Originally from Montreal, Yasmine Eve Lucas is a PhD Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her research explores why growing numbers of Poles are identifying as ancestrally Jewish amidst what has widely been recognized as a Poland’s “Jewish revival” (Lehrer 2013). This revival is striking given the controversial historiography surrounding Polish-Jewish relations, the rise of ethno-nationalism, and the fact that 95% of Poland’s population is Roman Catholic. Yasmine’s dissertation investigates the meanings and effects of this Jewish revival by centering the lives and experiences of Jewish-identifying Poles, with a particular focus on Poles who now identify as ancestrally Jewish although they did not previously do so. The following three questions direct her research: what do Jewish-identifying Poles understand as constituting Jewishness, Polishness, and the relationship between these identifications, and how do these understandings come to be? How do Jewish-identifying Poles express their Jewishness, Polishness, and the relationship between these two identifications: in what public or private spaces, among which actors, and through which statements, practices, material forms and aesthetics? What and whom do Jewish-identifying Poles lean on as proof of Jewish kinship—DNA tests, rabbis, genealogists, etc.—and what investments do others have in dis/proving their Jewishness? By exploring Jewish-identifying Poles’ lives, Yasmine seeks to probe broader reasons for and implications of ethno-religious identification.
Alongside her academic work, Yasmine practices visual art and creative writing. Her artwork has been exhibited in a few galleries in Montreal, and her prose and poetry have most recently appeared in Hobart, Fanzine, Barnstorm Journal, and Lunch Ticket (forthcoming). Yasmine is currently working at bringing together art and anthropology through hybrid forms.