_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Language and Literature (A Companion to _Mendele_) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 01.006 May 15 1997 1) Versions of _Ashkenaz_ by Seth L. Wolitz _________________________________________ 1) Versions of Ashkenaz The recent exchanges in _Mendele_ on Ashkenaz, that magical Yiddishland which tickles cartological urges -- and perhaps hidden national ones? -- as we pronounce the names of shtetlekh whose national flag in fantasy might have been a page of Talmud, a Zionist banner or a red flag (but were none of these), underscores that Ashkenaz is an intellectual construct, a state of mind with ideological and methodological implications. These invaluable exchanges reveal how diverse are the views in interpreting Eastern European Jewish cultural life and how little positions have changed over the years. For heuristic purposes I construe ideal positions from the sparse statements offered thus far (see the notices on "Ashkenazic Studies" in _Personal Notices_ of 12 March 1997 and in _Mendele_, vol.6, nos. 285-288) and consider their implicit theoretical, methodological and ideological bases. If "Ashkenazic Studies" are to become a recognized academic discipline, these bases will define their parameters. 1. Center and Periphery The call for a conference on Ashkenaz in Cracow for next summer 1998 frames the coming Congress in a linguistic/sociological model: center and periphery. The center or centers of Eastern European Jewry, especially the great cities of the Respublica Polonicae plus Kiev and New York in this passing century serve as foci and dissemination points to the Kresy and other peripheries such as Lipkan and Kharkov and to the provinces. From this kukvinkl, Eastern European Jewry constructed for itself a unique identity: the putative Ashkenaz (the intellectual construct of David Neal Miller et al.), with evolving and mutating centers and peripheries but continually identifiable on evident geo-political bases, the Polish Respublica, the Czarist Regime, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later Rumania. Center and Periphery therefore is a geometric epitome of a theoretic vision of the unity of the Eastern European Jewish worldview. The methodology is descriptive and permits an historical mapping. Its ideological assumptions are drawn on Bundist principles of cultural autonomy, (and not forgetting the Folkists and other friends of Yiddish, Nokhem Shtif, the Weinreichs, etc.), the uniqueness of the Eastern European experience as a distinct entity as opposed to a Zionist integrative perspective. The influence of Dubnov is not far away and the perspectives of the leading Austrian socialists who found room for national culture in socialist universalism. This theoretical and methodological approach, center and periphery, privileges the Jewish folk (and Yiddish) and its cultural production in toto as opposed to legitimizing only the elite production in Hebrew/Aramaic texts. That the conference will be a joint Ohio State and Jagellonian University undertaking adds further confirmation of ideological factors at work. Poland today, like other Eastern European nations, perhaps learning from modern Spain, has discovered the convivencia, the idea that early states were amalgams of peoples and nations and not nation-states, in which various peoples lived side by side in various conditions of harmony across time. Jagellonian University in Cracow has both an academic interest in the topic of "Jews in Ashkenaz" as well as an ideological claim as a Polish institution to reenforce for today's needs the image of the past "convivencia." Thus there is a felicitous conflation of doyiker ideology and Polish contemporary ideology to wish to site "Ashkenazic" studies in the Polish Center. Poland becomes suddenly the Center of (and claims) Ashkenaz and positions Jewry deeply anchored to the Diaspora-a very Bundist ideal! [And a penchant of Prof. Miller!] Poland then becomes the de facto center of Ashkenaz for the last six hundred years reenforcing the ideological interests of this Bundist-derived perspective which melds so well with contemporary Polish political, cultural and economic interests. 2.The Positivist-Historical Approach The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York position on the putative Ashkenaz in New York (the Prof. Roskies voice) embraces a modernised positivist historical perspective which derives from Comtian and Tainian models, the celebrated: race, moment, milieu structure. The literary and social history proffered by its champions is prescriptive rather than descriptive. The historical linearity of this approach privileges the religious inheritance as the signifying practice and accomplishment of the culture. This methodology, formed from an organicist perspective, sites and positions the study of Eastern European Jewry as a sui generis experience. Its ideological rootings tie it to a cultural Zionist perspective of an evolved Ahad Ha'amian school which favors elite cultural production and considers the Eastern European Jewish Existenz as merely another variant in the on-going Jewish whole. Whereas the fulcrum for Miller's position depends on the Vilna/Warsaw axis, Roskies' position posits a continuous historical "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem...", Jerusalem as ompholos and source of Eastern European validity and significance. The metaphysical over the physical. The Yiddish accomplishment is subsumed in the general Judaic fact joining the Muser works, khsides and responsa etc. The secular aspect is accomodated willy-nilly in the reality of the evolving Jewry but hidden in its theoretical and methodological assumptions lie a sacral history and mission. 3. The Post-Colonial Stance From a YIVO voice (Prof. Steinlauf), a post-colonialist perspective proffers the cross-cultural interpretation of Eastern European Jewry. Jews and their culture cannot be studied sui generis but as a national people in a contextualized condition often facing transgressive forces which must be accomodated. The Jewish culture is necessarily evolutionary in its continuous encounters with the Other, be it hegemonic or co-equal. Its parameters and core structure re-configure the intellectual and material factors in its condition. This theoretical position derives from neo-marxist thought, subaltern studies, gender theory, and the post-existentialist anti-colonialism of Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi and possibly Homi Bhabha. The approach, while descriptive, refuses the attempt at definition of a "pure" culture but considers hybridization as the norm in an evolutionary fashion. Transmutation and metamorphosis of culture underline the Post-Colonialist approach to Eastern European Jewish life which is conceived as a projective historical appreciation rather than as essentialist which, at base, dominates the JTS position and hovers over the Ohio State model. The Post-Colonialist position ultimately situates Eastern European Jewish culture in its Slavic context , recognizes the centrality of hybridization and promotes a multi-cultural legitimacy which fearlessly hints at an ultimate universalism given the ideological underpinings rooted in marxist thought. [The new summer Yivo program in Yiddish in Warsaw hypostasises this view.] This theoretic position tends to dominate most cultural historical studies today. It determinately places the Ashkenazic experience as part of the Third World encounter with Western modernity and insists more on the commonalities of the cultures than their signifying differences. All three theoretical approaches display elements of occlusion and cannot be considered holistic efforts today. Their overlappings do not prepare some future harmonization but rather sharp differences of perspective which are driven by theological/ideological practices. (The Miller position could ultimately accomodate the Steinlauf position by accepting "hybridization" of the Ashkenazic culture and thus dilute its "ideal tyoe" purity!) Their variety should be a source of satisfaction for the diversity in Jewry. Unfortunately, variety is never traditionally applauded either by the Jewish intelligentsia or in the folksmasn. The JTS position makes this evident. Each perspective attempts to re-position the Eastern European Jewish experience inside its own system but the multiple focalizations yield a more complex, rich and nuanced appreciation of the whole. Each approach necessarily foregrounds its own parti pris: 1. Miller emphasizes place; 2. Roskies continuity; 3. Steinlauf/Baker interaction. All derive from Western models and do not provide a particular Jewish perspective evolved from Jewish scholarly sources. The contributions of each methodology yield meaning in terms of Western scholarly practices mistakenly passed off as universal. These efforts contribute to an accumulated body of abstract knowledge about Eastern European Jewry without much echo. Is this scholarship a mere anthropological exercise to preserve a lost community? Can it serve to help re-configure a new Jewish people and culture? Does it do both? Naturally both would be the ideal but these ideologically-driven methodologies go little further than the nineteenth century Wissenschaft des Judenthums for these scholarly undertakings produce artifactual labellings as in any Western anthropological exhibit: a "show and tell" on a higher level of abstraction but not one whit less difference than the Vancouver Museum dedicated to preserving the artifacts of Kwakiutl culture or the Musee de l'Homme's collection of Berber culture. These approaches seal the culture. Its descendants, if descendants still exist, either remain in their "tribal" reserves or have joined supposedly the universal fabric of Westernism. The culture therefore is appreciated as part of the human whole but with closure. These approaches serve Western ideological interests and reduce the Jewish experience and culture to an earlier condition not unlike traditional Chrtistian theological thinking which would admit to the Jews its discovery of the one God concept but insists that its fulfillment is elsewhere. The theoretical options therefore may be appreciated for awakening interest in Eastern European Jewish culture but these approaches are methodologies at the service of the Other, not of the subject studied! It is one more object, in fact, no different than studying Easter Island culture, the Mayan one or Bulgarian one. To argue that in a university setting the above methodologies provide the only appropriate structure is to accept a hegemonic practice. That the Jewish condition, Jewish culture, Judaism, etc., cannot find easily its own sovereign housing like English, French, Chinese or Russian in academe evidences the hidden reality that it is not a "normative" object of study and may reflect more on the Other, Western Civilization in its academic garb, that there are tensions which have not yet been flushed out. Jewish "Programs" only finally emerged after Israel became a reality. (Judaism was with Biblical Hebrew relegated for decades to the theological schools.) Yiddish became "legitimized" when it was found profitable: Jewish benefactors paid for its presence and German and Middle East Departments saw it providing an increased body count. The study of Eastern European Jewry and its Yiddish fact and accomplishments succeed in holding its legitimacy by the objectification of the field of study as merely a past to be ingathered as mere artifacts. Modern Eastern European Jewish scholarship which includes Yiddish culture at its heart must not be allowed the academic closure to fit "higher" ideological perspectives of Western "universalist" practices. The transmutation of Yiddish culture, for example, need not conclude on the Shoah but can be argued to be in a metamorphosed state: the great majority of what is "American" cultural production by Jews could well be argued in Foucauldian terms as Ashkenazic culture in its new hybridization: witness the prose of Bellow or Ozick etc. (If Prof. Harshav could argue in his Introduction to American Yiddish Poetry that the poetry is American poetry in Yiddish, it is even more true that it is Yiddish poetry in America!) The cultural descendants are no less carrying in a reconfiguration the inheritance by giving consent to their cultural, intellectual and biological descent no matter how re-configured or re-positioned. These aforementioned methodological optics serve Western perspectives seeking closure whereas new approaches are needed to provide and recognize the open space for continuous Jewish cultural growth within and without of Western Civilization. Ashkenaz. in short, was not wiped out by history but its geographical location has been relocated, rehybridized and reconfigured. Israel and most of North America is its "progeny" -- and perhaps the new sprouts in Russia and Ukraine (to use an organicist metaphor). Yiddish, as the major language of recent Ashkenazic culture, has surely been given a death knell but even in its outrunners, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Israel, France and Quebec, its metamorphosis is not less the inheritance and continuity of Ashkenaz. We still lack fresh scholarly theories and methodologies which provide optics to interpret and serve the living culture by valorizing the Jewish past for the valid present Jewish cultural existence. Until Jewish oriented academic theories emerge as is happening in African and Asian academic and cultural circles, Jewish academic scholarship will remain a subaltern production of Western Civilization. If this is wanted, it means that the Shoa did bring to a closure a unique civilization. Seth L. Wolitz University of Texas at Austin ______________________________________________________ End of _The Mendele Review_ vol. 01, no. 006 Leonard Prager, editor Please direct all correspondence to: Leonard Prager 13/35 Dr. Kauders St. Haifa 35439, Israel email:lprager@research.haifa.ac.il