Introduction. Lucyna Aleksandrowicz-Pędich, Małgorzata Pakier

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2 Introduction Lucyna Aleksandrowicz-Pędich, Małgorzata Pakier His head was full of Europe all those obscure languages in all those shadowy places where there had been all those shootings in the streets, in the forest. (Cynthia Ozick, The Messiah of Stockholm) This quote, from an American Jewish writer, who set her novel in a European country, poignantly sums up the Jewish perspective on the Old World after the Holocaust, the sine-a-que-non caesura in any study of Jewish cultures. When Levinas reads The Merchant of Venice the vision of trains is inescapable, from the ghettos in Venice as much as from Kovno, together meeting their destiny at the station in Treblinka. Cynthia Ozick (1988:98) is merciless; those obscure languages with their incomprehensible messages, and all those shootings in the European landscape both humanitas and natura became deadly. Jewish photographers who bring to Poland their heads filled with a Europe of shadowy places painstakingly recreate that very vision through their camera lenses. Prior to the Holocaust the Jewish identity struggled with European anti- Semitism, either constructing its own world in the mode of the Hasiddim in Podolya, or attempting the illusion of safety of the assimilation in Germany. In the post-holocaust world, with the state of Israel in existence in the Middle East and the Jewish diaspora largely moved across the ocean to Americas, the Old World remains both the precious heritage and the burden. As regards the Holocaust, U.S. and European memories have been created from different perspectives. Jewish communities practically ceased to exist in Europe, leaving American and Israeli Jews, by default, the natural agents in Holocaust commemoration. Meanwhile the processes of commemoration in Europe have concentrated on questions of guilt and responsibility, thus nurturing a perpetrators-oriented Holocaust memory. With reference to the self-critical patterns of dealing with national pasts that have developed in Europe since the late 1960s, the German historians Volkhard Knigge and Norbert Frei diagnosed the emergence of a negative memory of the Holocaust. What they meant was that in this model of remembering, the past loses its role as a source of inspiration but instead is being recalled primarily to prevent it from being repeated as in the formula Never again! In other words, history is that which needs to be overcome. But diligent memories, even those deriving from the noble imperative of Never again!, may degenerate in time and turn into forms that stop being productive, serving narcissistic concerns. Tony Judt observed that while the first postwar Europe was built upon deliberate mis-memory, i.e., forgetting as a way of life,

3 10 Lucyna Aleksandrowicz-Pędich, Małgorzata Pakier since 1989 it has been reconstructed instead upon a compensatory surplus of memory (Judt 2005: 829). Towards the end of the 20 th century and the first years of the 21 st century, plaques, memorials, and museums devoted to the victims of the Holocaust have proliferated across the European continent. Yet the Israeli scholar Natan Sznaider, although previously enthusiastic about the globalisation and Europeanization of Holocaust memory, has now observed with sadness that Jewish (not Holocaust!) memory has disappeared from the European landscape. This is despite all the memory rituals; or perhaps, because of them (Sznaider 2008: 7). How can a slim volume of essays contribute to the discussion of such a broad and complex topic as Jewish cultures and identities? Modestly and, as we intend, heuristically. It is hoped that the vision provided through fragments may illuminate and indicate what we consider essential: the heritage and the burden of the European past, the prospect of the American future, the Israeli dilemmas, the extremely diverse faces of Jewish identity in pre-holocaust era and the new representations of Jewish identity reconstruction in culture. The idea for this anthology began with a conference on Jewishness in Contemporary Culture: American and European Perspectives which took place in Warsaw on 17th and 18th May in 2011 at SWPS Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, but the editors of the volume were fortunate in being joined in the project of an anthology by new contributors; hence we were able to expand the topic of the volume to the issue of Jewish identity and its representations in a broader way. Małgorzata Grzegorzewska in the opening essay featuring, on the one hand, Shylock and Antonio and on the other Levinas and a plethora of other intellectuals, introduces a historical geography of the Jewish settlement in Europe, later discussed at length by Piotr Podemski in his article on the Fascist Burden which the Italian Jews have to carry throughout the 20 th century. Na ama Sheffi s article, though discussing a play performed in Hebrew in Palestine in late 1930s, in fact through the lens of the play focuses on anti-semitism in Germany as well the tragic conflict between the self-image of the German Jews against their perception of Eastern European Jews. This diversity of Jewish communities is brought to fore here by the presentation referring to another part of historical Europe, the territory of 18 th c. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from which an impressive heritage of Hassidic thought is shown by Hanna Komorowska who demonstrates their prophetic emphasis on the essential features cherished by modern education nowadays: the appreciation of its intrinsic value, the stress on each individual and his or her autonomy, the recognition of motivation, the shifting role of the teacher from an authoritarian figure to a friendly advisor, and

4 Introduction 11 other seemingly innovative attitudes which had already been anticipated there, by 18 th century Hassidim in their religious reflections and practices. Central Europe, the land where once Orthodox Jewish or the Hassidic culture flourished became the site of the Holocaust. Joanna Auron-Górska looks at some of its aftermath, in a double-perspective vision, analyzing the photographs taken by Jewish photographers visiting Poland and publishing their photographs from the years between 1996 and 2006, and what she, herself a photographer, sees in these images. The troubled past of what Ozick calls shadowy places has received its reflection here. Destroyed Jewish life in Europe was restored in Israel and in diaspora, particularly in the United States. An example of how traditions become the backbone of identity can be seen in the analysis of kashrut practices in an Orthodox Jewish community in California. Jody Myers description of how kashrut affects the social life of Orthodox Jews offers a glimpse into Jewish societies governed strictly by their own laws, accepting and cherishing self-imposed restrictions. Jewish cultural separatism can flourish in the United States, should it be so desired by some Jews, since cultural plurality is a premise of American life. The flourishing of kashrut observant communities testifies also to the reversal of Israel Zangwill s concepts in his 1908 work The Melting Pot. Jewish cultural identity in contemporary America is informed by plurality and diversity. Yet another face of Jewishness in American cultural reality is shown through the writing of Marge Piercy, discussed by Justyna Sierakowska. Piercy s prose belongs to the realm of cyberpunk science fiction, generally considered a predominantly male genre, but the writer has found in it a way to express her belief in the possibility of repairing the world which she expresses through the concept of tikkun olam as taught in Kabbalistic literature. Piercy integrates multiple identities as a woman, a Jew, an American and an environmentalist, thus creating a new hope for the world, and an ecofeminist, nonanthropocentric Jewish identity. The conflict within the Jewish self, on the one hand, while on the other the reconciliation, are shown through two works of literature discussed further in the anthology. For Will Self, born in London in 1961 to a Jewish American mother and British father there is some biographical support for Jewish self-hatred in the character of Lily Bloom he created in his 2000 novel How the Dead Live, apparently based on his mother in temperament and personal history. Discussing Self s novel Zofia Janowska provides insight into the trauma of a Jewish identity infused with self-hatred. As the analysis of the novel indicates, the long known

5 12 Lucyna Aleksandrowicz-Pędich, Małgorzata Pakier problem of Jewish self-hatred in the post-holocaust era is further complicated by the survivor guilt (and images of the Gestapo steal into the mind of the tormented protagonist). The quest for identity by half-jewish Barbara Vaughan, the protagonist of the novel The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark (herself a Scot with Jewish roots) takes place in the Jewish heartland of Jerusalem, under the pall of the ongoing Eichmann trial; Małgorzata Czajka in her analysis captures both the trauma of the uncertain identity and the comedy of the protagonist s masquerading as an Arab woman or a Catholic nun and her other adventures in the madness of the Holy Land politics. Jerusalem as the locus of the identity restructuring for a character who is Jewish and Roman Catholic and European, in the post-holocaust era, seems to indicate a direction that would provide a new hope against traumas summed up by Ozick s shootings - in the streets, in the forests. However, the Israeli reality carries the burden of old European problems complicated by the new ethnic and political situation. The complexity of the post-holocaust functioning of the Jewish nation is reflected in Liat Steir-Livny s article The Holocaust and the Israeli-Arab Conflict in Israeli Culture 1950 s s. Here the text informs about both history and the visual and artistic methods of its representation. Israeli cinema serves as a moral guardian of the consequences of the state s extremely difficult geo-political situation. Nurith Gertz looking at Israeli history and identity through the lens of contemporary films indicates the traumas, the fragmentation and the split between the inherited sense and duty of compassion towards the victim and the acquired role of the defender/oppressor. History, not without irony, has cast a Jewish victim into the role of an Israeli perpetrator. Recent Israeli films discussed by Nurith Gertz (e.g. Jellyfish 2007, Waltz with Bashir 2008) attempt to confront the division between ethical and national identities. Levinas s ethics (which illuminates also Małgorzata Grzegorzewska s essay opening the anthology) of responsibility for others, their life and death, brought here stresses the importance of the philosopher s message. Nurith Gertz s essay also shows how Israeli filmmakers incorporate European film aesthetics and use a diversity of other inspirations, reflecting the amalgam of influences behind the Israeli Jewish identity. The selection of topics related to Jewish identity in this volume indicates that, prior to the Holocaust, Jewish identity, by then primarily European, was often constructed around the concept of faith and self-improvement, exemplified so well by the Hassiddic culture of learning, but also struggled, as in Italy and Germany, against the conflicting ideologies of anti-semitism and assimilation. When, after the Holocaust, the Jewish world has moved to Israel and to America, in the United States Jewish identity is reconstructed in diverse ways resulting

6 Introduction 13 from the freedoms assured by the multicultural society, for example by strict adherence to tradition, or by blending Kabbalistic tikkun olam with American passion for the betterment of the society and an individual, while in Israel it builds upon, on the one hand the inherited trauma of the survivor/victim and, on the other, the achieved status of one of the most powerful nations of the Middle East. Cultural representations in film and literature reflect these struggles. While scholars may lack the strength of the artist s vision, we remain sanguine in our role as accomplices in better understanding the multiplicity of Jewish identities. References Judt, T., Postwar. A History of Europe since London: The Penguin Press. Knigge, V., and N. Frei., Einleitung. In: Verbrechen Erinnern. Die Auseinandersetzung mit Holocaust und Völkermord. München: Beck, pp. VII-XV Ozick, C., The Messiah of Stockholm. New York: Vintage Books. Sznaider, N., Gedächtnisraum Europa. Die Visionen des europäischen Kosmopolitismus. Eine jüdische Perspektive. Bielefeld: Verlag.