This book had begun long before I formally embarked on it. During my summer break of 1994, after my first year of graduate studies in Jewish history at Columbia University, I returned to Poland to visit my parents and my relatives in my father's hometown of Sandomierz. There, I had an encounter and a heated debate with a local priest about a painting in the local cathedral church depicting Jews in the act of murdering a Christian child. The discussion left me with many questions about Jewish-Christian relations, Jewish-Church relations, and the attitudes of the Catholic Church toward Jews in premodern Poland.

The following fall, it happened that Michael Stanislawski taught a graduate colloquium at Columbia University on the history of Jews in Poland before 1772. In researching Polish and Polish Church historiography on Jews and the Catholic Church in Poland, I found mostly silence about anything that dealt directly with Jewish-Church relations. This silence surprised me because, in my conversations with people in the United States, in Europe, and in Israel, I had found that most people had strong opinions about Polish Jews and the Catholic Church, opinions generally either accusatory or defensive. And thus began my journey that has led to this book.

Searching for answers to my questions on the Church's attitudes toward Jews in Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I found some answers. Yet, I also am acutely aware that there is more to be learned. More questions, in fact, emerged.