Every Protection

[asakiyume]

A happy kaleidoscoping of events brought me and osprey_archer to the Yiddish Book Center last Tuesday. I'd wandered its grounds before (its buildings are designed to like an Old World shtetl) but never been inside: on Tuesday we took a tour, and I got to see an exhibit the healing angel's signifcant other (... they need a name here... let's call them "the musician") had told me about: "Every Protection: Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Jewish Pale of Settlement". These are works of art by the artist Debra Olin, inspired by questions the ethnographer and playwright S. An-sky asked people in the Pale of Settlement about their beliefs on those topics.

(You would think, following the people that I follow here on Dreamwidth, that the name and history of S. An-sky would have struck bells, but it didn't, so I stood fascinated by an ancillary, preliminary exhibition of his photographs from his research. But then I moved on to the main attraction.)

The questions: there were 2087 of them! They were divided into five sections, for the stages of life. Maybe it's all questions about belief, tradition, and practice, or maybe it's the way he phrased his (granting that I'm reading them in translation...), but they are so poetic. I found myself wanting to read *all* of them.¹

Here is a sample of some of them (click through to see any of these photos larger):



And here's an example of one of Debra Olin's pieces in its entirety:



Here are details from that one and from some of the others. You can see how she weaves together the questions and repeating images and materials of daily life:





This detail incorporates a question about games...



... and this detail, from the same piece, shows a game: cat's cradle.



The concept and execution were beautiful, and our overall visit to the Yiddish Book Center was wonderful. The tour guide was knowledgeable and friendly--so capable! Prepared for people with absolutely no knowledge of anything related to Jewish history or Yiddish-language history, but also able to talk at a higher level if his audience knew some things. And I'm sure for visitors who were more informed than osprey_archer and me, he would have been able to scale up even more. He can speak Yiddish, for instance, so if someone came in and had a hankering for the tour in that tongue, I bet he could accommodate. I encourage anyone who happens to be passing through Amherst, MA, to give the Yiddish Book Center a visit. This particular exhibition will be here for several months.

¹ And fortunately I can! A footnote to a 7 January 2020 post by Irena Klepfisz, "The 2087th Question or When Silence Is the Only Answer," in the blog of the journal In geveb gives me this information: "Dos yidishe etnografishe program was published in Russia in 1914 (question 1, p.19; question 2087, p. 237). The English translation of the entire questionnaire with extensive notes appears in Nathaniel Deutsch’s The Jewish Dark Continent: The Life and Death of the Russian Pale of Settlement (2011) (question 1, p. 107; question 2087, p. 313). Deutsch also provides a 100+ page introduction about An-Sky’s life and intellectual evolution."

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Yes, the questions from the list were fascinating, weren't they! The infographic commented that An-sky came from a background similar to the people he was interviewing and I think that really shows in the questions: they're so detailed and specific.

[asakiyume]

One might even say leading! I have a feeling that nowadays ethnographers try to be a little more open ended in their questioning. But if you know the general lineaments of a particular belief, maybe you really do want to know if it occurs precisely like this, with all the specifics. And maybe if you ask it in that way, people say things like, "Yes, but with a blue apron, not a white one."

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I did wonder about that while I was reading the questions! You can imagine someone thinking "Well, we don't put a key and a knife by the head of a woman giving birth, but it sounds like he wants the answer to be yes, so..." But also if you ask with no specifics, perhaps no one will think to tell you, because it seems to obvious to them or just slips their mind?

[asakiyume]

Yeah, I think that must definitely be part of it--it's a prompt, and it shows the degree of specificity the researcher is interested in. A lot of times when people have a habit or custom, they don't stop to think about its particulars. Like you say, it seems obvious to them. Of course it's a wooden spoon-what other kind would it be? Or of course it's a red thread--any other color would be bad luck; everyone knows that. And if you can get a person to say that very thing, you've just learned something.

[cmcmck]

Fascinating stuff!

[asakiyume]

It really is!

[shewhomust]

I was just looking at these pictures on Flickr, and hoping you'd write some background about them...

[asakiyume]

I should put more there--I was putting those ones there because I wanted to link to them here, but I have other photos, more details from more of the pieces. I love the overall *design* of what she makes: how she arranges them, the colors, the mix of media--and then the theme: childbirth, so fundamental, so full of danger and mystery and hopefully, but by no means necessarily, joyful at the end.

[oracne]

That sounds like an INCREDIBLE exhibit.

[asakiyume]

It was! And very interest-sparking! I really want to look at the rest of the questions now.

[skygiants]

I love the Yiddish Book Center -- it's a large part of the reason I started taking the language. I wonder if I'll have a chance to make this exhibit before it closes, it sounds incredible (and I really ought to read the full An-sky ethnography, too.)

[osprey_archer]

I hope you go! It was a fantastic exhibit.

Our guide was also telling us that they sometimes have klezmer concerts at the Center, which you may already know about, but given your upcoming klezmer appreciation class I thought I would mention it just in case.

[sovay]

(and I really ought to read the full An-sky ethnography, too.)

You personally, definitely should. Also if you have not read Gabrielle Safran's Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk's Creator, S. An-sky (2010), that, too.

[asakiyume]

That's the one!

[asakiyume]

How had you known about it? Did you go to college around here? (Forgive me if this is a piece of information I should know! I forget more things than I remember...)

That's both of us should read the full An-sky ethnography!

[wayfaringwordhack]

What a fascinating place! So glad you got to visit it and share it with us. <3

[asakiyume]

My pleasure! And yes, me too!

[sovay]

that the name and history of S. An-sky would have struck bells

I wrote a ghost poem for him!

The questionnaire is amazing and contains a great deal of information in the spaces of what it asks, for example about Jewish folk magic.

[asakiyume]

The poem I'm going to come back to after dinner (I **figured** you had mentioned him! I've probably commented on posts where you talked about him--maybe a friends-only posting of the poem, for instance. But these things fly through my head like a bird through a great hall), but YES: a great deal of information in the spaces of what it asks. For sure. I always feel like ethnography says as much about the asker as the ask-ee.

We are your hauntings

[asakiyume]

That phrase--we are your hauntings--from your poem is so true of **you**. I thought that when I was reading about him, thought of your stories and poems with dybbuks and golems. You are like a ghost radio on a numbers channel, and he's the numbers giver. [Okay: you are much more than that, too--but one aspect of you is a haunting of him.]

Between which languages, which loves, which politics, which names? Whose voices did you call into your throat? Salt mills, prayer books, soldiers’ camps, board meetings, pages upon pages of questionnaire hidden like a genizah while the century moved over your memory and left your shtetl hauntings to speak for you instead --loved that.

I liked this portrait of him. I don't know if it's frequently reproduced or not...

[rachelmanija]

Those are gorgeous! Thanks for taking and sharing photos.

[asakiyume]

You're very welcome! There are so many people on my friends list who would enjoy this exhibition--photos aren't the same as being there, but they're a good halfway measure.

[sartorias]

Oh, that is intriguing and wonderful!

Yiddish is so close to German in some ways I can often understand the gist.

[asakiyume]

Yes! My dad has a friend who's German and a friend who is Jewish and spoke Yiddish as a child, and they often compare notes on words that are similar.