Writing Jewish Culture: Paradoxes in Ethnography PDF
Preview Writing Jewish Culture: Paradoxes in Ethnography
WRITING JEWISH CULTURE This page intentionally left blank W R I T I N G Jewish C U LT U R E paradoxes in ethnography S Edited by Andreas Kilcher and Gabriella Safran Indiana University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis This book is a publication of Library of Congress Cataloging-in-P ublication Data Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Writing Jewish culture : paradoxes Herman B Wells Library 350 in ethnography / edited by Andreas 1320 East 10th Street Kilcher and Gabriella Safran. Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA pages cm Selected papers presented at a conference iupress.indiana.edu titled “Jewish ethnography between science and literature” held in Zurich © 2016 by Indiana University Press (Switzerland) in September 2013. All rights reserved Includes bibliographical references and index. No part of this book may be reproduced or ISBN 978-0-253-01962-2 (pbk. : alk. utilized in any form or by any means, electronic paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01958-5 (cloth : alk. or mechanical, including photocopying paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01964-6 (ebook) and recording, or by any information 1. Jews—Europe, Eastern—Social life and storage and retrieval system, without customs—Congresses. 2. Jews—Social permission in writing from the publisher. life and customs—Congresses. 3. Jewish The Association of American University folklorists—Europe, Eastern—Congresses. Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes 4. Folk literature, Yiddish—Congresses. the only exception to this prohibition. 5. Jewish folk literature—Congresses. 6. Ethnology—Europe, Eastern—Congresses. The paper used in this publication meets the 7. Europe, Eastern—Ethnic relations— minimum requirements of the American Congresses. I. Kilcher, Andreas B., 1963– editor. National Standard for Information II. Weissberg, Liliane. The voice of a native Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed informer: Salomon Maimon describes life Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. in Polish Lithuania. Container of (work): DS135.E83W75 2016 Manufactured in the 305.892'4047—dc23 United States of America 2015033420 1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16 To our families This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Note on Transliteration and Names xi Introduction / Andreas Kilcher and Gabriella Safran 1 Part 1. Reinventing the “Jews” in Ethnographic Writing 1. The Voice of a Native Informer: Salomon Maimon Describes Life in Polish Lithuania / Liliane Weissberg 25 2. L egends of Authenticity: Das Buch von den polnischen Juden (1916) by S. J. Agnon and Ahron Eliasberg / Sylvia Jaworski 48 3. The Cold Order and the Eros of Storytelling: Joseph Roth’s “Exotic Jews” / Andreas Kilcher 68 4. Y iddish Ethnographic Poetics and Moyshe Kulbak’s “Vilne” / Jordan Finkin 94 Part 2. Seeing, Hearing, and Reading Jews 5. L istening in the Dark: The Yiddish Folklorists’ Claim of a Russian Genealogy / Gabriella Safran 119 6. Ethnoliterary Modernity: Jewish Ethnography and Literature in the Russian Empire and Poland (1890–1930) / Annette Werberger 138 7. I magining the Wandering Jew in Modernity: Exegesis and Ethnography in Leon Feuchtwanger’s Jud Süss / Galit Hasan-Rokem 159 8. Exclusion and Inclusion: Ethnography of War in Kriegsgefangene (1916) and Das ostjüdische Antlitz (1920) / Eva Edelmann-Ohler 181 viii contents 9. A vant-Garde Authenticity: M. Vorobeichic’s Photographic Modernism and the East European Jew / Samuel Spinner 208 Part 3. Spaces of Jewish Ethnography between Diaspora and Nation 10. Zionism’s Ethnographic Knowledge: Leo Motzkin’s and Heinrich York-Steiner’s Narratives of Palestine (1898–1904) / Alexander Alon 235 11. Eastern Europe in Argentina: Yiddish Travelogues and the Exploration of Jewish Diaspora / Tamar Lewinsky 251 Part 4. Politics and the Addressee of Ethnography 12. From Custom Book to Folk Culture: Minhag and the Roots of Jewish Ethnography / Nathaniel Deutsch 273 13. In Search of the Exotic: “Jewish Houses” and Synagogues in Russian Travel Notes / Alla Sokolova 291 14. B allads of Strangers: Constructing “Ethnographic Moments” in Jewish Folklore / Dani Schrire 322 Appendixes Note to Readers 348 Appendix A. W hat Is Jewish Ethnography? (Handbook for Fieldworkers) / Naftoli Vaynig and Khayim Khayes, Translated by Jordan Finkin 349 Appendix B. R esearch Your Shtetl! / H. Aleksandrov, Translated by Jordan Finkin 381 Appendix C. “ A Strange Experience” / A. Almi, Translated by Gabriella Safran 393 List of Contributors 399 Index 403 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful to the contributors to this volume, who have joined us in an intellectual journey that originated with the international confer- ence “Jewish Ethnography between Science and Literature” at the ETH Zurich in Fall 2013, and that has carried almost all of us beyond the bor- ders of our scholarly comfort zones. We want to acknowledge three par- ticipants in our Zurich conference, Sasha Senderovich, Alexander Lvov, and Bernhard Tschofen, whose work is for various reasons not included here but who offered very valuable contributions to our conversation. We thank James Clifford for consulting with us and carefully reading our introduction. Raina Polivka, Janice Frisch, Darja Malcolm-Clarke, and Jenna Whittaker shepherded the manuscript through at Indiana Univer- sity Press, and Joyce Rappaport copyedited it with informed precision. At Stanford, we thank the Humanities Center, which gave Andreas the possibility of spending two months in the Bay Area and working on the volume. D. Brian Kim elegantly and carefully edited and translated from Russian; Brian Tich effectively edited multiple parts of the manuscript and organized the paperwork around it. In Zurich, we thank Victoria Laszlo, who was of great help in the organization of the conference, and Jonas Stähelin, who was responsible for the index of the volume. Thanks go also to the Swiss National Science Foundation for the support of our Zurich conference, and to the Stanford Taube Center for Jewish Studies, ix
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