Historical Evidence
Many secondary sources – encyclopaedias of Jewish culture, history and religion – include an entry on Potocki, a Polish magnate and member of the powerful Potocki family, who converted to Orthodox Judaism in 18th-century Netherlands and who, after his return to Vilna, was tried by an Inquisition court which sentenced him to burning at the stake. Polish (ex. Janusz Tazbir and Jacek Moskwa), Lithuanian (Rimantas Miknys) and Western (Magda Teter) historians who have studied the story of Potocki, however, believe it to be invented, although it is unknown when or by whom (Moskwa points to a possibility that the author was Kraszewski himself, who is known to have invented some tales he claimed were true). Teter mentioned that the story ("a carefully crafted tale of conversion") was likely created and developed as a "response to a number of challenges that the Polish Jewish community faced from the mid-eighteenth century".
Read more about this topic: Abraham Ben Abraham
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or evidence:
“Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Yet in spite of all they sang in praise of their “Eliza’s reign,” we have evidence that poets may be born and sing in our day, in the presidency of James K. Polk.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)