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ABSTRACT
In his novella In shtrom (In the Stream), Sh. An-sky depicts the complexities of the 1905 revolution for Jews through representation of the physical spaces of the city, especially the city park that becomes the central location for the workers' organizations. This article investigates how the novella uses representations of the “lived Jewish space” of the city park to further the cause of building a revolutionary Jewish identity grounded in Yiddish culture and the spaces and experiences of eastern Europe. I call this kind of writing “literary do'ikayt” (hereness): a literary manifestation of the Yiddishist and revolutionary politics of the period that sought to build political and cultural identity grounded in lived experience and a relationship to place, while resisting territorial nationalism as a solution to the problems of either Jews or the working classes of other nations. The article also provides historical and scholarly background on the term do'ikayt.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Madeleine Cohen is the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center (Amherst, MA). She received her PhD in comparative literature with a designated emphasis in Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is president of the board of directors of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies.
Notes
1 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band: In shtrom: ertseylung. The title has been translated as “In the Stream,” “In the Current,” and “With the Flow.” Originally written and published in Russian in 1907 and in the same year in Yiddish serially in the St Petersburg paper Der fraynd. Tammuz in 1905 fell on July 4–August 1. All translations are my own. Portions of this article are adapted from chapter one of my dissertation, Cohen, “Here and Now”.
2 The novella is discussed in Frankel, “‘Youth in Revolt’,” 137–63; Krutikov, Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914, 79–83; and Safran, Wandering Soul, 132–8.
3 A series of pamphlets An-sky edited in 1904–5 “with pictures and worshipful biographies” of Jews who had committed (or attempted) acts of revolutionary terror. See Safran, Wandering Soul, 115.
4 Safran, Wandering Soul, 135.
5 Frankel, “Youth in Revolt,” 138.
6 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 39.
7 This term is adapted from Henre Lefebvre’s concept of “espace vécu,” see Brauch, Lipphardt, and Nocke, “Introduction: Exploring Jewish Space, an Approach,” 16.
8 In addition to historical sources cited elsewhere in this article, see Rabinovitch, Jewish Rights, National Rites as well as his excellent sourcebook Jews & Diaspora Nationalism.
9 There are many sources for histories of the Bund. See, for example, Gitelman, ed., The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe; Jacobs, ed., Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe: The Bund at 100. For the interwar period in Poland, see Pickhan, “Gegen den Strom.” And for the Bund’s complete internal history, see the five volume, Aronson, Dubnov-Erlikh, Herts, eds., Geshikhte fun Bund.
10 On the Bund’s national program, see Gechtman, Yidisher Sotsializm, discussed briefly below.
11 An image of the poster is available in the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. See the article “Bund” by Daniel Blatman, accessed April 29, 2019, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Bund.
12 See Gechtman, “National-Cultural Autonomy and ‘Neutralism,’” 69–92.
13 For a history on the differing positions among Jewish socialists in relation to Jewish identity, see Frankel, Prophecy and Politics.
14 And it has entered a popular discourse, being reclaimed by aspects of the Jewish left. To give one example, there is a “doikayt” tag on the website of the Jewish Currents magazine, accessed April 24, 2019, https://jewishcurrents.org/tag/doikayt/.
15 This in an article by Yudl Mark entitled “Yidishe periodishe oysgabes in lite,” 291. Discussing two anthologies entitled “Lite” that were published in 1922, Mark writes: “di koyne fun di zamlheftn iz geven – brengen tsu a kultureler dernenterung tsvishn yidn un litviner, bakenen yidn mit di shafungen fun der litvisher literatur un mit di ideyen fun di farsheydene gezelshaftlekhe shtremungen bay di litviner, aynflantsn bay yidn gufe mer tsugebundenkayt tsu lite un farteydikn a printsipyeln shtandpunkt fun do’ikayt. Vi a kegnzats tsu der tsionistisher dortikayt.” (The intention of the anthologies was – to bring about a cultural rapprochement between Jews and Lithuanians; to introduce to Jews the creations of Lithuanian literature; and through the ideas of the various social leanings of the Lithuanians to plant within the Jews themselves more of a sense of connection to Lithuania and to defend a primary position of hereness [do’ikayt]. This in opposition to the Zionist thereness [dortikayt].) The Yiddish Book Center’s Yiddish OCR search (in beta form) and the search feature of the National Library of Israel’s Historical Jewish Press project have helped me identify several occurrences of the term from the 1930s in books and periodicals, but not in a political context, rather simply to mean “hereness” in the sense of being present. A forthcoming article by Michael Casper will address the question of the origins of the term. See Casper, “‘Principled Diasporism.’”
16 For a history of the Bund in the postwar period, see Slucki, International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945.
17 To give a schematic sense of this, a full-text search for do’ikayt in the 11,000 volume collection of the Yiddish Book Center’s Digital Library returns two books using the term published in the 1930s, six books from the 1940s, fifteen books from the 1950s, fifteen books from the 1960s, and seventeen books published during the 1970s. This search feature is still in a beta version and will undoubtably improve, returning more accurate results in the coming months and years.
18 Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 17–18.
19 Gechtman, “National-Cultural Autonomy and ‘Neutralism,’” 14.
20 Hodes was a teacher in the TSYSHO system (Central Jewish School Organization), a journalist, and a Bundist leader in interwar Poland. He lived in Wilno from around 1912–1926, then moved to Warsaw where he edited a number of newspapers and journals until 1939. In 1940, he escaped to New York where he lived in failing health until his death in 1957. Interestingly, the second sustained discussion of do’ikayt in reference to the Bund that I have found from 1947 comes from a series of talks given by the Zionist activist Yitskhak Tabenkin to the “first world-seminar of ‘Dror-ha’haluts ha’tsair’ which took place in Indersdorf (Bavaria) from March-June 1947.” Tabenkin, Vegn un umvegn, 5.
21 Leyvick Hodes, “Mitn ponem tsu der tsukunft,” 288–9.
22 Hodes, “Mitn ponem tsu der tsukunft,” 288.
23 See Miron, The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination; and Shandler, Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History.
24 See my discussion of Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia and multi-voiced texts as an aspect of literary do’ikayt in chapter three of my dissertation, “‘The Culture of Little Bits’: Do’ikayt in Moshe Kulbak’s Zelmenyaner”, Cohen, “Here and Now,” 75–121.
25 See Safran, “Timeline: Semyon Akimovich An-sky/Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport” in The Worlds of S, An-sky, xv–xxix.
26 Kacyzne, “23 yor dibuk (di 17te yortsayt fun sh. An-skin iz oysgefaln dem 27tn oktober),” 14–16. Safran includes a photo of An-sky in this uniform, including the hat Kacyzne describes him wearing, see Wandering Soul, following page 224.
27 Safran, Wandering Soul, 127–32.
28 Frankel, “Youth in Revolt,” 138–9.
29 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 18–19.
30 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 19.
31 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 48–9.
32 Krutikov, Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914, 80.
33 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 19.
34 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 49–50.
35 One section spends several pages representing a debate between a socialist Zionist and a Bundist about the merits of territorialism vs. national cultural autonomy! See pages 52–6.
36 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 51–2.
37 “Toye-voye” is biblical Hebrew, appearing in Genesis 1:2 describing the state of the Earth before the creation of light: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (New International Version.)
38 Safran, Frankel, and Krutikov all discuss a different scene in which a similar message is expressed. A dying sofer tells his revolutionary son that he has heard about a self-defense group saving Torah scrolls from desecration in a pogrom. The sofer sees these young revolutionaries – who in so many ways have distanced themselves from Jewish tradition – as dying kidush ha’shem, in sanctification of God’s name. See Frankel, “Youth in Revolt,” 146–7; Krutikov, Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914, 81; Safran, Wandering Soul, 133–4.
39 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 117.
40 An-sky, Gezamlte shriftn. Naynter Band, 126–7.
41 As is the case of SKIF in Australia, the Sotsyalistisher Kinder Farband (socialist children’s organization), www.skif.org.au