Uncategorized – Page 5 – From Under the Fig Tree

Shelf life

joselitMay 5, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Late last week, I had the opportunity to visit with the executive of a foundation which intends on closing its doors for good within the next five years. This philanthropic venture is such a valuable asset to the Jewish community, a supporter of some of its most smartly conceived and innovative programming, that its decision to “sunset,” as the current lingo would have it, is rather puzzling. Why not continue doing good work, especially if money is no object?

Chicago Agudas Achim — Chicago's Agudas Achim. Photo: Menachem Wecker

I put this question to my host who explained that the organization’s founder strongly believed that the longer a philanthropy endured, the more it ran the risk of departing from the intentions of its original sponsors. Far better, he claimed, to think in terms of a specific life span than of the longue duree.

I suppose those who inhabit the foundation world, much less the beneficiaries of its largesse, might take exception. But from where I sit, as an historian, it’s hard to argue with this philanthropist’s perspective. In fact, I can’t help wonder whether other Jewish institutions might even possibly entertain it. The communal landscape is chock-a-block with facilities long past their prime, facilities that struggle valiantly to hold on even as their constituency and their raison d’etre are increasingly attenuated, the consequence of demographic as well as ideological change.

Synagogues are especially vulnerable. Among the very first institutions to be established, and with such high hopes, too, they seem to enjoy a run that lasts no more than a generation or two before their fortunes change – and not for the better. There’s much to be said for their persistence and for the dedication of those members who keep things going against great odds. And yet, there’s nothing quite as dispiriting as sitting on a Shabbat morning in a sanctuary that had accommodated hundreds of worshippers, but now attracts just a handful of them, its carved wooden pews and imaginative lighting fixtures, once the cynosure of its congregants, now looking somewhat worse for wear, its lustre dimmed.

We hear a lot these days about sustainability. Most of the time,that conversation fastens on the physical environment. Perhaps it’s time to start talking about our institutional resources as well.

Star turn

joselitApril 7, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Now and again, I have the opportunity to venture beyond my customary haunts and spend a weekend in another place and amidst another congregation as a scholar-in-residence. These “gigs,” as some of my colleagues are wont to call them, are no walk in the park. Yes, most pay handsomely. But they also give new meaning to ‘singing for one’s supper’: You’re called on to prepare and deliver anywhere from three to five different presentations within the space of 25 hours and sometimes on a Sunday morning, too. And since expectations tend to run really high, you have to be on your toes at all times.

Amish buggy near Lancaster Pa — Amish buggy near Lancaster, Pa. Flickr/denisbin

Time-consuming and emotionally draining, these ventures can also be hazardous to your health. If it’s your practice not to travel by car on Shabbat, you just might find yourself escorted along a highway or a deserted stretch with no sidewalks at 11 p.m. of a Friday night, wondering how on earth you managed to get yourself into this scary situation.

It’s worth it. There’s nothing like a close encounter with contemporary Jewish life at the grass roots to set you straight. Talk about a cold bath of reality. Your high minded theories quickly go out the window when you’re face to face with the direct consequences of changing demographics, widespread intermarriage, dwindling communal resources and a gnawing sense of frustration. Comforting bromides about the importance of continuity and constancy simply won’t do.

Having just completed a scholar-in-residence weekend at Temple Beth El of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I speak from experience. I returned home from my visit to this intellectually engaged and searching Conservative congregation feeling rather sobered, even chastened. Despite a keen sense of community and deep reservoirs of good will, its children have either moved away for good or they’ve intermarried. Or both.

Some have left the fold altogether; others feel much more comfortable within the precincts of the Reform rather than the Conservative movement. One way or another, a younger generation is not much in evidence at Temple Beth El. To compound matters, the local JCC has closed its doors for want of support and the local day school is no more. And yet, the members of Temple Beth El keep at it, cautiously optimistic that the situation will turn around one of these days.

I suspect that I was invited to Lancaster in the hope that my work on the American Jewish experience might shed some light on why things are the way they are: History pressed into the service of the present and the future. I hope I didn’t disappoint. All the same, I think I took away more from my scholar-in-residency than I brought to it.

Temple Beth El: I’m rooting for you.

Paper chase

joselitMarch 9, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Many of us live in the moment, texting and tweeting away as if there’s no tomorrow. But now and again, the long arm of the past casts a hulking shadow over our contemporary lives, compelling us to reckon with the power of history.

Last Books: Recovering the East European Jewish Past flyer (click to enlarge)

The recent release of the film, “Monuments Men,” is one case in point. Another is the discovery in Munich of a cache of more than a thousand paintings that had been looted from museums and private Jewish homes by the Nazis. Believed to have been lost or destroyed, these valuable artworks have now resurfaced in what some call a triumph of good over evil. A third case in point is “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937,” a forthcoming exhibition at New York’s Neue Galerie, which provides a context in which to situate the Nazis’ attempts to purge 1930s Germany of modernist art and those who championed it.

And, yes, there’s more. On Tuesday evening, March 25th at 7 p.m., the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, in partnership with GW’s Program in Judaic Studies, will host the Frieda Kobernick Fleischman Lecture in Judaic Studies, whose roster of distinguished speakers over the years has included Pierre Birnbaum, James Loeffler and Alisa Solomon. This year, Jonathan Brent, the executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, will do the honors. (To register, please send an email to Washington.amb@msz.gov.pl)

Titled “The Last Books: Recovering the East European Jewish Past,” Mr. Brent’s presentation explores an issue of considerable delicacy: the fate of Jewish books and manuscripts whose readers are no more.

The story he tells -- one of pathos and hope in equal measure -- deserves a wide hearing. I hope you’ll be able to join us for this latest brush with history.

Funny business

joselitFebruary 17, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

No matter how often I watch them, two classic comic routines have me in stitches every time. The first, the handiwork of Mel Blanc and Jack Benny, pivots around the sounds of “Sy, Si, Sue.” A marvel of timing and of linguistic ingenuity, the sketch is the verbal equivalent of ping pong as the two comedians sally back and forth and it’s really funny.

Sid Caesar Wikipedia — Sid Caesar/Wikipedia

My other favorite bit is also bound up with language and features Sid Caesar, who died last week. You know it, I’m sure: It’s the one in which the comedian bamboozles his audience into thinking he’s a high stepping, much decorated military man when, in fact, he’s a doorman with a whistle.

What makes this sketch amusing is not just the way in which it confounds expectations, subverting our reading of clothing. What really tickles the funny bone is how Caesar plays with sound, barking commands in what seems to be German, the language of authority, when he’s actually speaking gibberish, the language of nonsense.

Here and elsewhere, the celebrated comedian was playing -- some might even say toying -- with Yiddish , a language whose cadences, rhythms and gestures he picked up from his immigrant parents, but whose literature and history and elevated aspirations eluded him, as it did so many of his generation.

Sounding off in Yiddish, and on national television, no less, Sid Caesar introduced millions of Americans to an age-old language with which they were entirely unfamiliar. But its public debut came at a cost: By rendering Yiddish comically, the stuff of silly business, much got lost in translation.

Razzle dazzle

joselitFebruary 9, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

History, I tell my students and anyone else willing to listen, is a rather curious dance between retention and erasure. The stories we tell, the monuments we build, the exhibitions we mount, the pageants we enact and the rituals we perform make their way, often uneasily, between these two poles of human activity.

Stalin (defaced) and Gulag memorial, Muzeon, Moscow. Flickr/Garrett Ziegler. One aspect of Russian history that wasn't portrayed in the Olympic opening ceremonies in Sochi.

Lest anyone doubt the veracity of this observation, tuning into and taking the measure of the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Sochi would make abundantly clear what I mean. Pulling out all the stops and giving new meaning to spectacle, the Russians put their history on display: The Cyrillic alphabet danced, chariots floated magically in the air, brightly colored onion domed structures bobbed up and down, the Black Sea rushed in and out and even Chagall himself put in a brief appearance.

What was omitted from this narrative of national pride was more stunning still: revolution, Communism, gulags, the Siege of Leningrad, the Leningrad Seven -- the list goes on and on. I didn’t expect to see an acknowledgement of pogroms or the Doctor’s Plot or the repression of Soviet Jewry, certainly not in a forum given over to effusions of the national spirit. All the same, so conspicuously and painfully absent were some of the most important personalities and moments of Czarist and Soviet history that it made this pyrotechnical pageant about as compelling as an ice capade: Skillful, yes, but icy cold at its core.

It got to the point where I couldn’t watch any more. Razzle dazzle can go only so far in shoring up the spirit before it turns hollow.

Wear a sweater

joselitJanuary 19, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Every week brings with it an often unwieldy barrage of experiences, encounters, observations and remarks. At its conclusion, I like to retrieve one encounter or, better yet, one remark, that sums things up. This week’s candidate: “Wear a sweater.”

Warm sweater + big buttons. Flickr/Tasha

As it happens, the reception area in which the administrative assistant for the Program in Judaic Studies sits is unusually chilly. Adjacent to the building’s entrance, it is constantly assailed by drafts as a steady stream of students march in and out, often neglecting to close the front door. It doesn’t help matters that the heating in that part of the building is erratic, at best.

In an attempt to make said staff member, a most valuable member of the team, a little bit more comfortable, I bought a throw for her chair so that, when the temperature dropped, she could wrap herself in it (the throw, that is, not the chair). Pleased with this new purchase, which kept her body (and, most especially, her legs) warm, my admin submitted the receipt for the throw to the fiscal powers-that-be so that I could be reimbursed. So far, so good, no?

No. The story then takes a strange turn. The authorities declined to “allow” the reimbursement. It wasn’t that the item in question was too expensive: after all, it cost under $30. Rather, the expenditure was deemed an inappropriate one. Near as I can tell, the university’s financial gatekeepers defined the throw as a decorative object rather than a utilitarian one and ruled that such things were simply not reimbursable. In retrospect, I would have been better off defining the throw as a blanket, I suppose. But I get ahead of myself here.

This situation could not stand, said I to myself. It wasn’t the money; it was the principle. And so, I asked my admin to resubmit the form and, in the space marked “rationale,” to explain why the throw was a necessity, not an ornament.

Once again, the claim was rejected. This time, I took matters in hand and wrote directly to the fiscal powers-that-be, explaining at some length why the throw (I mean blanket) was necessary. Peppering my explanation with references to ‘efficiency’ and ‘congenial work environment,’ I thought I had made a really convincing case. I hadn’t.

Rejected for a third and probably final time, the claim for reimbursement came back with the following message: “Can’t your admin wear a sweater?” To which I wearily responded: She does and sometimes two, as well as a scarf.

I’m still waiting for an answer.

School days

joselitJanuary 13, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

I start the new academic term, which is right around the corner, with butterflies in my stomach. And yet, unlike the Sunday evenings before the Monday mornings of yesteryear when I experienced a similar sensation, this one is born of excitement, not anxiety.

Sunlit chair in old classroom. Flickr/Jason Pier in DC

Each semester brings with it a sense of possibility as my colleagues and I set about exposing our students to the fullness of the human condition and, concomitantly, of bringing out the best in them. Spring 2014 is no exception. The varied courses GW’s Program in Judaic Studies offers are designed to do just that.

Immersing our undergraduates in rabbinic thought and Jewish philosophy, the Jewish literatures of Latin America and the United States, Jewish women’s history and the history of the ghetto, to name just a few of our offerings, should make it abundantly clear that there’s so much more to Jewish education than Hebrew school.

Our public programs, which are open to the community, also make that point, expanding our intellectual as well as our geographical horizons. Over the next few months, East European Jewry looms especially large in our sights. For starters, Professor Marek Kucia, a sociologist from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, will be on campus in mid-March where, among other things, he’ll be delivering a talk on the Europeanization of Holocaust memory.

A week or so later, the Program’s annual Frieda Kobernick Fleischman Lecture will feature Jonathan Brent, the executive director of the YIVO Institute in New York, who will be speaking about his recent bibliographic adventures in Vilna, where thousands of once well-thumbed Jewish books remain, inert, on the shelves. Co-sponsored by and held at the Polish Embassy, Mr. Brent’s talk promises to affect both our intellect and our emotions.

This is as it ought to be. Judaic Studies, I’ve come to see, and hope you do, too, is not just a discipline or a field of study. It’s also a way of contemplating the world – and of emerging just a bit wiser for it.

Color coded

joselitDecember 30, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

You never know where you’re going to come across the most fascinating theories about human behavior. No, I’m not referring to the recent contretemps about the ASA boycott, though well I might. Instead, I have in mind early 20th century notions about the ways in which people dressed.

Color Chart — From "Color," The World Book, 1920. Flickr/Eric Fischer

Having once published a book, A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America about the relationship between clothing and identity, I thought I had covered the waterfront, as the old saw would have it. But in reading a recently published article by my colleague, Steven Fine, about polychromy in the ancient world (Academia.edu), I came across something I had never known before: a set of references to a late 19th and early 20th century discussion that linked any number of Jewish cultural practices to colorblindness. Reportedly a Jewish physical trait, colorblindness was used back in the day to explain a host of things about the Jews, from their lack of a painterly imagination to their penchant for dressing in bright colors.

The handiwork of scientists rather than cranks, this discussion appeared in authoritative, eminently respectable publications such as the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1890) and was later circulated by the equally redoubtable Jewish Encyclopedia (1902). Here, and elsewhere, readers learned that that the high proportion of colorblindness within the Jewish community resulted in a “general lack of interest in the delights of colour, especially in its more refined forms,” the “absence of any painters of great ability among the Jews and the want of taste shown by Jewesses of the lower grades of society.”

Who knew?! More to the point, who would have thought to find this material in an essay about the ancient world? A testament to Professor Fine’s erudition and his wide-ranging command of sources, it is also an invitation to read widely and in areas outside of one’s immediate interests.

As 2013 gives way to 2014, let’s open our eyes and take in the world. We’ll all be the better for it.

Clueless

joselitDecember 22, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Now and again, people ask me how I came to be an historian, arguably not the most likely of careers for aspiring professional women of my generation. At a time when most of my peers were headed straight for law school, becoming an academic, especially one who trafficked in the history of the Jews, was somewhat off the beaten track. What influenced me, inquiring minds want to know. Did an inspiring college professor set me on my way? Had I experienced a moment of awakening at an ancient historic site? Was I inspired by Gibbons? Encouraged by my parents?

nancy drew books — Nancy Drew books. Flickr/Celeste Lindell

In response, I usually mumble something about the life of the mind, the challenges and joys of teaching, the thrill of research -- and, yes, that my parents did actively encourage my scholarly pursuits.

But now, I come clean: The real reason I became an historian was Nancy Drew, the plucky heroine of the eponymous mystery series. I thrilled to her adventures, relished her way with a clue and delighted in her ability to put two and two together. I envied her clothes and her sporty car, of course, and fervently wished that I might have a dash or two of her aplomb, but what really got to me was the way she reasoned. From where I sat in my pretty floral bedroom, nobody could hold a candle to the girl detective whose powers of discernment and intellection -- of sleuthing -- were without compare. Nancy Drew made me think.

Imagine my despair when I learned only last week that some of the earliest Nancy Drew mysteries were riddled with racist and anti-Semitic characterizations. Writing in Tablet, Marjorie Ingall, a longtime Nancy Drew fan like myself, revealed that the first generation of mysteries left a lot to be desired when it came to depictions of the Jews and African Americans.

As one of the characters in The Clue of the Broken Locket would have it, I was “hornswaggled” by the news, profoundly disturbed and utterly baffled, too, by my failure to have noticed these cruel and mean spirited references. So much for my nascent powers of observation!

But wait. It turns out that beginning in 1959, the author of the series not only contemporized the plots and their prose but also removed the offensive passages. The Nancy Drew whose exploits lined my bookshelves did not harbor prejudice.

Phew! What a relief! I’d hate to think that I owed my career to a wrong turn.

All that noise

joselitDecember 8, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

No sooner did I sit down to write this post than my ears were assaulted by the sounds of a jackhammer, which wreaked havoc with my powers of concentration. And then, to add insult to injury, the kid who lives in the apartment right below mine decided it was time right about now to tickle the ivories or, more to the point, to pound them. Oh, woe is me.

Sound Waves — Sound waves. Source: Smith College website

The only thing that served to ameliorate my sonic distress was the knowledge that I was not alone. In years gone by, similarly aggrieved New Yorkers took pen to paper and wrote to the municipal authorities, especially to the city’s department of health, to register their dismay at the racket that increasingly characterized urban life.

I picked up this juicy little fact from a fascinating interactive online exhibit called “The Roaring ‘Twenties” which draws on archival matter, maps and Movietone newsreels to document the aural history of New York City during the interwar years. An exercise in what its proponents call “sensory history,” the exhibition challenges us to think historically about sound.

Imagine the possibilities. We could eavesdrop on a synagogue service, whose frustrated clergy repeatedly called on those in the pews to stop talking and to tend to their prayers instead. Or we could take the measure of a sermon: Did its cadences lull its listeners to sleep or prod them into action? We could listen in on the often rancorous meetings of the all-powerful ritual committee as it decided which traditions to follow and which to relinquish. Conversations around the dinner table would also fill our ears, as would the stuff of vaudeville skits and theatrical performances. And what of the way things were taught? What of the sounds of the classroom? Of the workplace?

I’m jazzed by the prospect of integrating the history of sound into my own work and of drawing on the latest digital technologies to make that happen. I’m not sure what I’ll discover but one thing is for sure: I’ll be listening.