Acknowledgements
Numerous persons provided support during the writing of this book. Above all, I would like to thank Vladyslava Moskalets, whose husband I happen to be, for her advice and for bringing home the latest academic literature despite a lack of shelf space. I am also grateful to two people whom I cannot thank personally anymore: Jacob Goldberg, who continuously broadened my research perspectives during my fellowship at the Hebrew University in 2011; and Piotr GrÄ cikowski, who patiently taught me how to read nineteenth-century Cyrillic manuscripts. I wish also to express my gratitude to (in alphabetical order): Ivanna Cherchovych, Joanna Degler, Stanley Diamond, Ami Elyasaf, Dina Feldman, Karen Forth, Agnieszka JagodziÅska, Neville Lamdan, BartÅomiej Majchrzak, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Agata RybiÅska, Michael K. Schulz, Shaul Stampfer, MikoÅaj SzoÅtysek and Marcin WodziÅski. Two institutions also contributed to broadening the scope of my research. The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy provided me with a grant to carry out social networking analysis and Jewish Records IndexingâPoland shared with me anonymised data from the twentieth century vital records which would have otherwise remained unavailable for research.