In this week’s section of Life Is With People, written by Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, we learn more about life in the shtetl, specifically the importance of charity to the Jewish community. Performing a mitsva, a commandment, was essential in everyday life. The opposite of a mitsva is an aveyreh, the violation of a commandment. The act of performing good deeds, maasim tovim, was critical and determined one’s fate (i.e. how they will be judged by God). This could include money to the poor, offering words of comfort, or even giving someone a meal (192). Tsdokeh is an umbrella term that refers to social justice. As it is written, “Life in the shtetl begins and ends with tsdokeh” (193). When a baby is born, the father gives money to the poor. When someone dies, mourners give money to beggars found at the cemetery. From a very young age, children are taught to give charity. Performing good deeds and tsdokeh is what made a Jew living in the shtetl a “good Jew” (194). As a Jew, it was your responsibility to give charity, but it was also supposed to bring you joy and satisfaction at the same time.
Zborowski and Herzog portray the shtetl as a place where everyone looks after one another. There were many organizations to help address the specific needs of individuals. When a girl did not have a dowry, the Hakhnosses Kaleh (“Sheltering the Bride”) supported the bride and made sure “she has a ‘beautiful wedding’ with prominent citizens of the community as invited guests” (203). Talmud Toyreh organizations existed to fund the education of poor or orphaned children. If a sick person could not afford their medical expenses, the Bikkur Khoylim provided financial support. Old people were also taken care of by the Moyshev Zkeynim (“Home for the Aged”) if their families were unable to offer them support. The Khevreh Kadisha (“Holy Association”) was responsible for burying the dead, regardless of economic class (204). Moes Khitten was an organization that formed once a year to help Jews celebrate Passover, offering them matsos. According to Zborowski and Herzog, “Every Jew must have the means, not only to observe but also to enjoy the holiday, for enjoyment is mandatory” (205).
As we have previously discussed in class, there is a feeling that Zborowski and Herzog romanticized life in the shtetl and used a sense of nostalgia to build an image of it. Before this section of the book, there was a clear absence of any acknowledgment of what was going on outside of the shtetl, or in general, any troubles facing the Jewish community. However, in this section, there is some brief acknowledgment of pogroms. Pogroms are described as being treated as “acts of God” (224). Jews are supposed to plead with God “for help and mercy” and anyone that fights back or resists, they are considered “un-Jewish” (224). So, although pogroms are mentioned here, the purpose of including them is not to bring attention to occurrences of violence against the community, but rather to describe the traditional Jewish perspective on reacting to it.
I also thought of the movie Europa, Europa when reading this. Solek is forced to hide his Jewish identity in an attempt to survive the Nazis. He hides his identity papers, lies about his name, and avoids public bathing to avoid revealing his circumcision. According to the book, Solek’s resistance and desire to survive would have been characterized as “un-Jewish.” This movie also showcases what the Jewish people went through during the war, the hardships they faced. This depiction of history is what is missing from Zborowski and Herzog’s version of the shtetl.
Zborowski and Herzog do acknowledge a time in which there were “pogroms in Ukraine, when ‘Jewish blood was flowing in the streets’” (236). However, they only mentioned this as an example of when a rabbi, or another prominent figure in the community, was selected to go and beg for mercy and offer a ransom to help save the community against a “bloody gang” (235). The purpose here of including this was to showcase their responsibilities, not to go into great detail about a tragic event and its impact on the community.
Zborowski and Herzog are offering some kind of hint that life in the shtetl was not perfect. However, their mentionings of it are so brief that one could miss it if they weren’t paying close attention. This book serves as a way to remember a place that has been left in the past. It is clear that a real effort was made to give great detail of life in the shtetl. But my question is, what is the motive behind leaving out key details of the past? What is the benefit? Is there a political motive? Or is it simply a desire to romanticize the past by remembering the good and forgetting the bad?
In the article The Jewish Roots and Routes of Anthropology, Jeffrey D. Feldman discusses well-known Jewish anthropologists and how their own perceptions of Judaism and Jewish culture may have had an impact on how they approached their anthropological studies. As Feldman puts it, “I consider how the perspective of the biographer and historian impacts the model of Jewishness that emerges from the study” (111). He argues that the field has “grown accustomed to accepting scholarly ruminations on Judaism as if they were based on ethnographic authority” (110). He acknowledges the lack of investigation and interpretation of an “anthropologist’s Jewishness” in interviews or other documents (110). He says that one must “first retrace the routes of the anthropologist in all of its changing and often contradictory forms” in order to better understand their “Jewishness” (112). Feldman uses the French journalist, Didier Eribon, as an example. Eribon interviewed French anthropologist, Levi-Strauss. Feldman argues that while Eribon conducted his interviews with Levi-Strauss, he assumed that “Jewishness is consistent and singular” (116). This results in one losing their hold of the conversation. He says that this is a “heuristic flaw made fatal by nostalgia for an imagined past” (116). Making the assumption that the Jewish identity is consistent, will only “blind ethnographers and biographers, or worse: lead them inexorably to interpretive paralysis” (116).
Feldman’s argument can be connected to the question I raised when reading Life Is With People. As we learned in class, Mark Zborowski was an anthropologist and a Soviet spy. He grew up in Uman, a Ukrainian town that is not considered to be part of the shtetl. When reading his account of the shtetl, it is important to understand him and his life. While much of what he wrote may be accurate, the reader must question the motive behind his desire to put together a book such as this. Was there a political motive? Was he trying to distract from his criminal activities? Was there a motive behind portraying the shtetl in a particular way and omitting other parts? When reading an anthropologist’s work, we must do research to understand their life and how it connects to their writing. We can’t read everything as facts.
I like that you pointed out the brief mentions of pogroms and struggles outside the shtetl, as in class we had talked about how Zborowski may have wanted to preserve a sense of nostalgia, and in the reading for this week there was a strong focus on idealized community spirit AKA “life is with people”— tzedakah, helping the poor, bikur cholim, etc. I also thought the passage on pg. 224 was interesting as Zborowski describes any sort of resistance as “un-jewish” and claims that Jews accepted death rather than break the Sabbath. It is interesting to think about this knowing how so many Jews during this period did many sorts of things in order to “resist” or survive. To connect to the movie Europa, Europa, Salek struggles with his Jewish identity throughout his survival, as he needs to keep his true identity hidden and does many things besides “accepting death” to survive. The passage on pg. 232 was interesting as it relates to past discussions we had about how to define a Jew. Here, “a ‘real Jew’ is known by his ‘Jewish heart,’ his ‘Jewish head,’ his scrupulous fulfillment of all the mitzvot.” This connects to some of the points made in Feldman’s article as it is hard to think about Jewish anthropologists as just anthropologists without considering their Jewish identity, and how that fits into the discipline. Strauss felt less of a connection to his Jewish roots, while Tax’s connection may have been a bit more clear through his interviews.
I enjoyed reading your commentary, Anabelle. In your post, you emphasize a common theme we have discussed in class- the overly hopeful (and mostly unrealistic) way in which Zborowski and Herzog write about life in the shtetl. You followed up by asking what their motive was in leaving out critical details in their writing. While I am obviously unable to tap into their minds to understand their reasoning fully, Jeffery Feldman offers a possible answer in his own work. In “The Jewish Roots and Routes of Anthropology”, he writes, “to assume that jewishness is consistent and singular..is a heuristic flaw made fatal by nostalgia for an imagined past” (page 116). Perhaps Zborowski and Herzog write in such a nostalgic way because they want to shortcut a longer and deeper history. Perhaps people would rather read a happy story instead of one permeated with darkness. I believe Zborowski and Herzog narrate “Life Is With People: the Culture of the Shtetl” in the nostalgic tone they do because this is the way that they want to remember life in the shtetl.
Feldman, Jeffrey D. “The Jewish Roots and Routes of Anthropology.” Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 1, 2004, pp. 107–25. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149870. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
I really appreciate your connection between “Life is with People” and “Europa Europa.” I think layering on ideas from “Anti-Semite and Jew,” Solek can be viewed as an “inauthentic Jew.” It’s interesting to consider the way in which Herzog and Zeboroski understand shtetl norms about what it means to be “un-Jewish” in comparison with an outsider view like that of Jean-Paul Sartre. The narrative that Jews are passive, non-violent victims has been popular post-Shoah. Who does this narrative serve? Does it fight back against stereotypes of Jews as an evil controlling conspiracy or does it remove guilt from perpetrators of harm by blaming Jews for their own suffering?
I agree with many of the points above, and I also found both Life Is With People and Europa Europa interesting to read and watch in the context of Feldman’s article. One line in the article that stuck out to me was on page 113, about the role of religion in Levi-Strauss’s family: “He discusses his Bar Mitzvah, for example, less as an act of Jewishness than an instance of acquiescence to the will of the family patriarch”. However, it’s hard to deny the Jewishness of a Bar Mitzvah, and while I understand what Levi-Strauss is saying here, it actually gave me more confidence that there’s something to the nostalgic or idealized views of the shtetl that Zborowski gives. To me, this quote from Levi-Strauss seems to describe an active example of nostalgia: an adherence to a tradition because of the value it has held to previous generations. Especially recalling our conversation in class about cultural Jews in the United States, this made me wonder whether nostalgia itself could be considered a characteristic of Jewishness.
I enjoyed reading your blog post. I like how you contrasted Europa, Europa’s perspective on Jewish hardship with the brief mentions of the Pogroms in Life is with People. I think to answer the question you posed about why Zborowski would write the ethnography, it most likely was a mixture of political action and also a way for him to write about something he “knows”. I use knows loosely because he claimed to be raised in a shtetl and came from a small city instead–so who knows his motivation? But I think in questioning his motivations you are also doing the thing that the second article, The Jewish Roots and Routes of Anthropology, brings up about the Jewish Question. You try to unravel the ethnographer to answer the question; I don’t know if it can be answered.
I think you did a really good commentary on our readings, especially when you connected this section of Life is with People to Europa Europa. I completely agree that Zborowski and Herzog failed to acknowledge (on purpose or not) that side of history that we saw in Europa Europa, and instead focused more on idealizing life in the shtetl rather than confronting the harsh realities, like pogroms and persecution, faced by Jewish communities. I thought that this was maybe a form of escapism for Jews who wanted to learn about Jewish history, especially in pre-war Europe, without those harsh reminders. I think perhaps this is a situation where Zborowski and Herzog might be all too aware of the pogroms and persecution but want to depict an idealized version of Jewish life because it isn’t something that is commonly shown in literature.
This post raises an important point about how we view and remember historical communities like the shtetl. The romanticized portrayal of life in the shtetl in Zborowski and Herzog’s work does seem to gloss over the darker realities, such as pogroms and the violence that Jewish communities often faced. While it’s clear that charity and community support were essential aspects of life, the absence of more serious engagement with the hardships experienced by Jews, especially during periods of violence, does seem to reflect a selective memory. The questions raised about Zborowski’s personal background and the potential political motivations behind his work are crucial to understanding the narrative he’s presenting. Could it be that nostalgia for the “ideal” community life in the shtetl serves as a form of cultural preservation or a reaction to the trauma of later historical events, such as the Holocaust? The balance between remembering the good and the bad is always tricky, and it’s essential for readers to approach such works critically, understanding that history is often written from a particular perspective.