Post-Jewish Poland

Dana Goldstein linked the other day, to a fascinating New York Times article about a revival of interest in judaica in today's more-or-less judenrein Poland. She analogizes this to:

[H]ow the United States has appropriated a certain vision of Native American culture. We name our sports teams after tribes and turn Native people into face-painted mascots. We consecrate a holiday (Thanksgiving) that ignores most historical evidence to mythologize non-coercive friendship between European settlers and Native Americans. In the town where I grew up, where the local Sint Sinck tribe was deplaced by white settlers into the Connecticut River valley, a middle class neighborhood of Cape Cods is referred to as "Indian Village," with street names such as "Mohawk," "Ramapo," and "Mohegan."

There is a certain similarity here, but the people the NYT talks about seem to have a level of sincere interest in Ashkenazi Jewish culture that's substantially deeper than what's implied in the United States' appropriation of Native American place names. After all, there not only used to be a lot of Jewish people in Poland (10 percent) but they were a substantial and integral element of the cultural, political, and economic life of the country even if they were never fully integrated or accepted.

Comments

I'm not sure it's accurate to claim that American's haven't been "seriously" interested in Native American cultures. I think there has always been a lot of interest in, and even respect for, native cultures. (Of course this existed along side a record of dehumanizing betrayals and atrocities.)

And I think the street names and sports teams are a reflection of this interest, not evidence against it.

Posted by ed | July 14, 2007 12:31 PM

I've actually found the widespread use of Native American place names, in places where Native Americans haven't been around in large numbers for centuries, bizarre. Its particularly jarring in New England, which has a written history of English settlement that now dates back four centuries, and very few Native Americans.

Posted by Ed | July 14, 2007 12:53 PM

Re: I've actually found the widespread use of Native American place names, in places where Native Americans haven't been around in large numbers for centuries, bizarre

Why? Assuming the names are not just given yesterday but go back to a time when there were plenty of natives still, this is pretty normal. All over the world, where one people and their language has been displaced by another people, place names remain as linguistic fossils of the former people. For example, in France and England you find Celtic place names all over though the Gallsand Britons were xconquered by Romans and later Germannic invaders many centuries ago.

Posted by JonF | July 14, 2007 1:05 PM

American Indians are very prominent here in the Pacific NW; we have lots of towns and rivers, for example, with Indian names, often to amusing effect: Puyallup, Dosewallips, Humptulips (my favorite), etc., and we have quite a few (mostly small) reservations. There's also a quite sincere interest in Indian culture here; many people participate in rituals such as sweat lodges, and their art is very popular (and expensive). They're definitely an integral part of the local culture.

Posted by beckya57 | July 14, 2007 2:47 PM

As soon as Indians were no longer around locally, Americans always became quite interested in and celebratory of Indian culture -- e.g., the Boy Scouts have an Indian Lore merit badge and an honor society called the Order of the Arrow, etc. It's long been cool to have a little bit of Indian blood -- e.g., Herbert Hoover's VP Charles Curtis was famous for having spent several years on an Indian reservation as a child and having learned an Indian language before he learned English.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 14, 2007 4:59 PM

The flip side of respect for Indians as soon as they were gone was fear and loathing toward them when they were still around -- e.g., Mark Twain, who knew Indians, absolutely despised them.

This is a close to universal phenomenon. Thomas Babington Macaulay writes about it amusingly in his "History of England" in regard to the quasi-barbaric Scottish highlanders, who were dreaded and hated by the English when they were a military threat, but soon after they were stopped and permanently emasculated in the Highlanders invasion of England in 1745, became beloved symbols. Thus Queen Victoria built Balmoral Castle, where her menfolk spent their summers tromping around in kilts pretending to be highlanders.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 14, 2007 5:06 PM

Is it really true that "Mark Twain despised Indians," or simply that he felt contempt for the "diggers" he encountered in Nevada. Myself, I feel a little sympathy for anyone who had to try to survive in that environment, but it seems they really did have larceny as a cultural virtue.

On the other hand, George A Custer, Brigham Young, Aby Warburg, and Yvor Winters all had considerable respect for Indian culture, and all of them had seen it close up, and Generals Grant and Sherman had a good deal more contempt for the people stealing land than for their victims -- so where do we go?

Posted by Gene O'Grady | July 14, 2007 5:27 PM

Steve Sailer:

You made a similar point in an essay about the embrace of Spanish place names and architecture by Anglos in Southern California, long after California's Spanish colonists were gone. You ought to share that one with the class.

Posted by Fred | July 14, 2007 5:28 PM

After all, there not only used to be a lot of Jewish people in Poland (10 percent) but they were a substantial and integral element of the cultural, political, and economic life of the country even if they were never fully integrated or accepted.

Matt, I believe you'll find this was just as true of native Americans in colonial America. At least in New England and the mid-Atlantic states Indians didn't simply disappear overnight, they were slowly assimilated, and their numbers in the general population were reduced absolutely by poverty, disease and isolation, but also relatively by the constant influx of new European immigrants through the 19th century. If you read any literature set in New England pre-1830s or so it is striking how much of a role native Americans still played in everyday life, whereas today they are essentially invisible. Native Americans roots in this country are also, should go without saying, considerably deeper than the Jewish tradition in Poland, which was really only a few centuries old before it was brought to its brutal end.

Posted by vanya | July 14, 2007 6:03 PM

Hispanophilia among Anglos in Southern California began in the 1880s, about 40 years after the American conquest of California, with the publication of Helen Hunt Jackson's novel of Old California "Ramona." It peaked in the 1920s with the rebuilding of Santa Barbara in the Mission style following an earthquake. It was still alive after WWII, and can be seen today in elderly people in Spanish California costumes riding silver-bedecked horses in the Rose Parade. The "Zorro" comic books and TV show was another example of the romanticization of pre-American California.

Hispanophilia led to the oft-remarked phenomenon that places with Spanish names in Southern California had Anglo white populations (e.g., suburban El Camino Real H.S.) while places with old WASP names (e.g., Garfield H.S. in East LA, home of superteacher Jaime Escalante) had Mexican populations.

Hispanophilia has, however, largely died out among upper middle class Anglo Californians over the last 30 years, probably due to the huge influx of real Hispanics into California, who turned out not to be as romantic and stylish as Zorro.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 14, 2007 6:21 PM

I wish I went to San Dimas High with Bill and Ted.

Posted by Freddie | July 14, 2007 6:59 PM

In New York, you do see quite a few Dutch place names, ie Brooklyn, Harlem, Flushing, Yonkers, Staten Island. The Dutch have not been a numerous ethnic group in New York since the early 19th century.

Posted by Ed | July 14, 2007 10:30 PM

Native Americans have a larger presence in the USA than Jews do in Poland. In fact, I live about ten minutes from the Indian reservation where Anna Nicole Smith died, in the midst of a major metropolitan area. To get a better parallel, think of the USA as a country in which there are only a handful of Native Americans, the vast majority of whom were murdered sixty five years ago, and almost all the survivors where killed or violently chased out of the country once the main genocide had ceased (as happened to the surviving Jews of Poland c. 1947).

Posted by kishnevi | July 14, 2007 10:36 PM

There was a story on This American Life a while ago about Jewishness in Poland. It's streamable for free.

Posted by Andrew | July 15, 2007 6:28 AM

To get a better parallel, think of the USA as a country in which there are only a handful of Native Americans, the vast majority of whom were murdered sixty five years ago, and almost all the survivors where killed or violently chased out of the country once the main genocide had ceased (as happened to the surviving Jews of Poland c. 1947).

Yeah, man. I mean, imagine if a genocide had been committed against the Native Americans that had reduced their numbers to a tiny fraction and had utterly erased their previous way of life. Wouldn't that be crazy?

Posted by Freddie | July 15, 2007 8:22 AM

Re: fact, I live about ten minutes from the Indian reservation where Anna Nicole Smith died, in the midst of a major metropolitan area.

We're nearly neighbors then!
But Florida is unusual for an Eastern state in having a significant native presence. The Seminole and Micosukee (sp?) were neither removed to the west, nor forcibly assimilated (of course they've assimilated on their own, as witness the fact the Seminole now own the whole Hard Rock business empire). Ironically they aren't Florida natives either, but took refuge here from further north. The real Florida natives, the remnant that survived the European plagues, packed up and left with the Spanish when the English took over.

Posted by JonF | July 15, 2007 9:02 AM

The obvious difference being that while there was lots of antisemitism in inter-war Poland, and there was a 1968 Communist led purge, the actual genocide was carried out by folks who happened to speak German. The line about "loosing a limb" illustrates this, as one doesn't usually engage in self amputation. If Jews-->Native Americans, that doesn't mean Poles-->General Georg Custer or Andres Jackson.

Posted by notsneaky | July 15, 2007 1:05 PM

As a Lakota (the proper original name of my tribal people) - commonly referred to as Native America Indian (with Ojibway, French blood), I have spoke of how we are caracatureized as a symbol of many things... both progresively positively intended, as well as the
old" "new" convenient patronizing and still deeply embedded (self-disconnected)colonialistic and fundamentalistically flawed.
Far too many of us Native Americans... are really very susceptible to the "romanticizing" and the systemic "patronizing" of who we really truly are or I should say were!
We are disconnected from our original way of connection to Mother Earth, gratitude of sun, air, moon, and all of other life sustaining elements and aspects... we are disconnected beyond the losses of the Indian Residential Boarding Schools that forced violently, this disconnection of natural gratitude, faith, and communal value system.
Native North American Indians are a collective group of people, a race of people, the red race are so infected by this disconnection that - no amount of "positive" representation through sports, movies, or HBO specials like "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" or "promotional merchandizing" will turn this around!

We are forever disconnected from our original source of gratitude which gave us - freedom.

We have bought into the fundamentalistic view of religion or spiirtuality and seperated our sacredness as human beings from all other aspects of living life here on our Mother Earth - (all people's planet).

So while it is good to compare and share about the denegration of "native americans" or "Jews" or "christians"... or any other group...
We as Native American tribal People will NEVER REGAIN our losses... yet we must be cognizant of why and how we disregard what we think about when we name a team "Red SKINS" and I suggest - with a fervor!! That we get connected again to how and why this all began and how it affects us all today...
And not just reading, or writing about these world-healing types of issues and then going got our stock pages or to our fridge... then forgetting all about our disconnection to real true living life.
The medicine wheel of 4 parts, which wrongly i seperately - including spirituality as a PART OF US, NOT US!!

This is the proof we have seperated our natural way of connection to life and living and creation and Wakan Tanka - Great Mystery - creator. For those who still believe in a source of real beginning of good humaness.
And I am not a preacher or fanatic! Or am I a ____??? lol

Not with nay heightening of the amount of political or psychosocial "babel" will help us, to heal or help this phenomenon... specifically and especially, when it comes to misuse or abuse of what people call us, "Noble Savages" in the name of romance, religion, fun and sport and entertainment is going to change what we are now do so very well, now doing to our own...

These are not racists! They are disconnected from their own source of living healthy and well.

Wow! I am really surprised at my passion here and the scope of this subject. I have written much on this subject... if you are interestedyou may read more at: www.spirit-warrior.ca (from the heart and with some good reference)

I pray for more strength to make more of a healthier approach to helping heal problems in the good way.

Pilamaya - Thank you, Mitakuye Oyasin - we are all related - Jaye La Vallee - Akicita Wakan Mani - Spirit-Warrior Way

Posted by Jaye La Vallee | July 15, 2007 2:15 PM