Prof. Scott Ury

I am a Senior Lecturer in Tel Aviv University's dynamic Department of Jewish History where I am also Director of TAU's Eva and Marc Besen Institute for the Study of Historical Consciousness and Senior Editor of the journal History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past.

Grounded at the intersection of social, political and cultural histories, my research explores various aspects of Jewish and east European societies and cultures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  I am particularly interested in questions that probe the very nature of urban society as well as those regarding the various connections between the process of urbanization, the construction of modern communities and the nature of inter-group conflict.  I have also worked on migration, antisemitism and memory within the context of modern Jewish history.

After receiving my BA from the University of California at Berkeley in History, I undertook graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where I wrote my PhD dissertation under the joint supervision of Prof. Ezra Mendelsohn and Prof. Jonathan Frankel, of blessed memory.

Published in 2012, my monograph Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry examines the impact of the urban environment on the development of modern Jewish society and politics in what was then Europe's largest Jewish center, Warsaw.  Throughout Barricades and Banners, I also analyze the influence of urban society, democratic institutions and popular politics on the nature and course of relations between Poles and Jews in turn of the century Warsaw. The book received the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize for outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern Europe or Eurasia in the field of history from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). A manuscript version of Barricades and Banners was awarded a commendation for the Fraenkel Prize for an outstanding work of twentieth-century history from the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, London.  Barricades and Banners has been reviewed in over twenty different forums in English, German, Hebrew, Polish and Yiddish.

I am also co-editor of  six volumes on various aspects of modern Jewish history including, Jews and Their Neighbours in Eastern Europe since 1750, and Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe.

Sponsored, in part, by a generous grant from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), my current research project integrates scholarship and methodologies from urban studies, Jewish studies and hate studies to look at the different ways that various urban spaces influenced and shaped relations between residents of large cities across turn of the century eastern Europe.  

In addition to this research project on the various connections between urban spaces and inter-group relations, I am also co-convener of the newly formed International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism (ICRAR). Founded  in London in 2011, ICRAR is a dynamic group of scholars from Europe, Israel and North America who are committed to pooling their intellectual and institutional resources to re-invigorating the study of antisemitism and its relationship to other racisms (ICRAR_web_version1).  

I am always happy to hear comments and thoughts regarding the different publications, research projects and courses listed on this website.

Monograph

1)    Barricades and Banners:  The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry (Stanford University Press, 2012).

Edited Works

2)  Semion Goldin, Mia Spiro, Scott Ury, eds. Jewish Migration in Modern Times: The Case of Eastern Europe, Routledge, 2019. 

3)  Jews and Their Neighbors in Eastern Europe, 1750-Present, Israel Bartal, Antony Polonsky and Scott Ury, editors, Polin 24 (2011).

4)  Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe, Michael L. Miller and Scott Ury, editors (Routledge, 2014). Also appeared as, Miller and Ury, guest editors,  European Review of History, vol. 17, no. 3 (2010).

5) Artur Sandauer, On Polish Writers of Jewish Descent in the Twentieth Century, trans. Abe Shenitzer, edited by Scott Ury, Studies in Polish Jewry, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2005.

6)  Ela Bauer, Between Poles and Jews: The Development of Nahum Sokolow’s Political Thought, edited by Scott Ury, Studies in Polish Jewry, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2005.

Articles and Book Chapters:

7) "Fear and Loathing on the Streets of Warsaw:  Revolution, Violence and the Rise of Political Antisemitism," (forthcoming, in Polish).

8)  "The Urban Origins of Jewish Degeneration: The Modern City and the End of the Jews," (forthcoming).

9)  "Lost and Found: Jewish Historians, Jewish History and the Narrativization of Order in East European Cities," (forthcoming).

10)  "The Future of the Past: On the Fate of Polish Jewish History in the Global Era," (forthcoming, in Hebrew).

11)  "Dlaczego, kiedy, gdzie i kim są Żydzy Polscy?" (in Polish,revised and translated version of article no. 31, forthcoming).

12) "Civil Society, Secularization and Modernity among Jews in Turn of the Century Eastern Europe," in Secularism and Its Discontents: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times, ed. Alexander (Ari) Joskowicz and Ethan Katz (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 142-167.

13) “The Jews of Poland, 1800-2000,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. Mitchell Hart and Tony Michels (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press, 2016).

14) "Jewish Coffee Houses and the Transformation of the Jewish Public Sphere in Turn of the Century Warsaw," Zmanim, 128 (Fall, 2014, in Hebrew).

15)  "Poland, 1800-1939," Oxford Bibliographies Online: Jewish Studies, ed. David Biale.

16) "In Kotik's Corner: Urban Culture, Bourgeois Politics and the Struggle for Jewish Civility," in Warsaw: A Jewish Metropolis, ed. Glenn Dynner and François Guesnet (Brill, 2015).

17) "Warsaw," Oxford Bibliographies Online: Jewish Studies, ed. David Biale.

18) “O Brother, Where Art Thou? The Search for Inter-Ethnic Solidarity in the Late Imperial Era,” (with Theodore Weeks), Gal-Ed, 23 (2012): 97-130.

19) “Young Jews, Big Cities: Youth, Masculinity and Nationalism in Turn of the Century Eastern Europe,” Zmanim, 119 (Summer, 2012, in Hebrew).

20)  “Dangerous Liaisons? Jews and Cosmopolitanism in Modern Europe,” (with Michael L. Miller) in Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, ed. Gerard Delanty (Routledge, 2011). 

21)  “Jonathan Frankel: In Memoriam,” Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 100, no. 4 (2010): 689-697.

22)  “Auto-Emancipation by Leon Pinsker,” Encyclopedia of Jewish Cultures, ed. Dan Diner (in German, forthcoming, 2012).

23)  “Between Jews and Their Neighbors: Isolation, Confrontation and Influence in Eastern Europe,” (with Israel Bartal) in Jews and Their Neighbours in Eastern Europe, Polin 24 (2011): 3-30.

24)  “Cosmopolitanism: The End of Jewishness?” (With Michael L. Miller) in Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe, European Review of History, vol. 17, no. 3 (2010).

25) “Urban Societies, Popular Culture, Participatory Politics: On the Culture of Modern Jewish Politics,” in Insiders and Outsiders:  Dilemmas of East European Jewry: Studies in Honor of Ezra Mendelsohn, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel and Stefani Hoffman (Littman, 2010).

26)  “‛Juste un café?’ Le rôle des cafés juifs à Varsovie au tournant du XXe siècle,” Les Cahiers du Judaïsme, no. 26 (2009).

27) “The Revolution of 1905 and the Politics of Despair:  Alienation, Friendship, Community,” in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews:  Studies in Honor of Jonathan Frankel, ed. Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 96-110.

28) “Zionism and Zionist Parties in Eastern Europe,” Jews in Eastern Europe: The YIVO Encyclopedia, ed. Gershon David Hundert (Yale Univ. Press, 2008)

29)  “‘On the Gallows!’  The ‘Politics of Assimilation’ in Turn of the Century Warsaw,” Polin 20 (2008); 339-354. Polish version: Duchowość żydowska w Polsce (Kraków, 2001): 327-342. ScottUryAssimilationinPolish

30) “Noble Advocate or Unbridled Opportunist? The Shtadlan of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Polin 15 (2002):  267-299. ScottUry_Shtadlan

31)  “Who, What, When, Where, and Why is Polish Jewry? Envisioning, Constructing and Possessing Polish Jewry,” Jewish Social Studies, vol. 6, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 205-228.

Selected Encyclopedia Entries and Book Reviews:

32) Review of Elissa Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (in Hebrew, forthcoming).

33)  Review of The Revolution of 1905 in Transcultural Perspective, ed. Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal, Slavic Review, vol. 74, no. 3 (2015).

34) "Antisemitism," Encyclopedia of Political Thought, ed. Michael Gibbons (Blackwell, 2015).

35)  Review of David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, Nexus Institute.

36)  Review of Joshua Shanes, Jewish Identity and Diaspora Nationalism in Habsburg Galicia, American Historical Review (AHR), vol. 119, no. 3 (2014).

37)  "Hoveve Zion (Lovers of Zion),"  Encyclopedia of Jewish Cultures, ed. Dan Diner (2012, in German).

38) Review of Samuel D. Kassow, Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Oyneg Shabes Archive, Gal-Ed, 22 (2010): 186-191 (in Hebrew).

39) Review of Jeffrey Shandler, Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture, Gal-Ed, 22 (2010): 202-205 (in Hebrew).

40) "Der Fraynd," "Sabbath Rest," and "The Shtadlan," in Jews in Eastern Europe: The YIVO Encyclopedia, ed. Gershon David Hundert (Yale University Press, 2008, www.yivoinstitute.org/publications).

41) Review of Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia, Jewish Culture and History, vol. 8, no. 3 (2008): 129-131.

42) Review of Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland, Polin, 17 (2004): 429-432