Symbolic Systems, Categorization, & Anomaly

How can this drive to homogenize be explained?

In her book, Purity & Danger, Mary Douglas explains that as humans perceive the world, we create a system by which we order our perceptions. We create categories into which we place ideas and material. Our world is then laid out before us in a pattern which we construct. We build up a system of labels for the elements of this world, and we become invested in the regularity and predictability of this system (Douglas 1966: 36).

Since the systematic ordering and classification of matter involves the rejecting of inappropriate elements, an inevitable by-product of this system, Douglas writes, is "dirt," which she defines as "matter-out-of-place." She refers to matter-out-of-place as dirt because we often label such matter as "dirty," "impure," or "polluting."

Our ideas of dirt carry symbolic weight; they often reflect other ordered systems within our society (Douglas 1966: 3). The impulse to re-order, to clean up dirt, reflects our need to maintain an ordered system. Douglas views this action as positive, rather than negative. In the "elimination" of dirt we are "organizing the environment," making it "conform to an idea" (Douglas 1966: 2).

When we encounter an element that does not fit a given set or category, it becomes an anomaly. Once the category of the anomalous is established, "the outline of the set of which it is not a member is clarified" (Douglas 1966: 38). In other words, once something is defined as anomalous, as not fitting a category, the original set of categories is reinforced, made more rigid and defined.

Just as individuals create ordered systems in which to organize their perception, groups of individuals create a common set of categories and in turn a common set of anomalous elements. Due to their public nature, categories created by the collective are more rigid and authoritative:

"No individual lives in isolation and his scheme will have been partly received from others...Culture, in the sense of the public, standardized values of a community, mediates the experience of individuals. It provides in advance some basic categories, a positive pattern in which ideas and values are tidily ordered" (Douglas 1966: 38-39).

As individuals we have several ways of confronting anomalies:

"Negatively, we can ignore, just not perceive them, or perceiving, we can condemn...Positively we can deliberately confront the anomaly and try to create a new pattern of reality in which it has a place" (Douglas 1966: 38).

In turn, cultures have ways of collectively dealing with anomalous elements. Douglas lists five basic options: 1. A common interpretation or explanation of the anomaly is adopted by the collective. 2. The anomalous element is physically controlled. 3. The anomalous element is avoided -therefore strengthening its anomalous, dirty status. 4. Anomalous elements are labeled as dangerous. 5. Ambiguous symbols are used in ritual (Douglas 1966: 39).

Russia's Jews/Judaism as Anomalous Elements

It is striking to see the extent to which Douglas' model is applicable to the ways 19th century Russian thought understood the Jewish presence in Russia. Douglas' model is clearly reflected in both Russia's concept of its Jews and the ways in which lawmakers dealt with them. The Jewish Question seems at its root to be about the struggle with the Jewish anomaly, the struggle to create the pure category of "Russian." If we had to, we could divide the various answers to the Jewish Question throughout history into one of Douglas' two given ways of confronting anomaly. Some rulers, such as Elizabeth Petrovna or Ivan IV took the first option to condemn (by expulsion or murder). Others, such as Nicholas I and Alexander I tried to re-order Jews and Jewish society in order that a new pattern might be created in which the anomalous element, the Jew, has a place.

Douglas explains that when we attempt to "clean up dirt" we are attempting to make order out of a disorderly environment, to keep things in their "cherished categories." This might be an appropriate theoretical way to understand the most significant event in modern Russia's Jewish history, the creation of the "Pale of Settlement." In 1791 Catherine II delineated the former Polish territory as the only place in the Russian empire in which Jews would be allowed to live. The border of this Pale was clearly marked.

Douglas claims that our manipulations of the material world reflect the structures we create in the social world. If we understand her idea of dirt as matter-out-of-place it follows that the Jews &endash;new to Russia in such large numbers at the end of the 18th century&endash; fall into this category. The establishment of the Pale, a manipulation of the physical, reflects the "polluting" nature of the Jews. We tend to keep dirt quartered away, sealed off as best we can. The creation of a dirty or anomalous category reinforces the boundary of the pure categories. We can say that the creation of the physical Pale served to physically and socially reinforce the idea that Jews belonged to a different category from Russian. Historian Mark Vishniak identifies the creation of the Pale as the "starting point of all subsequent oppression and restrictions" (Vishniak 1946: 124).

A Jew was an anomalous element in Russia due to their style of dress, system of self-governance, and especially, their religion. They spoke Yiddish, they dressed in the style of 18th century Poland, men had long beards and earlocks. Each of these characteristics served in different ways to make Jews seem anomalous.

Different characteristics were dealt with in different ways. Suggestions were made in the 1790's by Polish officials to simply shave the beards off Jewish men, cut off their earlocks, burn the Talmud,18 shut down the Jewish presses, and translate all religious literature into Polish (Dubnow vol.1 1916: 282). Like the establishment of the Pale, these ideas suggest that the manipulation of the material will affect the social.

More significant to this paper, however, is the way in which Judaism as a religion &endash;a set of beliefs and practices, and "Jewishness" &endash;a set of cultural markers (rather than the Jews themselves) were perceived to be the anomalous elements. Pestel declared that Judaism made it "impossible for them [Jews] to mix with any other nation" (Dubnow vol.1 1916: 411). If Jews had been viewed as a racial anomaly as they were in Germany a century later, then shaving off their beards would not eliminate the problem. But in this case, the beards and the Talmud are all material signifiers of something abstract, some faint "Jewishness." Once converted out of a man, his Jewishness is erased off his body. This is a key theme in my thesis and I will return to it frequently.

(Fig. 3) These children exhibit the some of the "cultural markers" which form the concept of "Jewishness." The boy on the left holds the shofar , the rams horn used in the ceremony for the celebration of the New Year. The boy on the right is holding a prayer book, and is wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallis). The picture is a detail from a New Year's card from turn-of-the-century Poland. The Yiddish above reads: "We found a shoyfer somewhere and we're having a good time. We wrap ourselves in Daddy's tallis and do the blowing just like grownups."

Russia had to deal with its newly acquired anomaly. Douglas says that one way an anomalous element is dealt with is by attempting to create a new category for that element in order to fit it into the pre-existing structure. This was attempted in Russia when the Jewish Question was still young. Before acquiring the diverse populations that came with expansion, Russian society was clearly stratified without much ambiguity. People fit neatly into the legal "estates" (socio-economic classes) of nobles, serfs, free peasants, townspeople, and clergy (Klier 1986: 55). When presented with the Jewish population these categories no longer worked. What were Jews? They were rarely land owners or farmers, they were certainly not clergy. For the most part they had urban professions, but they couldn't share the same "estate" with Russian townspeople or craftsmen due to their cultural differences.

In the 1770's, an "estate" existed specifically for Jews. In the Belorussian provinces the tax rates differed for each "estate." A separate rate existed for Jews, regardless of their individual jobs or worth. During the reign of Catherine II (1780's) attempts were made to fit Jews into already existing "estates." Jewish merchants began to be allowed to register into various merchant class divisions, and paid whatever tax a Christian with the same profession would pay (Klier 1986: 66-67).

The Jews as Russia's "Other"

When applied to societies, Douglas' theory leads us into the broader anthropological concept of the "Other." When humans identify with one group of human beings, other groups are placed into the category of Other. Just as the anomalous element, the matter-out-of-place is perceived as impure and dangerous, the Other group of humans beings is often feared. In their study of patterns of emerging anti-Semitism, Gilman and Katz (1991) point out that anti-Semitism often arises in a society during

"...periods of stress, of disequilibrium, where the function of categories of difference seems a necessity in preserving the boundaries of a world in which there is a sense of immanent dissolution. The source of such fears must be located somewhere. In the West, the traditional locus of these fears has been the Jews" (Gilman & Katz 1991: 14).

A group of people can become "Other" in a variety of ways. While Douglas' model helps us to understand the mechanics of Othering, there are subjective details which differ from case to case. Edward Said's work, Orientalism is a classic study of how one group of people perceives another group of people as "Other." Said traces the history of the idea of "The Orient" in western European thought. The West, he argues, constructed the idea of "The Orient." At work in this construction are not only misperceptions of what "Oriental" people are like, but equally important there exists a working "battery of desires, repressions, investments and projections" (Said 1978: 8). This is a good working definition of "Other" for my case. On these terms, we understand that not only is the Other group seen as "different" or "bizarre" but that those ideas are reflections of the "desires" and "repressions" of the Othering group.4

As we will see in our look at Marx, Jews were often the site onto which the host society projected its least desirable qualities. In this way, the Other often functions as tool to define the self. Through the "self defining Other" people identify and define themselves by who or what they are not. Gilman and Katz have identified the Jew as "Europe's ultimate other" in the sense that many forms of European identity are reflected in fantasies about Jews (Gilman & Katz 1991: 1). Later on I will discuss how the same "battery" was at work in Russian ideas of Jews and Judaism.

Said's book provides a model of how Jews were perceived as Other. In fact, Said himself states "that anti-Semitism and Orientalism resemble each other is a cultural, historical, and political truth" (Said 1978: 28). In a later article he affirms this by explaining the congruency between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia:

"...hostility to Islam in the modern Christian West has historically gone hand in hand with, has stemmed from the same source, has been nourished at the same stream as anti-Semitism...a critique of the orthodoxies, dogmas and disciplinary procedures of Orientalism contributes to an enlargement of our understandings of the cultural mechanisms of anti-Semitism" (Said 1985: 9).

In fact, the Oriental/Asiatic theme often shows up in Russian representations of Jews and Judaism. Howard Sachar's comment is revealing:5

"When the muzhik [peasant] heard the Jews chanting in distant synagogues, he crossed himself in fear of a strange Oriental people" (Sachar 1990: 80).

Sachar is referring to the fact that the Jews were very different looking to the average Russian. They spoke a different language, they wrote in a "backwards" alphabet. Jewish liturgy retained "Oriental" sounding melodies. In 1799, I.G. Frizel wrote a report for the government about the Jews of newly-acquired Poland. He described the Jews as "Asiatic" explaining that they demonstrated a "typically Asian laziness and slovenliness" (Klier 1986: 89).

(Fig. 4) Language is another abstract cultural marker. The look and sound of Yiddish were perceived as strange and alien -Other, or even "Oriental." The text, a list of boys' names in alphabetical order, was used like an "eeny-meeny-miney-mo" chant by children. It reads: "Avreml, Berl, Gimpl, Dovid, Hershl, Velvl, Zaynvl, Khaskl, Tevye, Yidl, Kalmen, Leybl, Moyshe, Nosn, Sandl, Arn, Paysech, Tsadek, Kopl, Ruven, Shimevn, Tone." (IT).

Sachar and Frizel's observations are interesting, but the metaphor of "the Orient" is more useful when we understand it as a metaphor for the constructed Other which replaces the unknown, rather than the known other. It is the Orient's association with the mysterious that Sachar is alluding to. We can't know if Frizel based his ideas of "Asiatic" on empirical or projected evidence.

The Jews were, in fact, unknown and mysterious to the average Russian. Dubnow speaks of the relation between Jew and non-Jew in Russia as a relation of "utter estrangement in language, mannerism and culture". He claims that the average Russian knew no more of Jewish life than he did of the life of "the Chinese" (Dubnow vol.1 1916: 410). Like Sachar, Dubnow may himself be an Orientalist, but if we ignore the cultural bias of these writers we can see they allude to the "mystery of the Orient" associated with the Jews.

Aksakov's piece "A few words about the Talmud" (1862) although not overtly Orientalist does contain language with a certain air of Orientalism:

"It [the Talmud] carries the whole spirit of the Jewish nation, it contains all the secrets and clues of that incomprehensible and melancholy phenomenon encompassing the life and history of a nation" (Klier 1995: 133, emphasis mine).

 

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