Woodzh' ya....?

In search of Bruno Schulz

2011-07-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

I recently spent an intense week in Poland and Ukraine looking for traces of Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), the Polish Jewish writer and artist of the interwar period.***

Plagued by my usual cast of physical ailments, I journeyed in classic stony-faced fashion, and I can only be grateful to my compatriots for not throwing me out of the bus. That being said, along the way, I learned quite a lot about Jews, memory, and language in Eastern Europe. If you'll indulge me, I'll impart a bit of what I learned, followed by more personal remarks and pictures.

Growing up several generations removed from WWII, I think I always took the existence of Holocaust museums for granted. Earlier generations had established the necessity for Holocaust remembrance and the basic forms in which it took place. Beginning in elementary school (I was 12 when Schindler's List came out in 1993), I saw my task differently: to analyze and critique the way the Holocaust was presented to me.

It seemed to me, as I grew older, that American Jews received their information about Jewish life and history in Eastern Europe from two institutions in particular: March of the Living and Yad Vashem. March of the Living, a nonprofit organization with both American and Israeli funding (www.motl.org), has taken generations of Jewish high school students to Poland and Israel, beginning with tours of the Polish death camps and ending with the celebration of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israeli independence day. The message is clear: Jewish suffering in Eastern Europe has ended, in a deterministic fashion, in the victory of Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, similarly emphasizes the history of Zionism and Hebrew-speaking Jews in Eastern Europe over other political and linguistic groupings and ideologies. Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe is reduced to the Holocaust; the Holocaust in turn becomes Israel's founding myth.

Yad Vashem's approach towards collecting artifacts was illustrated clearly in 2001. Frescoes painted by Bruno Schulz under duress during the Second World War had been discovered in his native town of Drohobych, in Ukraine. Yad Vashem removed some of the frescoes, bringing them back (illegally) to Israel for conservation. Several prominent Polish and East European historians published an open letter to the New York Review of Books in protest: "The work of Bruno Schulz, after all, reminds us that this region was long one of unique cultural richness and diversity; an effort by any single group to monopolize his memory erases this history of pluralism."

Historians have increasingly begun to frame the experience of Jews during the Second World War within a larger framework. My advisor and mentor Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands, 2010) has situated the Holocaust within the larger context of violence and terror in the region beginning in the early 1930s. Our focus should not be limited to Auschwitz and other death camps but rather should include the crude shooting that killed the majority of Jews.

A new Museum of Polish Jewry (http://www.jewishmuseum.org.pl/pl/cms/strona-glowna/), scheduled to open in Warsaw in 2013, has made its mission not to be a Holocaust museum but rather to offer a history of 1000 years of Jewish life in Poland. Its organizers propose to devote equal attention to secular Jews as well as religious ones; to tell a story of Polish-Jewish relations while attempting not to prioritize either the Polish or Jewish narratives.

It is not always clear, however, how exactly Jews should be remembered; the extent to which remnants of Jewish life should be conserved, or, alternately, reconstructed; and, in a region where virtually no Jews remain, who should be doing the remembering.

Funding is always an issue. Thanks to the (financial) influence of Chabad, as well as other organizations such as the Lauder Foundation (http://www.lauderfoundation.com/), Judaism in Poland today has been largely understood, interpreted and practiced as a religion, rather than as a culture or historical tradition. Those who do not wish to keep shabbat or kashrut, or those who are not biologically Jewish, are either consciously or de facto excluded from the community (and from funding). The rabbinic establishment has embraced events such as concert tours of the American Hasidic singer Matisyahu; there is little communal framework or support for those who might question his lyrics or find them offensive.

Then there is the national question. In the interwar period, the eastern border of Poland lay far east of its present location, so that Poland extended far into present-day Ukraine. This presents a complication for remembering those Jews who identified as Poles yet lived in what is today Ukraine. The Ukrainian government, plagued by corruption, has little funding for public works of any sort--and there is clearly little interest in funding the memorialization of either Poles or Jews. Support for extreme forms of Ukrainian nationalism in western Ukraine in particular makes public self-reckoning or self-criticism out of the question. (There are of course exceptions, see for ex.: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/world/europe/06priest.html). Poland has been discussing the heated question of Polish-Jewish relations for ten years, since the 2001 publication of Jan Gross' Neighbors (Sąsiedzi), an account of Polish violence against Jews during WWII. In Ukraine, there has been virtually no such public discussion. As the director of Lviv's Center for Urban History put it, "these things are still very painful."

Indeed, there are fundamental differences between Poland and Ukraine (even though they are jointly sponsoring the Euro 2012 soccer tournament). Poland joined the EU in 2004, and European funds have led to visible improvements in over the past couple of years, for example in transportation. In Ukraine, renovations in preparation for the Euro 2012 are rather potemkinish: a facade for collapsing infrastructure. Poland has been active in promoting democracy in the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union; civil society in Ukraine is still circumscribed.

Our opinions of Ukraine were shaped by a bad experience on our first night: a restaurant that commercialized Jewish memory to the point of being anti-Semitic. Patrons are invited to sit out on an open-aired veranda overlooking the ruins of an old synagogue. The walls are festooned with Bruno Schulz sketches, and a television screen flashes photos of Hasidic men in interwar Poland; Jewish ritual objects; and coins of some sort (presumably shekels?). Guests are invited to take part in the Jewish ritual of hand-washing before meals (so strange in this context that I couldn't keep a straight face).

Matzah is served instead of bread--a stereotype with a concerning resemblance to the old pretext for pogroms against Jews. Finally, the meal ends with the 'traditional' Jewish custom of haggling over the bill with the waiter (!!!!). In our case, it turned into a disturbing debate over Jewish vs. Ukrainian victimhood.

*****

Whether in Poland or Ukraine, there is a thin line between memory and kitsch, so that outside observers familiar with Polish language and culture differ on what is appropriate or, alternately, offensive.

In the city of Lublin (eastern Poland), the NN (No Name) theater troupe and museum has taken on the mantle of the guardian of Jewish memory. The organization has created a multi-story exhibition space and online portal (http://tnn.pl/The_Gate_of_Memory_-_English,3362.html) with a neat interactive map (http://teatrnn.pl/makieta/makieta.html). In what is today a homogenous city of Poles, the goal is to raise awareness; to memorialize Lublin's Jewish population, obliterated during the Second World War, as well as its old Jewish quarter, entirely erased from the map by Soviet postwar planners.

As the institute's co-director W. showed us around the exhibit, I was slightly amused by his enthusiasm and optimism: his almost spiritual belief in signs and symbols as a testament to the enduring memory of the Jews who once lived in his city. In the evening, with the same full-bodied energy, W. gave us a private show. Together with an accordionist, he acted out one of the traditional stories of the Jews of Chelm, the town of 'wise men' (ie, fools) neighboring Lublin. In a musical interlude, the two men sang the Yiddish song 'Sapozhkelekh,' a favorite of mine.

I was moved by the performance. I was touched by W.'s energy, sincerity, and love for the material. I was touched to witness a reenactment of the stories I'd loved as a child in the very region in which they originated. As I've spent more and more time in Poland, I've come to sympathize strongly with those Jews (such as Bruno Schulz) who identified primarily as Poles. I'm always touched by memorials that are conducted in Polish: the language that these Jews embraced and spoke and the culture to which they contributed.

My companions, especially those who did not understand Polish, were less impressed by W.'s performance. This is kitsch, they told me. It may have been heart-felt, but the choice to reenact a Chelm story was a mistake. This rendering of the Jewish fool was replete with stereotypical hand gestures, facial expressions, and accent.

On the last day of our trip, we went to Drohobych, once the third largest city in Habsburg Galicia. Today, Drohobych is a middling, typically-looking Ukrainian city, with virtually no traces of either Polishness or Bruno Schulz.

Instead, we met Schulz's last surviving student, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust by the name of Alfred Schreyer. Schreyer speaks Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian; he spoke to us in Polish and made clear he identifies primarily as a Pole. Schreyer is also a performer. He is in his late '80s, yet still sings and performs as part of a trio. When we took him out to dinner and had him sit at the center of the table, he loved the attention.

Upon request, Schreyer entertained us with stories of Bruno Schulz, mainly legends that he had clearly perfected after multiple rounds of retelling. For our part, I had the feeling that our group projected onto Schreyer our own expectations of what we hoped to find in Drohobych; and our reactions to him were therefore characteristically scripted. Some members of our group proposed singing a song together with Schreyer, and since no one knew Stephen Foster, they proposed Afn Pripetchik. Afn Pripetchik is probably the kitchiest Yiddish song that there is. It describes small children learning the Hebrew alphabet by the fire; its last verse instructs the children that even as they suffer from persecution and the burden of the diaspora (goles), they should find strength in the letters themselves. Our group of Americans had arrived in Poland with an almost nostalgic hope of finding traces of Jewish life and culture. We refused to let go of that nostalgia entirely.

Schreyer went on to serenade us with a song he was more familiar with: a Polish-language version of the Yiddish song 'Mayn shtetele Belz.' This seemed far more natural to me than asking him to sing in Yiddish. The reactions around the table were quite varied:

The highlight of our trip to Drohobych was to be a visit to see the remaining Bruno Schulz frescoes. After encountering resistance from the Drohobych art museum, we bribed them by buying 100 tickets (there were 8 of us). The warehouse where the frescoes are housed looks run-down on the outside; the inside is damp and creaky.

The conditions couldn't be worse for the preservation of artwork. We were brought to a room where the remains of the frescoes were literally propped up on chairs for our viewing.

And so we ended our trip in search of Bruno Schulz both disappointed and slightly horrified. Given the challenges in Ukraine, is it even worth attempting to preserve and/or reconstruct remnants of Jewish life and culture? Perhaps we should say, as one of our group members suggested: you can't have it back. And, if this is the case, perhaps Yad Vashem is right: we should be grateful to the museum for rescuing pieces of the Bruno Schulz frescoes before they were vandalized or otherwise destroyed. In other words, should we give up on the goal of memorializing the Jewish experience in Ukraine itself?

I hope that this will not be the case. I hope that Ukraine can gradually learn from Poland's experience; introduce programs of Jewish studies in its major universities; begin to discuss that which it finds so painful. I hope that Lviv's Center for Urban History can continue the work it has begun in researching and publicizing a full picture of the history of Ukrainian cities in the interwar period, one that includes both Poles and Jews.

But most of all, my hope is for American Jews. I hope that we continue to question our own assumptions: the way in which we remember the Holocaust in particular and Jewish history in general; the way in which we view the institutions that present these memories to us. We are still mourning and coming to terms with the violent extermination and white-washing of Jews from the East European landscape. I hope that even as we do so, we begin to form new hopes and expectations regarding Polish-Jewish and Jewish-Ukrainian relations. I hope that we remain open to further discussion. I hope that we remain open to complexity: in the way we view the history of Jews in Poland and Ukraine, in our understanding of the region, and in the way we understand our own identities.

***The trip was organized by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Book Institute.

Summing up

2008-05-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I still have two days (and three nights) left. But since both my computer and my stomach are on their last legs, I thought I would post now, before one or the other completely crashes.

This will be my last post. I think I've exhausted the subject of Polish-Jewish relations for now, same for the Catholic church :) And hopefully after this week I won't need to vent about things like broken doors and washing machines or lack of smoke detectors.

I want to thank everyone who read and commented and wrote to me. You were my connection to home, you were what I lived for this whole year. I snapped my photos for you to see; I tried to find the comic and noteworthy in the grey and dull--so I could share it with someone else. I can't wait to see and be with you.

Y takes break from politics to indulge in well-deserved litany of pain

2008-05-23T04:11:00.000-07:00

Well I've now been in bed since Monday, that's a long 5 days. Yesterday my good friend I. made me call the doctor, which was quite the task, given that it was Corpus Christi and no doctors were working. After calling everyone I knew in lodz, I finally found a private ambulance service that made house calls. And so I soon found myself in the surreal situation of trying to explain in Polish to two red-uniformed paramedics what was wrong with my stomach. Well sorry, that's not surreal at all, that's just difficult. This was surreal: instead of asking me about my stomach, they started grilling me instead about my stay in Poland, about my research, and about the fact that Tygodnik Powszechny was lying on my desk. Turns out that not too many foreigners read the Catholic news.

Well the good news is, thanks to their medication, I am no longer in danger of dehydrating to death. Maybe tomorrow I will finally eat something.

In the meantime, I will declare for now and ever that this was NOT what I signed up for, that it is a spectacular finale to 4 months of stomachaches, and after this, my dissertation better be **@@&& amazing. That's all.

Rabbis and priests

2008-05-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

The chief rabbi of Poland appeared on the pages of this blog once before, in connection with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial/prayer march this spring. (At that time, I failed to mention that my mother studied Talmud in the same class as Rabbi Schudrich at the Jewish Theological Seminary. I brag about this fact to Poles all the time, which is why the entire Lauder Foundation in Lodz now knows about my tangential link to rabbinical stardom.)

Anyway, after receiving both conservative and orthodox ordinations, Schudrich spent 6 years as rabbi in Japan, and then came to Warsaw--where he is now chief rabbi of Poland.

This week, Tygodnik Powszechny, the Catholic weekly in Poland, awarded Schudrich its yearly St Jerzy prize, for struggle with evil and promotion of good deeds in Polish social life.

What did Schudrich do to merit this award? Well, according to Tygodnik Powszechny, it has to do with the definition of 'rabbi' in Poland today in general. How to fulfill the post of Jewish spiritual leader in a country which once produced some of the greatest rabbinical figures and scholars--a country which since then has been turned essentially into a big Jewish graveyard.

Schudrich's answer: to treat Judaism as a system of morals and ethics, rather than as one of rules and regulations that apply particularly to Jews. This ecumenical approach has enabled him not only to engage in dialogue with the Catholic church and with Poles in general, but to better approach the problem of what 'jewishness' means in Poland today.

Schudrich has praised Pope John Paul II as a role model in his openness for other religions; in his comments on Jewish-Polish relations, Schudrich once said: "What should be more important for Poles than what the US thinks about the [WWII] tragedy should be what Poles themselves tell God."

I am very proud that a native new yorker has contributed so much to polish religious life; and I am again impressed by the Catholic church--that it places such a high premium on interfaith dialogue and recognition.

I once said on the pages of this blog that I would write my dissertation on death and mental health. Well, my mood improved significantly after I left Russia :) Since then, I have also become absolutely obsessed with Catholicism (as I'm sure is evident), and I've decided to write my dissertation about charismatic priests and popular religion.

My plans

2008-05-16T06:42:00.001-07:00

I'm leaving Poland in two weeks, on June 1. It's been a long year, it's hard to believe I'm almost done. I have no sad feelings about leaving Poland. I'm looking forward to seeing family and friends; I'm also excited to begin writing.

I'm going back to Ohio for a bit, until June 12. After that I'll be in the New York/New Haven area, writing feverishly and looking for an apartment. (also feverishly).

ysk returns to her roots

2008-05-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

After four semesters of teaching Russian and East European history, I'm TA'ing next semester: Jewish culture to the Reformation.

So just in case it didn't come through in the blog--I'm now officially a Jewish historian.

The Lodz Jewish Cemetery

2008-05-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

The Jewish cemetery in Lodz is supposed to be the largest in Eastern Europe.

It's one of the most gloomiest places I've ever seen during the fall and winter--but in the summer, it's actually quite pleasant. Locals come here on Sundays simply to walk around; it's like an outdoor museum of Lodz history.

The cemetery was constructed in the early 1890s--the decade when Lodz workers began dying in massive numbers. According to Jewish community sources, there were an average of 6-7 funerals a day here!!!! The traffic was so bad that a new highway had to be constructed, connecting the cemetery to Lodz proper.

Back in the day, funeral homes were located on the grounds of the cemetery itself.

The mourners and coffin would then proceed through the main cemetery gates, into the main cemetery alley. All the biggest industrialists were buried here, and many of their graves are as outlandish as were their homes.

Take the Poznanski tomb, for example. I laughed out loud the first time I saw it. Surrounded by a marble wall, it's a veritable palace in the land of the dead. I may be mortal--Poznanksi might have said--but my millions aren't!!!!!

The main alley of the Lodz cemetery is well-maintained, but the Lodz Jewish community simply doesn't have the funds to look after the hundreds of other alleys and plots. Some of these are from the ghetto years, others are from the interwar period and pre-WWI.

Most of the cemetery looks like this:

I kind of like the overgrown look. It's as if the dead have more...privacy.

On the other hand, tombstones themselves can be of enourmous use to historians--so when the Jewish club devoted a Sunday to cleaning up one of the cemetery plots, I agreed to help.

I think we made a little bit of progress....

Still, for all their bravado, the guys only lasted a coule of hours before they stopped for beer.

I could have gone on much longer.

My first Catholic wedding

2008-05-03T04:32:00.000-07:00

Before I came to Poland, I knew virtually nothing about the Catholic church. I had heard of Radio Maria, the ultra-conservative, anti-semitic wing of the church in Poland; I knew that the previous government of the Kaczynski brothers had fashioned a moral/religious brand of politics, while simultaneously launching a purge in the church of those who had allegedly been associated with the Soviet security services.

I end my year here, though, with an enormous amount of respect and admiration for the Catholic church in Poland. For its openness, for its willingness to engage in ‘a reckoning of the conscience,’ as the Poles say, to discuss painful issues such as Jewish/Polish relations—-for its commitment above all to human rights. I return to the States with a slightly more positive outlook on religion in general.

This weekend my friends Piotr and Iza got married here in Lodz. Iza directs the Jewish choirs in both Lodz and Warsaw; Piotr is also Jewish. But they chose to have their wedding at the church of Piotr’s family—a culturally Polish wedding for two Polish artists/intellectuals.

That being said, the wedding was a testament to the fluidity of boundaries, to the ultimate supremacy of individual identity over institution. Early on in the service, we were flabbergasted when a woman’s voice, floating down from the choir gallery, began singing ‘eishet khayil’--the psalm praising the ideal Jewish woman. I realized that moments before, the priest had been reciting the same words in a Polish translation. What a novelty!!!!! The age-old Hebrew verse entirely filled up the church, resonating to the tender accompaniment of the organ.

We then realized that not only was there a church choir in the deck, but Iza’s choir was singing as well!!!!! They launched into a spirited “Hine-matov”, in Polish and then in Hebrew: how pleasant it is, how exalted, for brothers to sit together. At the end, when the bride and groom walked back down the aisle, the choir serenaded them with the traditional “od yi’shama”.

And so I left with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude to the church: thank you for letting my friends express themselves in all their complexities.

Piotr later told me that the priest who performed the wedding is biologically Jewish himself. He even knows a little Yiddish.

Travel tips

2008-04-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine has a travel tip blog (http://nobudgettravel.wordpress.com)--which I, as a traveler without internet, shamefully don't read.

My latest bad decision: co-ed hostel room. These are always cheaper than all-women rooms, but the couple of bucks are worth it. Not only are guys more likely to vomit, but a lot of them smell bad in general.

Good morning from (a very stinky) Krakow.

SuperLodz

2008-04-23T03:17:00.001-07:00

There’s no escaping Lodz. It follows me wherever I go.

This is a billboard that just went up in front of my Warsaw apartment.

“Lodz: we’re flying towards Culture!” the sign proclaims.

‘Captain Culture,’ with Miss Polonia 2007 at his side, are towering over a skyline that peculiarly resembles…New York.

This is not the only such billboard---Captain Culture signs are now plastered all over the Warsaw metro and up and down main thoroughfares.

The catch? Lodz is competing for Capital of European Culture, 2016.

Don’t get me wrong, Lodz has some terrific independent cinemas. It’s home to a world-renowned film school. And the old Poznanski factory is being converted into a giant modern art museum. But I have a tip for SuperLodz…next time you compete for Capital of European Culture, fly over your own skyline.

First seder

2008-04-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

I went to the Lauder Foundation, the alternative in Lodz to Chabad. We finished early enough for a jovial yiddish song session. My kind of people.

The only problem--when I told the leader I would be back next summer for a visit, he said--well, I hope we'll still be around then. A plea for a contribution? I don't think so. More like a statement of fact. The reality is, I'll have two seders next year whether I like it or not. But Judaism in Lodz depends on outside funding. Not even yiddish song sessions are for free.

Warsaw Ghetto Memorial

2008-04-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

Today, in Warsaw, the Polish Council of Christians and Jews held a ‘march of prayer’ in memory of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Such events at home would be advertised as ‘non-denominational.’ This prayer march, on the other hand, was as ‘denominational’ as I’ve ever seen. The number of priests in attendance was just phenomenal. One could even identify them by their garb—it was as fun as Hasidic sects.

There were the Catholics...

An Ewangelical minister...

An Orthodox priest...(on his left is the Chief Rabbi of Poland, American-born Michael Shudrich)

And even a group of Dominicans (I think).

About a hundred people gathered at the main Warsaw ghetto memorial; we then proceeded to various other small monuments within about a two-block radius. At each monument, both a priest and a rabbi would lead a prayer; we then all recited a psalm aloud together.

If the denominations were impressive, so were the languages. Milling around before we started, I heard quite a bit of German and English. That being said, the overwhelming majority of participants were Polish. In fact, when one of the priests recited the ‘Ojciec nasz’ prayer, almost everyone joined in--in Polish--by heart.

I found the event as a whole surprisingly touching. I thought I’d be turned off by the prayer—but honestly, it was all just so appropriate. I’ve been working my way this year through memoirs of the uprising--and the march today brought them alive, matching buildings and places with people and voices.

It found it touching that we all read psalms aloud in a Polish translation, not a Hebrew one. How appropriate that priests and rabbis together prayed specifically in the language that the deceased identified with. And how remarkable that I, too, could join in--that I, too, could now recite in the language the deceased would have chosen.

I found it touching to hear the Hebrew prayer of mourning, the ‘kel-mole-rakhomim,’ at Milej 18--the bunker where many of the leaders of the uprising, most no older than 21 years old, committed suicide. And I broke down completely at the Umschlagplatz, the square where 300,000 Jews were herded onto cattle cars and deported. You know, I usually eschew all exclusive sentiments of group victimization. But when Rabbi Schudrich began to wail “Min ha-meytsar karati ya”, --it seemed to me that of all the march participants, I was the only one who actually understood these words--their significance, their power.

Two American Jews and a whole lot of Poles—we were the ones left to mourn the 300,000.

laundry woes

2008-04-06T06:53:00.001-07:00

Inevitably, about a week after you've moved into an apartment, you find out all the things that are wrong with it. Since I never stay in one place long enough to actually fix these things, my year in Eastern Europe has been one long succession of housing frustrations.

I am now living Warsaw, in a chic apartment which certain advisors of mine procured for me. I am actually the guinea pig in this situation: my advisor will be living in the apartment in the summer--which means I get to discover all the problems before she arrives.

Luckily, there are no bugs yet to speak of, tfu tfu tfu. But for an apt this nice...

and this expensive, you would expect that things would actually work. No such luck. The oven doesn't work, there is no bed frame yet, there is no internet, and after several washes, I have determined that the washing machine most certainly does not work. Of course, the bed will have arrived by the time my advisor comes, and the washing machine will also be fixed. We can't have certain advisors of mine wasting precious warsaw time wringing out their clothes. But in the meantime, I am left with a big rip-off. And no clean jeans. The washing machine in my Lodz dorm is also currently out of service.

Yedida sticks to her guns

2008-03-31T06:02:00.000-07:00

Despite certain facts that have been brought to my attention about certain western journalists--I still maintain that Poland claims for itself a particular relationship with rebellious/beleaguered countries. It has an affinity towards them, an understanding of them.

Again, this a historical connection: the legacy of the Solidarity movement of the 1980's. Solidarity, Poles say today, was not only a revolt against Soviet rule, but a fight for all human rights. It has become an international symbol. Which is why another Polish newspaper, the Catholic 'Tygodnik Powszechny,' splashed a red 'Solidarnosc' on its front-page this week--declaring an Olympic 'Solidarity' with those repressed by China.

Well this is all very stimulating, and certainly a relief from the Poland of the Kaczynskis, but somehow...I wish human rights could be less black and white. Would anyone boycott a US olympic games, because of crimes in Iraq? Highly doubtful. Lodz had a pro-Tibet rally today, at the Manufaktura shopping mall. Lodz radio encouraged civilians today to boycott Chinese products. Oh those evil Chinese. So nice that's it's finally PC to have an enemy again.

Tibet and Poland

2008-03-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's equivalent of the NY Times (except much more strident in tone), just published an editorial, a translation from the Washington Post. The original author, A.A., is a journalist who specializes in Russia/Eastern Europe--she came out several years ago with a book on the gulag. She also happens to be a Yale graduate.

This particular editorial is entitled: "China is like Austria-Hungary."
A. compares China to the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, in which, she claims, a dominant ethnic group ruled over subordinate ones through its police repression and manipulation. Birma, Tibet, and Xinjiang, she says, are like the Bohemia and Budapest of old.

Of all Washington Post editorials, why did Gazeta Wyborcza choose to translate THIS one?

Well, A. goes on to wax sweetly on her notion of China as an Empire. "Tibet is to China what at one point Algeria used to be for France, India for Great Britain, or Poland for tsarist Russia--the least loyal, the least humble, and at the same time the most important symbolic province of the Empire."

It took A.A. to articulate it: Rebellious and victimized, Poland identifies with Tibet!!!!!!!!!!

Easter

2008-03-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

My roommate Kinga gave me an edible Easter bunny yesterday. She brought him from home.

Today, as my roommates and I were discussing America's low-key attitude towards Easter, the inevitable question came up: "You're catholic, aren't you?"

So I 'came out.' No, I'm Jewish.

They didn't miss a beat. 'Well that doesn't bother me,' Kinga said. 'It doesn't bother me,' Kasia agreed. 'Everyone has the right to believe what they want.' They then launched into a spirited bashing of gypsies. I suppose it reduced the tension.

Later, Kasia asked me if Jewish women covered their hair and slept in separate beds from their husbands. She had seen some sort of program on tv.

All in all, it could have been worse. Kinga told me later that she had suspicions I wasn't Catholic: in the picture she saw of Y/J's wedding, all the men were wearing caps.

But you know, in the end, she still gave me my little Easter bunny. I have decided not to eat him.

Rules

2008-03-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

I generally try not to follow rules. Skybus asks that you not bring food with you onto the airplane--I eat my granola bars anyway. I sneak M&M's with me into the archive, hiding them in my pocket and sucking them like candy. I enter churches and holy places wearing pants and no head covering. I never ever check my bag before entering grocery stores in Russia and Poland--unless forced to do so. And today I almost committed the ultimate of crimes, trying to sneak a take-out bag of hot and sour soup into the holy sanctuary of the Columbia library. (I was caught red-handed, unfortunately, by a vigilant security guard. Doh.)

Honestly, I never thought twice about my rule-breaking habits until this past weekend, when I spent some time with my brother. We were going into a drugstore, to stock up for my next couple of months in eastern europe--when nachy pointed out to me a sign at the door: leave your bags at the front desk. I shrugged off the request, as is my habit. What a pain to take off my backpack! My brother, though, visibly hesitated. Why would you want to get in trouble, he asked.

Well, he has a point. Society works when people respect each other. Why jam up the system. I love Columbia library, why in heavens would I want the place to smell like Ollie's?????

On the other hand, if there's a god on this earth, he certainly does not operate according to any normal, human rules. A Harvard graduate student, 28 years old, a friend of friends of mine, was just run over and killed by a Shaw's truck. Shaw's is the name of a supermarket chain. This is not the first such incident--a couple years ago, one of the most prominent Russian historians was run over by a truck at Berkeley. Such a waste.

The world is a cruel place. If it makes me happier to eat M's in the archive...well, I'll just go ahead and do so.

Yedida takes on C.J. Chivers

2008-03-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

While I sat and stewed this past month, cursing my self-imposed blog censorship, C.J. Chivers of the New York Times was publishing away, stealing all of my exposees on the Russian presidential election.

Well now I will relay my own version of the past month's political events.

Compared to the Duma elections in December, the Presidential race was not a big deal. Since the outcome was a foregone conclusion, the Putin/Medvedev ticket hardly bothered to campaign at all. Medvedev did not even show up at the televised presidential debate--held only for the purpose of maintaining a pretense of democracy.

As for propaganda, there was virtually none. In Moscow, at least, the Medvedev campaign chest went unspent. The only election poster I saw showed a happy family on a sled--"Remember to vote on March 2!" Actually, it was less an election poster than part of the campaign to boost Russian population growth; other posters in the metro showed a matreshka doll family topped by a quote from Francis Bacon (!?): "love for the fatherland begins in the home."

The most disturbing election-related news was the temporary closing of the European University in St. Petersburg. Putin felt threatened, apparently, by a program under university auspices that aimed to improve election monitoring. In the end, the elections certainly were not fair--both the American and Russian news reported incidents of intimidation and forced open voting.

The closest I came to intimidation was in my own apartment building. I was returning from a run when an over-friendly babushka stopped me. "Are you coming to vote next week?" she asked. I had no idea what to say. "Absolutely!" I finally managed.

According to 'official' tallying, Medvedev received 70.2% of the vote. Does popular opposition really exist? You bet. Especially outside of Moscow, where Putin's economic achievements, touted so often by the press, are not so readily visible.

Take this muddy street in Pskov, for example.

Little wonder that one of its buildings bears the scrawled message: "Russia without Putin!"

Russia's approach to the environment

2008-03-09T08:48:00.000-07:00

(Note. I wrote this post my first week in Russia; I am publishing it from the safe shores of Poland. I stepped off the plane this morning and took a fresh breath of air, both literally and figuratively.)

One of the theoretical advantages to having a kitchen when you're abroad is being able to boil your tap water. One can then brush one's teeth and wash one's lettuce and even drink excessive amounts after running--all completely for free.

I have not had the best luck with hot water boilers this year. The one I inherited in Israel was coated in lime sediment; the one in my Moscow kitchen is, as we know, inhabited by ants. So, bottled water it is.

Unlike Israel, though, where there are bottle recycling bins every block, Moscow has no recycling to speak of. If I go through a large bottle per day, I will have wasted 31 plastic bottles by the time I have left this city.

Well that's not the worst of it. Moscow's most popular supermarket chain, 'Intersection,' has a peculiar way of preventing theft. As soon as you enter the store, you are greeted by a large babushka, who wraps both you and your bag up in a gigantic sheet of saranwrap. The idea being that Cellophane buyers will hardly be able to walk through the store, let alone open their bags to shoplift. To wrap up a day's worth of customers requires a 12-inch block of plastic. In one 'Intersection' store. Now say there are 15 'Intersections' in Moscow. You can do the math.

Lent

2008-03-04T11:17:00.000-08:00

Lent has virtually disappeared here in the election excitement (yes, Medvedev won) and in preparations for Women's Day, March 8.

Still, I have undertaken my own Lent. I no longer drink tea or coffee, since my hot water boiler is ant-infested. I no longer eat dairy products, since they're pasteurized differently and don't agree with me. I do not eat meat, as a rule.

I have not eaten the bananas here--they're so incredibly large that I fear growth-hormone poisoning. The muffin-like 'keks' that they sell are also now off-limits; I bit into one today and it tasted like arsenic. That is, what I imagine arsenic would taste like.

This leaves for consumption: soup, potatoes, and fish.

But don't worry, I will not arrive home meager and emaciated. Because running is also off limits!!!!!!! The streets and sidewalks are so flooded with muddy, snow-melted disgust that there's absolutely no place to go.

According to the YSK calendar, Lent ends in exactly....5 days :)