The Polish Catholic who became the world’s leading expert on Hasidim

Professor Marcin Wodzinski is helping Poles fill a very big hole in their history. ELIZABETH FINKEL talks to him in Wroclaw about his unusual intellectual journey.

Marcin Wodzinski is the world’s foremost expert on Hasidism.  I met him in July at the University of Wroclaw where he heads a thriving Jewish studies department situated in an 18^th century Augustine monastery. It’s just the first of many twists in this surprising tale.

Casually clad in an unstructured blazer and pants, with striking blue-green eyes set in aquiline features, 56-year-old Wodzinski looks the part of a history professor.

The question is: how did a Polish Catholic become the world expert on Hasidim? 

You could say he was at the right time in the right place.

Wodzinski claims to lead “the fastest growing humanities department in the universe”.  Indeed, in the last ten years, as most humanities departments around the world have shrunk, his has ballooned from one to ten faculty members. That growth reflects a hunger by Poles to fill a Jewish-sized hole in their history.  It is a big hole.

That history goes back a thousand years to towns where Jews often comprised a third or more of the population. In this crucible of extreme survival pressure, dozens of diverse movements evolved, from inward-facing mystical Hasidism to the outward facing, free-thinking Bundism.

Wodzinski also has a personal mission. “I believe I’m part of a general trend looking to diversity as a source of tolerance and understanding. There is also the ethic of searching for truth. Truth is a commitment of the historian, to represent that which is the closest to their sincere understanding. This is how we train our students.”