Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia

Nathans, Ben. Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Although I cannot do justice to University of Pennsylvania professor Benjamin Nathans's book Beyond the Pale, I will nonetheless attempt to briefly describe it. Essentially, Nathans describes the Jewish community that left the restricted area of the Russian Pale and went to St. Petersburg. Part of this story is the changing circumstances of Jews in Russia. The Jewish population expanded considerably at the time of Catherine the Great after she annexed Poland and other Baltic countries, which were home to much of Europe's Jewish population. This annexation led to official concern for the integration of Jews into Russian life. Nathans makes the point that this concern was not unique to the Jewish minority population in Russia--integration was always an imperial goal, but it was more overt and much more pronounced. Education and conscription seemed to be avenues to integration. Russia's draconian conscription policy of 25 years of service took many young Jews away from their families. At the end of the 25 year period, if you were still alive, you could move out of the Pale and into St. Petersburg. Special privileges to leave the restricted Jewish area (as large as the country of France) were also given to certain artisans, professionals, and to students. But Imperial Russia was never satisfied with the results of their policies over a hundred years of trying: quotas were tightened, loosened, and tightened again. Officials could not decide, for instance, if the Jews were a bad influence on Russians--turning them away from Christianity and toward Nihilism, or if Russians were a bad influence on the Jews--turning them into revolutionaries. In addition, popular and official beliefs were that the Jewish migrants to St. Petersburg were viewed as too successful; they were taking all the places in the professions; they had more babies than Russians; and they were invading the schools. Nathans looks at census documents, the shift of primary languages among the Jewish population and other details of acculturation; he explores the verifiable and mythological stories of the various ways some of the population attempted to circumvent the quotas and restrictions; compares Russia's policy toward its Jewish population with the policies of Europe. In many ways, Russia lagged far behind Europe both in its policies and its modernization. But it also has the sad legacy of anticipating the virulent anti-semitism that spread through Europe as the century turned. As with any excellent book, Nathans, by describing a particular opens the readers eyes to other similar instances perhaps closer to home, teaching a broader lesson in history. Nathan shows how Russia, though seeking to acculturate its Jewish population, could not resist continuing to single them out through laws of quotas and restrictions, thereby, creating a clearly defined "other," ripe for scape-goating and vilification. 

Find this book at a library near you.

New Online Short Fiction by Walter Giersbach, No. 2

and if one newly published short story isn't enough good news--two certainly is great news:

I'm happy to see that a new short short story--"Big Biz @ the Mall"-- is up at The Corner Club Press.  The editor said two days after I submitted it, "You knew we were going to accept this." Well, no I didn't.

   I bounced a draft copy off an 18-year-old to get her thoughts. "Any typos or misspellings?" I asked. "No," she replied, "well, maybe one word's misspelled."  (You know who you are, young lady, but I won't embarrass you or anything.) 

   How about you?  You can find it in Issue IV, pp. 50-51 at http://www.thecornerclubpress.com/uploads/6/0/5/3/6053731/the_corner_club_press_issue_4.pdf, and read it between subway stops, while waiting for the barkeep to bring your beer, or during your first bathroom break at work.

--Walt

Note from the blogger: You not only get the fast paced short story by author Giersbach, you get the entire 116 page anthology from Corner Club Press. Not to be missed! Many thanks Walter. Open Access and Digital Humanities all wrapped up into one.

Recommended Short Fiction from Walter Giersbach, No. 1

Grinnell alumnus and east coast resident Walter Giersbach, one of the Favorite Book Reviews favorite book reviewers, writes:

And now a I'm happy that after much waiting my "Fish Stories and the Mermaid" has been  posted at Bewildering Stories (at http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue439/fish_stories.html).

As animals and humans crowd each other out of their habitats, we know they adapt, but in what curious ways?  Now if I can only learn to hold my breath under water.

Enjoy!

--Walt

http://allotropiclucubrations.blogspot.com/

The Cyclist

Berberian, Viken. The Cyclist: A Novel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

I know almost nothing about Berberian as a writer. According to Amazon.com he writes for newspapers, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Financial Times, and others. He has a second novel out, Das Kapital: A Novel of Love and Money Markets, 2007.  When I say that Berberian is a poet, I do not know whether or not he writes poetry, but his use of language in The Cyclist shows a love and mastery of language that one associates with the careful precise use of poets. Berberian's protagonist is a young man who, the reader learns only towards the end of the novel, was recruited into a terrorist organization (the Academy) following a major bomb explosion of his natal village market square. His target is to be the Summerland Hotel on the beaches of Lebanon. It is clear that this act of revenge is to be carried out regardless of the loss of innocent lives, beleaguered citizens of a battle scarred country.

In preparation for this attack, the protagonist trains to take part in a bicycle race, eventually to veer off from the pack, and to take the bomb to the hotel where he will activate it to kill the maximum number of people. Having sustained great injuries as a result of his training, the novel opens with the cyclist in a hospital bed, unable to blink, unable to eat, unable to move, unable to speak because of a cycling accident. Through careful attention from medical experts and familial and Academy members, one of whom he is a childhood friend Ghaemi who he is very much in love with, the cyclist makes complete recovery.

The novel is written in a sort of stream of consciousness. The reader is unclear what is going on, because the narrator is also only partially informed and aware of what is happening. We have no idea whether Ghaemi loves him or is acting as a loyal member of the Academy. We do not know the sincerity of the leader Sadji who travels, buys clothes at the most expensive boutiques, and, in the name of deception and fact finding, spends time recreating with the higher levels of society. We do know that neither Ghaemi nor Sadji intend to risk their lives to carry out their prime initiative. Neither do we know whether they have had something to do with the accident that put the cyclist in the hospital, whether anything they say can believed beyond its power to manipulate the protagonist.

The cyclist is a lover of food and this figures as prominently in his thoughts as love and desire for Ghaemi. Once out of the hospital, the cyclist follows the path set out for him by the Academy. The reader begins to see the events that have brought him to the point of carrying out mass murder, but the logic of an action that harms the same people who are being avenged  is never apparent. There is no logic, only passion, and seductive power. As the cyclist inadvertently meets, face to face, people who will be victims of his action, the juice man who saved his life after the first accident, a cellist who escapes one terrorist act only to unwittingly be confronted by his, the cyclist's own grasp of the logic of his action begins to crumble.

Berberian, through his narrator, illustrates the richness of a culture eviscerated by wars and American hegemony through the succulent elements of its cuisine and culinary practices. As the protagonist prepares himself for his bloody task, he calms himself through the repetition of instructions and concepts, the importance of bicycle helmets, the baby that is his bomb and the baby that could be his and Ghaemi's true child, the listing of dishes and their ingredients.

As the novel reaches its conclusion, the cyclist attempts to explain how he has come so far beyond his passion for the tastes of his native cuisine to the task of an out of scale revenge. He tells his readers or listeners or imagined audience, "I suppose one can be philosophical and ask as I do every day why some of us return home safely after a morning of shopping at the fish market, sifting through rows of mollusk and marlin, while others become the target of a mugging, a beating, even a bombing. For years I have wrestled to find the answer. But what is the point of procrastination? The road to terrorism does not begin with boredom." (170).

It is clear as the narration progresses, that the protagonist does not want to die, and his determination to carry out the plan becomes rattled when, the night before he is to carry out the bombing, he is told by Sadji that the plan has changed and they want him to explode the bomb in effect, as a suicide, "deliver the baby straight from your bosom" (162).

The rest I leave for you to discover.

I didn't realize until after I had read the novel that it was written in 2002. Since I just bought it in a small bookstore (Bindlestiff between 44th and 45th on Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia), I just assumed it was new. I was already amazed with the intricate beauty of Berberian's writing on such a subject...giving the reader so much to think about and weigh, but my amazement is magnified thinking of the task of writing this so soon after the 9/11 event--provoking both sympathy and judgment in the reader.

Find this novel at a library near you.

The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe

Marquand, David. The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Marquand's examination of the European Union focuses on aspects of nationalism, ethnicity, regionalism, federalism, borders, and unity. As Marquand describes it, the European Union was and is a grand plan to mitigate the hegemony of Napoleons, Hitlers, and Stalins; to prevent the imperial designs and desires of individuals and nations. Marquand contends that the idea that pureness of blood or specific ethnicities should determine national boundaries is a relatively recent event in history, predating Hitler to be sure, but brought to its most complete manifestation by his Nazi regime. The European Union sought to do away with this way of thinking once and for all through diminishing the importance of borders through the unification of economies, monetary units, laws, and policies. Marquand shows that as national borders have faded in some respects, internal ethnic lines have become more indelibly drawn. In fact, as the European Union embraces countries farther afield geographically, economically, and perhaps ideologically from the initial core countries, unity may be an ever more difficult goal to reach. (Positive manifestations of this can be seen in the United Kingdom, where Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have achieved governing bodies independent of England, while staying within the UK).

Marquand discusses the difficulties with gaining popular acceptance of the EU constitution, the quandries related to the admittance of former Soviet Satellites, and only briefly at Turkey's efforts to join (A brand new book is out on Turkey and the European Union-look for a brief look at this book in a future blog entry).

A supporter of the union, Marquand asserts that it has accomplished more than anyone could possibly have expected as it came into formation. He considers the concept of East and West, dating from the time of the ancient Greeks, and points out the folly of Western rhetoric failing to recognize the foundational contributions of cultures beyond the imagined geographical West. As many of these non-Western nations rise to prominence in world affairs, Marquand writes that, [W]e shall have to recognize that the familiar "Western" narrative of global history . . .is a parochial distortion of a far more complex truth....[W]e shall have to accept that the "West" will never again call the shots in global politics: that there is no longer a "West" to call them" (177). Yet he sees hope in a functional European federation--and that creating such an entity is Europe's greatest challenge.

Find this book in a library near you.

Interdisciplinary Conversations

Strober, Myra. Interdisciplinary Conversations: Challenging Habits of Mind. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

An excellent discussion of how scholars work and communicate in the different disciplines and the difficulty of communicating across disciplines because of learned habits of mind. Strober, after conducting a case study of a selection of funded interdisciplinary study groups at three different universities, makes recommendations on how such groups can be conducted so as to have productive outcomes. She specifically recommends that participants lay aside the learned habit of approaching new concepts from the perspective of doubting and work from a perspective of first believing and then questioning. She writes that "synthesizing ideas from disparate disciplines is unfamiliar and uncomfortable. But it is in that discomfort that the seeds of creativity lie, and if the group can continue to play the believing game--not insisting on certainty, closure, or judgments--participantsmay ultimately move to new truths and imaginative solutions" (165). It is about listening with an open mind, trying on ideas, doing away with certainty about any single approach, method, or idea as the only possible scholarly path.