Prefaces are always written ex post and placed at the beginning, though it is not clear why, since you rarely start with them anyway, and even more rarely end with them. Therefore, prefaces might just as well be put as an extra chapter randomly in the book or abandoned at all. Sometimes, however—such is the case this time—the preface serves the author himself when it allows him to understand what kind of book he wrote and why he did it. That would be the first and by no means the most important reason for its creation. The second reason arises from the demand for such a preface as expressed by internal reviewers, who appreciated my book, yet they independently asked me to explain—to them and the readers—why it was written.

Well, some time ago I read Journey to Poland, a forgotten book by the eminent German novelist, author of Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin. Döblin, an assimilated Berlin Jew, for whom crossing the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse seemed like crossing some kind of Asian Rubicon, took me on a tour of my own country, albeit one changed by time. We started our journey around Poland a hundred years ago, in the fall of 1924.

First, we went to Warsaw, which was then home to 350,000 Jews occupying the northwestern district of the city. The Jews of Nalewki—I was born in Nalewki and lived most of my life there—seemed to Döblin unlike any human being he had ever met, dressed “in medieval garb, with their own language, religion, and culture.” They settled in Poland because Poland was an open country and welcomed the first Jews already in the eleventh century. Nearly a thousand years of growing together!

I walked with Döblin through the Jewish quarter, passing huge fruit stores, Jews who stood in the street as if sleeping, as if not fully awake. The magnificent synagogue in Tłomackie Street was filled to capacity, mostly by middleclass, enlightened, emancipated Jews. Döblin felt more comfortable among them. The upper seats were taken by women. There were far fewer women than in Catholic churches, as if religious observance was a male occupation among Jews, as if God had nothing to say to women.