and has been used to refer to the golden age of Jewish life in Poland. For example, John Klier titled a chapter in his book about Eastern European Jewish history "Poland–Lithuania: 'Paradise for Jews, and Gershon Hundert writes:"The Polish Jewish community was vibrant, creative, proud and self-confident [...]. Their neighbours knew this as well, referring to Poland as Paradisus Judaeorum [...]. The full expression went: 'Poland is heaven for the nobility, hell for the peasants and paradise for Jews'." The process of transformation of this phrase from antisemitic to philosemitic has been described by Piotr Konieczny as an example of linguistic reclamation. The comparison of Jewish and noble classes has generally been described as exaggerated (Hundert himself writes that it was hyperbole), as the Jewish situation in early modern Poland, while comparatively privileged compared to many other classes in the Commonwealth, and to the Jewish position in many other contemporary countries, was hardly idyllic. Norman Davies says Jews "were widely denounced as the chosen instrument of 'the Polish lords'" in Ukraine. In the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews that opened in Warsaw in 2013, a gallery covering the "Golden Age of Polish Jewry" was named, "Paradisus Iudaeorum". The gallery's name became a subject of discussion when in 2016 Joanna Tokarska-Bakir argued that its use for the gallery was disrespectful. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Program Director of the Core Exhibition of the POLIN Museum, says that the intention is to engage the reader in a complex debate going beyond a binary black-and-white oversimplification. In 2017 Kamil Kijek wrote that, out of context, the phrase can indeed be confusing, but within a broader context it is representative of a much more complex, nuanced relationship between Jews and non-Jewish Poles. Latin texts Notes References Further reading Jewish Polish history Social history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Latin proverbs 17th-century Polish literature 1606 works Satirical works Antisemitism in Poland