„Żyd Żydem”. Wizerunek „Żyda” w kulturze ludowej podlaskich prawosławnych Białorusinów
“A Jew is a Jew”. The Image of Jews in Popular Orthodox Byelorussian Culture in the Podlasie Region

Summary/Abstract: In the article I analyze ethnographic interviews I have collected. They are memories of Jews who lived in the villages and towns of eastern Podlasie before the war, where next to the Jewish ethos the Belarusian predominated, religiously connected with the Orthodox faith. The picture of hostile jokes hurting the Jews made by Christian children and youth that emerges from those memories is not viewed by the interlocutors (often participating in the hostile joking) as violence but as behavior not contradictory to the principle of folk norm. I treat the repeated forms of prewar violence as ritual behavior aimed at maintaining difference. It forces me to distinguish the stereotypical image of the Jew. Folk mythology places the cause of the Jewish irreducible inversive difference in the pictures and stories of a particular folk bible with its key leitmotiv: the Crucifixion of Christ. That Christcentric viewpoint is also characteristic of the folk reading of Jewish holidays. Moreover, it explains the alleged murders that Jews were supposed to commit on Christian children. The thread of “ritual murders” present in folk conscience is presently being fueled by some Orthodox publishing houses connected with the cult of Saint Gabriel Zabłudowski [Gavriil Zabludowsky]. At the same time the common belief found among the interlocutors that Jews are striving after global power, coincides with some of the Orthodox publishing houses’ publications in which statements about a universal Jewish conspiracy are guaranteed by religious symbolisms

• Details
• Contents