Krakow-Paris-Maghreb-Cracow: Circulations, images, and uses of a hand. An ego-history.

This contribution is an ego-history, based on an object that has accompanied the author for some twenty years: a pendant representing a stylized open hand. Offered as a representation of the hand of Fatima, it gradually takes on new meanings as its owner moves through her life: from a Muslim symbol, it becomes a Jewish object—the hamsa—linked to the Maghrebi Jewish culture studied by the author. Born in Cracow’s Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, she noticed this hamsa in the 2000s, at a time when “her” district was undergoing a revitalization that went hand-in-hand with the promotion of Jewish heritage: first Ashkenazi culture, then global Jewish culture. The inauthenticity of this decontextualized Jewish symbol emerged in conjunction with the gentrification of the district. The pendant thus becomes an allegory of both of the author’s favorite themes—North African Jews and Polish Judaism—and of her own path, including the appropriation of her Jewish identity.