Hasidic Pilgrimages and Local Identity: Stories from Four Eastern European Towns

Hasidic Pilgrimages and Local Identity: Stories from Four European Towns offers a compelling account of how Jewish pilgrimage reshapes collective memory in contemporary Eastern Europe. Focusing on Uman and Belz in Ukraine, and Bobowa and Le.ajsk in Poland, the book traces how the return of Hasidic pilgrims transforms local landscapes, narratives, and identities.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, media analysis, and memory studies, the author examines how pilgrims, local residents, and institutions engage with the Jewish past in ways that are often parallel, contested, or only partially connected. Rather than forming a shared framework, these encounters produce multiple, coexisting interpretations of place and history.
By tracing patterns of cooperation, tension, and selective inclusion, this book reveals how collective memory is continuously negotiated in post-socialist contexts, offering new insights into pilgrimage, heritage, and the politics of memory in a changing Europe.