Writing Jewish Culture: Paradoxes in Ethnography

426 Pages·2016·8.949 MB·English

by  Andreas Kilcher, Gabriella Safran (eds.)

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