The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the memory of a "Polish woman" – in Hebrew: "ha-Polaniya" - in the collective memory of Israeli travelers with Polish origins, who recently started to visit Poland for a leisure tourism. By using the conception of a dynamic memory (Rigney 2008) and travelling memory (Erll 2018), together with the remediation (Bolter i Grusin ca.2003) of the memory (Erll 2018) I will trace the image of "ha-Polanija" in Hebrew-language media of Israeli tourism, showing the remadiations of the former memory of this figure in the modern sources.
„Ha-Polaniya" which can be literary translated as „the Polish woman" is a well-known figure in Israeli cultural memory. Formed with the waves of Jewish emigration to Israel by an cultural clash between Israeli culture and customs of the Jews with Polish origins (Milner 2003), it became one of a standardized character (Kuipers 2011) of Israeli ethnic jokes about Jews with different origins with a well-defined set of personality traits such as passive-aggressiveness (especially towards her husband and son), overprotectiveness and the constant fear of what the neighbor will say (Lēv 1989). With the dynamic of cultural memory practices the theme of „Polish woman" remediated from the oral culture of jokes into popular creation of "the three Polish woman" in the satirical Israeli TV show "Zeu ze", literary metacommentary on the meaning of the figure in Eleonora Lev's book: "The certain kind of orphanhood" (Lēv 1989), stand-up interpretations, such as performed by Dorit Pelef Harpez as well as to the form of gadgets from the shop „Oy Vey" and internet memes.
Together with the growing popularity of Israeli leisure tourism in recent years )Karmel, 2017) a need of finding a way to describe the new experience is growing. The figure of the Polish women happened to be a useful premeditation (Erll 2018), providing language, metaphors and cultural images. References to "the Polish women" started to be used in Israeli tourism-related media such as articles, blogs, short-movies and social media. In my paper I will reflect on the usage of this figure. What role play allusions to well-known saying of: "Ha-polaniya": "I will sit here alone in the darkness" in the transformation of the memory of Poland from Holocaust-related to entertainment-focused? What is the place of "ha-Polaniya" in the narration on Polish culinary scene where typically Israeli image of Polish-Jewish cuisine meets the reality of modern Polish restaurants? What kind of convergences of the memory of Polish society and the memory of Israeli Jews with Polish can be noticed? What kind of (un)convergence between history-related associations with Poland and new experiences of leisure tourism are created by using the figure of "the Polish woman"?
