THIS volume of Polin is the second to appear under the imprint of the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in what we hope will be a long and fruitful partnership. Polin is sponsored by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, an associate centre of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and by the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies, which is linked with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University. As with earlier issues, this volume could not have appeared without the untiring assistance of many individuals. In particular, we should like to express our gratitude to Professor Philip Alexander, President of the Oxford Hebrew Centre, and to the Chairman of its Publications Committee, Dr Jonathan Webber. We should also like to acknowledge the indispensable support of Professor Jehuda Reinharz, President of Brandeis University; Professor Jonathan Sarna, Chair, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University; and Mrs Irene Pipes, President, American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies. Like Volume VIII, this volume would never have appeared without the constant assistance and supervision of Connie Webber, managing editor of the Littman Library, Janet Moth, publishing co-ordinator, and the tireless copy-editing of John Was. We also owe a debt to Anna Zaranko and Jolanta Kisler-Goldstein for keeping to a minimum the mistakes in the Polish language.

Plans for future volumes of Polin are well advanced. Volume x will have as its core a series of articles on the history of the Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth down to the partitions at the end of the eighteenth century. Its chief editor will be Gershon Hundert. Volume XI will be devoted to investigating the perspectives which sociology can provide on Polish-Jewish relations and the history of the Jews in Poland. We are also planning volumes on the varieties of the Jewish religious experience in Poland, on the triangular relationship of Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians in Galicia between 1772 and 1914, and on the Holocaust in the Polish lands. We welcome articles for these issues as well as for our section ‘New Views’. We should also welcome any other suggestions or criticisms. In particular, we should be very grateful for assistance in extending our coverage to the areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, both in the period in which these countries were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and subsequently.