An Excerpt from Chapter: Everyday Life
Social Mobility
The living conditions within the Warsaw Jewish community in the interwar period allowed for social mobility within Jewish society. This mobility did not necessarily involve economic advancement but was expressed in the acquisition of education, an openness to general culture and a developing connection with the local intelligentsia. The location of the Jewish neighborhood near the political and cultural centers of the city and the country played an important role in this.
Desire for economic and social change led to a move from apartment to apartment within the Jewish neighborhood. For example, a wealthy family of 7 that came to Warsaw might initially find itself in a 4-room apartment at the intersection of Smocza-Pawia streets (border of Compound III and V). The area was perceived by the family as inferior, leading the family to move to an elegant 5-room apartment on Ceglana Street (Compound VI next to Compound VIII). 
Shulim Rosenberg's life story serves as a good example of this phenomenon. Shulim's father was a shoemaker. His family lived in a small room with a kitchen located above a workshop with family members sleeping in the tiny kitchen. At a young age, Shulim stopped studying in heder because the family could not afford it. Among their neighbors in the building were educated people, whose children included two doctors and a singer. Their house even had a piano – the essential symbol of class identity in that period. Under the influence of these neighbors, together with that of his older brother – a worker who was involved in writers' circles (that included, among others, Isaac Bashevis Singer) – Shulim enrolled himself in school when he was just a ten-year-old, and began reading books he borrowed from one of Warsaw's libraries. Having managed to save a small sum of money from his work as a tailor's apprentice, he bought a ticket to a concert at the Philharmonic. He describes the experience “as having been born again.” As an adult, Shulim joined the Jewish intelligentsia and befriended maskilim, writers and artists, such as Marek Edelman of the Bund and the artist, Yosl Bergner. 
The processes of acculturation also affected the Orthodox Jewish community in Warsaw. In Hassidic circles, it was the women carried the banner of acculturation. Many of them studied in schools where the language of instruction was Polish. They read Polish literature, attended Polish theater and dressed according to the modern fashions of the Warsaw elite. Regarding the process of acculturation in traditional society we find the following description:
A new era arrived and the first to march into this era were the daughters of the wealthy Hassidim [...] little girls are suddenly grown up and now they appear in silk dresses. [...] They are visited by young, unfamiliar boys with shaved faces, who come from distant worlds [...] The parents look at them with apprehension, because they disappear with the girls to an unknown world. Matchmaking today is arranged out of "love", and love makes use of a foreign language. They read books and dance in halls and cafes that are foreign [...] The girls go to a place where the city lights shine. 
A notable example of the change led by women from the ultra-Orthodox society in Poland is the story of Ita Kalisz, the granddaughter of Simcha Bunim Kalisz, the Rebbe of Warka and the daughter of Menachem Mendel Kalisz, the Rebbe of Otwock. Ita was educated by private teachers, who recognized her thirst for learning. Her cousin smuggled newspapers and books in Yiddish and Polish into her home for her to read. She slipped into shows and concerts through the back door, entering them in the dark so she would not be noticed. At the end of the show or concert she fled from the hall before the lights were turned on. She developed a sincere passion for the outside cultural world. As a woman who was not required to study in heder, it was easier for her to maintain her interaction with the secular world. Ita continued her secret studies even after she was married off at the age of fifteen to a student her father chose for her, who was from a family of Gerrer Hasidism. The choice of this arranged marriage was part of her father’s strategy to keep his daughter within Hassidic world and protect her from the winds of secularism swirling in the atmosphere at that time.
In the courtyards of the Hassidic elite, women were expected to be familiar with contemporary Polish literature, so part of the bride's examination meeting prior to the marriage – carried out by females family members of the prospective groom – included an examination of the candidate's knowledge of the writings of contemporary Polish authors. Ita passed this part of the examination with flying colors.
Her father's plan was unsuccessful. The marriage failed, as Ita continued to draw closer to Western culture and left her husband's house. She returned to Warsaw, began working in various public institutions, and rented a room on Kremlicka Street together with her two sisters who had also abandoned their parents' house and their religion. This room served as a "literary salon" for young Jewish intellectuals, poets, artists and writers, who, like the daughters of the Kalisz family, came from Hassidic homes. The place served as a cultural space for people who, like the granddaughters of Simcha Bunim Kalisz, grappled with the transition from the old, Hassidic world to the new, secular world. After a stay of several years in Berlin where she again established a literary salon, Ita Kalisz moved to Paris and from there immigrated to Israel.   

Ita Kalisz
Describing the meetings that took place in her “salon” in Warsaw, Ita writes:                               
And so, our modest four-by-four room served as a shelter for these boys and girls, the descendants of Grand Rabbis and prominent Hasidim in Poland. But there were differences between the world of boys and that of the girls that was rooted in the foundational differences in the education they received and their daily lives in their parents' homes. While the girls were more easily freed from their parents' guardianship and they pulsated with a spirit of independence, the Hassidic boys felt as if their peyot were still rolled up behind their ears, and a Hassidic melody still buzzed within them. These young men were still connected to the fading reality of a yesterday that was quickly fading, and in the very roots of their souls still felt close to it. These boys, who had their eyes on a better world, were caught between the culture of the past and the secular culture that was unfolding before their eyes on the Jewish street – and they had a hard time of it. But their lack of means and lack of elementary preparation in secular studies frustrated their aspirations.