierz Wielki (Casimir the Great) and the Jewish girl Esther, which has been widely described in many works. Of special importance is the book written by the eminent literary historian and linguist, Chone Shmeruk, entitled “Legenda o Esterce w literaturze jidysz i polskiej ” (The Legend of Esther in Yiddish and Polish Literature).2 In the Jewish Diaspora, that is in exile, the myths and legends created by the Jews played a variety of functions. An ethnologist, Olga Goldberg-Mulkiewicz, follow-ing the Mircea Eliade’s idea of consecrating the place of settlement, showed that, in the context of the Polish Diaspora, the local Jewish legends played a role in getting familiarized with the foreign place and country.3 There were also legends in Poland