This book is on Jews and Poland, and the relations between the two both today and in the past. I speak not only as an observer, but above all as a participant in Polish and Polish-Jewish life. I present an account of problems from my personal perspective, that of a Polish Polish Jew. This puzzling phrase means that I am a Polish Jew from Poland, or a Polish Jew who is a Pole. To make it clear to the reader where I come from, my personal development is presented in the introduction.

The introduction as well as the other eight essays are adapted from papers published in the past decade (with the exception of one printed in 1989), mostly after the year 2000. They are not uniform in character but taken together they give, I hope, a picture of contemporary Polands Jewish dimension, together with the historical background of the issues.