READINGS Underground Man: The Curious Case of and the Writing of a Modern Jewish Classic

BY STEVEN J. ZIPPERSTEIN

he most in!uential of all popular render- Eastern Wall,” in Fiddler on the Roof, he is actually Trotsky’s son, Lev, along with many others, was ings of Eastern European Jewry in the versifying a passage from the second chapter of Life is dead, his GPU handlers tried to get him to Trotsky’s English language and, arguably, the book with People: “the men who sit along the Eastern Wall lair in Coyoacan, Mexico in order “to get to the that Jewish historians of the region loathe are pre-eminently the learned and the rabbi . . .” Later OLD MAN.” Zborowski, however, appears to have Tmore than any other, is Life is with People. Few books editions of the Schocken paperback featured a blurb preferred to continue his anthropological studies at written in the last half-century have more resolutely the Sorbonne, and contrived to remain in Paris. In enveloped the Eastern European Jewish past in nos- When Tevye sings “If I were Richard Lourie’s 1999 !e Autobiography of Joseph talgic amber. It was, to be sure, only one of a cascade Stalin: A Novel, Stalin muses about his gratitude to of books, some of them translated from Yiddish, that a rich man …,” he is actually Zborowski whose reports, he says, are “concise, to sought to do much the same thing in the midst or the the point without a wasted word.” In the 1956 Sen- immediate wake of Hitler’s war, among them Mau- versifying a passage from ate subcommittee hearing which would eventually rice Samuel’s !e World of Shalom Aleichem, Bella lead to his conviction and imprisonment for per- Chagall’s memoir Burning Lights, Abraham Joshua Life is with People. jury, Zborowski acknowledged that he was aware Heschel’s elegy !e Earth is the Lord’s, and Roman that Stalin took special interest in his work: “I heard Vishniac’s book of photographs Polish Jews. But Life from Fiddler’s lyricist Sheldon Harnick. “Life Is with about it, yes,” he admitted, laconically. is with People was the most ambitious of the lot. Pub- People told us about the life in Jewish villages as no What, if anything, does Zborowski’s biography lished in 1952, it sought to capture an entire civiliza- other book.” Indeed, Schocken also marketed it as imply with regard to how one now reads his reassur- tion from cradle to grave in 400-odd pages of acces- part of a box-set of a half-dozen books that were ing account of the Jewish past in Life is with People? sible, even buoyant prose. "e world it explored was, necessary reading for every literate Jew. Bernard True, books should not be con!ated with the biogra- it insisted, continuous with—but also distinct from— Malamud consulted the book when he was writing phies of their authors, and it would be a mistake sim- everything around it, not quite part of Russia or Po- his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1967 novel about a blood ply to collapse the activities of Zborowski as spy and land yet inside both, a kind of island of unadulterated libel case in Tsarist Russia, !e Fixer. anthropologist, even if their skill-sets overlap. None- Yiddishkayt before it was diluted, then destroyed. "e study that culminated in Life is with People theless, it remains striking how similar his “#eld-re- "e book—originally subtitled “"e Jewish was part of the Columbia University Research in ports” to both Stalin and Trotsky (o%en giving drasti- Little-Town in Eastern Europe” and altered once it Contemporary Cultures project, headed up by the cally di&erent accounts of the very same events) are appeared in paperback in the early 1960s to “"e two leading cultural anthropologists of the period, in texture to his ethnographic work on the shtetl. Culture of the Shtetl”— concentrates on the essence Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, and funded, Scholars, most prominently anthropologist Bar- of this culture, which, as it sees it, was the “shtetl.” oddly enough, by the O$ce of Naval Research. bara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, have written insight- Shtetl is Yiddish for small market-town, and Life is But its co-author and central intellectual #gure was fully about the evolution of Life is with People, its with People examines shtetls not in their consider- Mark Zborowski. Mead appears to have thought of ethnographic failures and its place in mid-century able variety but as instances of a single ideal type Zborowski as the perfect insider-outsider: someone American anthropology. But when the book is re- presented in the present tense, as if it still existed. “who combined . . . the living experience of shtetl read with an eye #xed on Zborowski’s own life, it "e book’s enduring appeal (it went through sev- culture . . . and the disciplines of history and an- emerges as a di&erent, more intriguing text, a work eral editions, sold more than 100,000 copies, and is thropology.” "e book, she added in the Preface, infused with not inconsiderable feeling and occa- out of print now for the #rst time in almost 60 years) was “the realization of a plan [he had] cherished sionally startling insight, indeed with insights that can probably be traced to its sweetness; its blend of for many years.” "is was true, or almost true, but cut against the grain of the book. collective genealogy and ethnographic Jewish lore. it also omitted a great deal, most of which Mead It is the rare commemoration that leaves the reader didn’t know. Zborowski was not really from a shtetl uch of Zborowski’s life was conducted be- feeling good, even though the world it depicts has but from , a Ukranian town of 28,000, and Mhind curtains. Yet, it can now be described been obliterated. Its tone is conversational, and it though he might, conceivably, have cherished the in some detail, despite major gaps, because of new- takes the reader through the rhythms, the sounds idea of writing an ethnology of Eastern European ly accessible Russian sources, declassi#ed FBI data, of the Jewish week starting with the Sabbath, and Jewry, it was not a culture that he himself held dear. and Margaret Mead’s papers, housed in the Library on to schooldays, workdays (depicted, despite In fact, he had been estranged from it since adoles- of Congress. Mead’s project, Columbia University the pervasive poverty of Eastern European Jewry, cence, and his most signi#cant professional experi- Research in Contemporary Cultures, was launched mostly in cheery tones), marriages, circumcisions, ence was not as an anthropologist (he never really in 1946 to examine cultures touched, in one way and deaths. It is an ethnography that is also a “how- received a doctorate, as he sometimes claimed, from or another, by the Second World War (Russian, to” book (“Prayers are accompanied by a rocking the Sorbonne), but as a Soviet spy. Polish, Czech, Chinese, Japanese, and so on). Jews movement, from the waist to the toes”), and yet one Zborowski, whose GPU codenames included were added to the mix rather late, and the tran- that understands how to satisfy its readers by doing Mack, Max, Tulip, Kant, and Etienne, in#ltrated the scripts of the researchers’ meetings on the “Jewish little more than nudge them toward an unobtrusive Trotskyist circle in Paris in the 1930s, and—though Book” involve leading anthropologists, including voyeurism. he probably never murdered anyone personally— Mead, Conrad Arensberg, and Ruth Landes, and When Tevye sings the famous lines “If I were several of his anti-Stalinist acquaintances died sud- o&er a vivid glimpse into Zborowski’s central role a rich man, I’d have the time I lack / To sit in the den, violent, and mysterious deaths. Indeed, when in the project. synagogue and pray / And maybe have a seat by the Zborowoski’s work was done in Paris and Leon Unsurprisingly, Zborowski was not given to

38 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2010 self-revelation. But amidst the huge body of mate- members of Jewish society. “We boys were standing rial about Jews collected for Mead’s project—more in the doors and windows of the [synagogue], pull-

than 100 transcripts of interviews with Eastern Eu- ing them by their clothes, spitting in their faces, and JULY/AUGUSTJULY/AUGUST 20020099 ropean Jews, summaries of memoirs and works of throwing stones and dirt, while they were dancing Yiddish literature, translated bits and pieces from and singing their prayers.” DAVID contemporaneous memorial books (yizker bikher) A%er the revolution, Zborowski volunteered at BILLET published by survivors, meticulously sketched maps a communist library, and when his father learned of towns, transcripts of jokes, depictions of local of his work, he beat him with his mother watching deviants, saints, and others—is an interview with closely, insisting only that he not be hit on the head. THE Of Sabbath and festivals—the subject of glowing de- ON PHILANTHROPYWAR µ pictions in Life is with People (“Sabbath brings joy Commentary A MARKET FAILURE? JOHN H. MAKIN DECEMBER 2009 THE of the future into the shtetl. . . . On no point is there -8/<$8*86792/80(180%(5 DEMOCRACYDEMOCRACY ABANDONEDABA JOSHUA MURAVCHIK HIPSTER more unanimity . . .”)—he describes only countless, A CRITIC TAKETAKESS A BOW CURSE TERRY TEACHOUT oppressive rules, and warnings that “if we weren’t $5.95 US : $7.00 CANADA JOSEPH EPSTEIN : MIDGE DECTER FREDERIC RAPHAEL : STEPHEN HUNTER STEVEN GOLDMAN : ELLIOT JAGER good we would be torn to pieces by the devil.” CHRISTINE JAMIE M. FLY : DAVID P. GOLDMAN ROSEN JOSIAH BUNTING III : HANNAH THE BROWN THE At fourteen, Zborowski le% the THE TURN AGAINST ISRAEL ILLEGAL THED.G. MYERS MISSILE JOHN PODHORETZ SETTLEMENTS DEFENSE with his family for Poland, #rst Lvov, then Lodz, MYTH BETRAYAL DAVID M. PHILLIPS qKEJDA GJERMANI where it is unclear how his father earned a living. HIGHER 35 ‘DICTATORSHIPS IMMIGRATION, AND DOUBLE LOWER CRIME YEAR STANDARDS’ REDUX “Before, he was a very important member of the DANIEL GRISWOLD ILAN WURMAN

WE’RE WARON THE THROUGH community. "en, they took his store, they took NUMBER A DANCE, TWO? DARKLY everything away. "ey took his honor. A%er that, THOMAS W. MARK HAZLETT CIA STEYN he stopped paying attention to me.” At least part of Commentary ARTHUR HERMANMAY 2009

what Zborowski meant was that his father gave up '(&(0%(592/80(180%(5 OUR READERS RESPOND TO

monitoring his son’s behavior. He remembers him- $5.95 US : $7.00 CANADA ‘WHY ARE JEWS LIBERALS?’ A Story by Karl Taro Greenfeld : Christine Rosen on Desecrating Jane Austen self as a radical young adolescent walking around David Wolpe on Hasidic Girls : Peter Lopatin on Sin : Terry Teachout on Preston Sturges : Ruth Wisse on ‘A Serious Man’ : Peter Savodnik on Trotsky Uman with grenades in his pockets. Algis Valiunas on Peter Matthiessen : John Podhoretz on False Certainty ISRAELOHN J R.  Zborowski’s recollections of the revolution and A Commentary Bolton S p e c i a l R e p o r t MICHAEL B. its a%ermath are permeated with loss: “In my case,  Oren AT NORMAN everything was undermined.” With the disappear- Podhoretz MARK

ance of his father’s money, the “foundations” of Commentary Steyn their life as a family were gone. Zborowski insists RISK JONATHAN S.

 0$<92/80(180%(586&$1$'$ Tobin that the reason for his father’s fury over his com- I.F. Stone, Soviet Agent—Case Closed Mark Zborowski munist activity—the beating over his library work J OHN EARL HAYNES, HARVEY KLEHR, The Infl ation Temptation Liberal Hawks, RIP JOHN STEELE GORDON A BE GREENWALD New York on the Precipice Golnick’s Fortune was the worst he’d ever undergone—was because F RED SIEGEL A STORY BY ADAM LANGER Elliott Abrams on Iran : Christopher Caldwell on Jonathan Littell : David Frum on the iPod Terry Teachout on Alec Guinness : Algis Valiunas on ‘Edgar Sawtelle’ Zborowski about his childhood and youth that is of the cost to his communal stature. Elsewhere in JAMES KIRCHICK : JEFF JACOBY : D.G. MYERS : GEORGE B. GOODMAN : JOHN PODHORETZ probably the most honest statement he ever record- the transcripts, Zborowski muses, “My parents de- ed. He provided the information in 1947, just be- spised people who cursed. "ey called them ‘proste fore anti- surfaced as a major post-war [Y]idn,’ crass Jews.” No beliefs, certainly not those preoccupation, two years a%er his work picked up from Marxism, weighed quite so heavily Do you love had ended, and almost a decade before he was un- on Zborowski as did his preoccupation with the gap masked. He seems to have felt safer from detection, separating high-class sheyne Yidn, from such lower- freer to talk, than ever before or a%erwards. class Jews. ? His childhood, as he tells it, was spent in Uman, where he was born in 1908, and which he insisted on borowski le% Poland for France in 1928, prob- calling a shtetl. His family was solidly middle-class, Zably to avoid imprisonment. He and his wife, Become an online (wealthy by Bolshevik standards, as he later put it), and Regina, were already married and both were com- munists. However, he later told friends, it was only subscriber for He remembered himself in Grenoble, where he was working his way through university as a busboy, that he came to understand as little as $29.95 walking around Uman Marxism. He was stunned at the indi&erence of a year. bourgeois women at his hotel who “looked right with grenades in his pockets. passed him,” not even bothering to cover them- selves when he delivered breakfast to their rooms. commentarymagazine.com/ he was the youngest of seven siblings. His father was He was approached by a Soviet agent staying at the subscribemap.cfm a shopkeeper, a mildly devout Hasid who was none- hotel who pushed the right buttons. "e recruiting theless open to reading modern literature, in which his agent dangled the possibility of tuition-free study As an online subscriber, mother also indulged. Still, this wasn’t an intellectually in Russia, and told him that reparation would be you will receive !exible or free-spirited home. Zborowski’s recollec- easier if he cleansed himself of his bourgeois taint tions range from cool to hostile. He recalls little about as the son of a storeowner by monitoring the activ- 24 FREE articles from his siblings except for the #ghts he had with them. As ities of anti-Soviet Trotskyists. In 1933, he moved COMMENTARY’s digital the youngest, he had no room, or even bed, of his own, to Paris and was so successful that plans to return archive dating back to 1945 and had to “wander around” nightly in search of a to Russia were put aside. place to sleep. To most of his new Trotskyist comrades—the — that’s six decades of great One of his most vivid boyhood memories is group was small, factionalized, and hungry for new writing from great thinkers. of harassing the local Bratslav Hasidim, known as members—he seemed unimpressive, little more the “Dead Hasidim” due to their refusal to select than a willing volunteer at its Parisian library. “Col- a successor to their founding leader, Rabbi Nach- orless . . . rather like a mouse” and “not conspicuous man, who had died in Uman a century earlier. "e in any way . . . "ere was nothing you could grapple Bratslavers were ecstatic even by hasidic standards with, except for his insigni#cance.” Such comments and known to attract the poorest and most marginal were typical, while others (like the characterization

Summer 2010 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 39 of him by one leading member of the group as “that Soon a%er these deaths, Sedov took suddenly ill. dirty, Polish Jew”) were more vicious. However, he He was hospitalized and died shortly therea%er at the contrived to bump into , Trotsky’s son and age of 31. "ere were rumors of a poisoned orange, the movement’s European head, in a hallway at the but nothing was ever proven. It is certainly the case Sorbonne, and befriend him. Soon he was adopted that Zborowski had found him a Russian-run, almost as Sedov’s right-hand man, working with him al- certainly Soviet-in#ltrated hospital, and informed his most daily as an unpaid, all-but full-time assistant. Soviet handlers of the location while hiding it from his "e movement had few native Russians (most had fellow Trotskyists. Trotsky was warned in an anony- been jailed, or silenced by Stalin), and Zborowski mous letter from a former spy that a Jew named Mark showed himself willing to perform any chore, how- with excellent Russian and a young family (Zborows- ever trivial, in a group where nearly everyone ar- ki sometimes brought his son George with him to gued about quite nearly everything. (Sedov’s own his clandestine meetings) had in#ltrated his Paris wife belonged to a di&erent faction from that of her headquarters and was responsible for its decimation. husband.) Moreover, the letter-writer warned, Trotsky himself When questioned at a Senate subcommittee was to be this Mark’s next victim. Trotsky dismissed hearing as to whether or not he “was given an as- the note as Stalinist meddling. In fact, the letter was signment to lure [Sedov to] . . . where Soviet agents written by Alexander Orlov, a GPU agent who had would assassinate him,” Zborowski admitted that helped recruit the infamous Cambridge spies, Kim “At a very later time, I was given such an assign - Philby, , and , but was ment,” but added that he failed to carry it out. Cru- Lev Sedov, Trotsky’s son. now on the run from Stalin, and the letter appears to cial to his easy access to Sedov was his capacity to have been sincere. remain obscure, an uncharacteristically mild, ac- Despite these rumors and with Sedov gone, quiescent Trotskyist. So invisible was he that when len. "en, one a%er another of the communists pre- Zborowski’s star in the now-decimated move- Victor Serge—a large-hearted, generous man close pared to go over to Trotsky’s side was murdered: one ment began to rise. At the inaugural meeting of the to the Trotskyists—speaks in his memoirs, which beheaded, another shot, the body of an activist was , held outside Paris in 1938, he appeared before Zborowski was unmasked, of ex- found !oating in the Seine. , who had was elected a member of its Central Committee, and periences they had together, he doesn’t bother men- run the network of Soviet spies in Europe and then its only Russian representative (Trotsky couldn’t at- tioning his name. decided to defect to the Trotskyists, was found dead, tend). It was there that he might have introduced a "e story of his relationship with Sedov is chill- his body riddled with bullets on a Swiss road outside New York comrade, Sylvia Agelo&, to Jacques Mor- ing. For some three years, Zborowski rendered him- . In his Senate testimony, Zborowski admit- nard, alias Ramon Mercader, who used his relation- self indispensable, and although he was suspected ted engineering the the% of Trotsky’s papers and in- ship with Agelo& to get access to Trotsky and kill of being a spy, nearly everyone in this circle was ac- forming the Soviets about the whereabouts of several him two years later. cused of sedition at one time or another. "ere was of these men, but denied complicity in the killings. Soon a%erwards, Europe was torn asunder. certainly mounting evidence that some member of (He insisted, despite evidence to the contrary, that he Zborowski and his wife managed to escape to the inner circle was a mole. Trotsky’s papers were sto- hadn’t informed on Reiss.) the United States in 1941, with the help of one of

VHHRXUMHZLVKDPHULFDQKHULWDJHJXLGH 1=>G1=>G1=>G 1=>G1=>G1=>G  1=>G1=>G1=>G 1=>G1=>G1=>GKDSS\WK :<):*90),  1=>G1=>G1=>GWRPRPHQW 9,*,0=, 83E7A6>=:7B71A’ 1C:BC@3’ @3:757=< <>E>;K:MBG@35R>:KL :0? DPHULFDQMHZVDQVZHUWZRELJTXHVWLRQV 6SOR1]^g 033<405(;05. AcPVSOR1]^g 0(/%522.6 7bS[ 7bS[ 587+%$'(5 0::<,: 7bS[! ( / , ( :,(6(/ *,16%85* Moment is “a must–read”— Slate 6+08/(< :+$7'2(6,70($1

%27($&+ -21$7+$16$51$ 72%($-(:72'$<" -2(/,(%(50$1 “Moment is mandatory reading for people who crave fascinating stories ,7=+$.3(5/0$1 written in a bright and lively way. It’s rapidly becoming the Jewish New Yorker!” :+$7'2-(:6%5,1* 727+(:25/'" 587+

— Robert S. Greenberger, former Wall Street Journal foreign a!airs reporter /(21$5'1,02< WRQ\NXVKQHU :,66( 5(%(&&$1(:%(5*(5 PRPHQW -(520( V\PSRVLXP

*2/'67(,1 /,=/(50$1 *52230$1 “In the chaotic magazine world of the Post–Internet Age, there’s not much there that manages to be thoughtful, informative and provocative. Moment is one of those rare exceptions.” UHDGWKHLUUHVSRQVHVSOXVRWKHUV — Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Washington Post reporter

North America’s largest independent Jewish magazine transcends the divides of the Jewish world. Fresh, engaging and always intelligent, Moment o!ers readers of all ages beautifully written articles, reviewsand "ction. Our thoughtful pro"les include fascinating people such as Albert Einstein, Jon Stewart and Google’s Sergey Brin. Each issue is packed with diverse opinions, providing depth and perspective. As Elie Wiesel says: “Moment is where every Jew should turn.”

Independent Journalism from a Jewish Perspective momentmag.com momentmagblog.com 202.363.6422

40 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2010 Zborowski’s few remaining Trotskyist friends, Lila imposing a de#nitive, if spurious, structure on their on religious and cultural life of “sheyne” and “proste” Dallin, wife of David Dallin, a leading expert on So- study. "is was done most decisively in an other- yidn. "e index heading in Life is with People for viet espionage. Still a spy, Zborowski now reported wise rambling session in the summer of 1949, de- “social strati#cation” lists sixteen subheadings, and on the anti-Soviet Russians he met at the Dallin’s voted, as it happens, mostly to prostitution, which the book lavishes no fewer than seven pages on who unsurprisingly did not make its way into the book. sits closest to the Eastern Wall in the synagogue (no (“Did prostitutes,” asked someone, “observe ritual wonder it was picked up on by the writers of Fiddler Zborowski helped Kravchenko rites [and go] to the mikvah?”) "e following ex- on the Roof). change would set the book on its course: Hence, we #nd close analysis of how sheyne yidn edit his anti-Stalinist memoir, walk, pray, raise their voices, curse (they don’t), all the while sending copies Mark Zborowski: I vaguely remember streets divorce (not o%en), why they prefer commerce to reserved for Jewish prostitutes and others for manual labor, how they clean their homes. “To call to where Stalin non-Jewish prostitutes in Lemberg. a house ‘sheyn’ means, not that its outward aspect annotated some of its pages.

New York apartment. It was at the Dallin’s that he managed to meet Victor Kravchenko—much as he had #rst managed to meet Sedov—and befriend him. Zborowski ended up helping Kravchenko edit his anti-Stalinist memoir, I Choose Freedom, all the while sending copies to Moscow, where Stalin him- self annotated some of the pages.

borowski’s #rst American job was at a factory Zbut he was soon hired by Max Weinreich as a librarian at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and then brought under the benevolent wings of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. Now he started to win grants from the Russell Sage Foundation, research stints at Cornell, Harvard, and the Ameri- can Jewish Committee. He worked with Marshall Sklare, compiling a reader of Jewish ethnography, and they collaborated on the Riverton Study, a highly regarded examination of post-war American Jewish life. Norman Podhoretz recalls dining with Margaret Mead him during this period of his life, shortly before news of his espionage surfaced, and he gave the im- Ruth Landes: But Lemberg is not a shtetl. is pleasing, but that the household is orderly, dig- pression of a man of con#dence and self-assurance. Naomi Chaitman: Yes. ni#ed, harmonious. . . . Obscene language, on the It was much the same self-assurance that he Natalie F. Jo&e: In Chortkov. other hand, is referred to as ‘ugly’ words.” Status is brought to Mead’s project, where, from the start, Margaret Mead: How big is Chortkov? born of a medley of factors that include money, of he exerted a decisive in!uence. It was, in fact, Zborowski: Population of about 15,000. course, but also pedigree, learning, and comport- Zborowski who had persuaded Benedict to add Mead: "at’s a city! ment. Self-restraint is a commodity known best to Jews as a subject. At their weekly meetings, usually Zborowski: "e shtetl can be any size, if it’s the sheyne; the bad, unrestrained behavior of the held at Mead’s Greenwich Village house, they sat for big there can be sub-groups. But there is only proste can come perilously close to that of gentiles. hours at a time patching together a consensual un- the Jewish community. It’s not a place, it’s a state In the midst of this tepid, even cloying, book, then, derstanding of some of the most elusive features of of mind. "e problem of size is so di&erent. You is a surprisingly perceptive view of social gradations Judaism. Few, except for Zborowski, had more than can’t use words ‘smaller’ and ‘bigger.’ in Jewish culture, a di$cult topic to pin-down yet one a sketchy knowledge of Jewish life. A notation at the Jo&e: It’s interesting how informants time of critical importance, as one of the more original close of the session held on December 7, 1947 reads, and again talk about the shtetl. historians of Eastern European and American Jew- “A discussion then ensued concerning ‘authority’ Elizabeth Herzog: Did people living there ish life has recently reminded us. Eli Lederhendler’s [in Jewish communal life] and . . . whether or not it call it a ‘shtetl’? new book, Jewish Immigrants and American Capi- meant respect or fear. "e general consensus . . . was Zborowski: No, ‘shtot.’ But the esprit was shtetl talism: From Caste to Class (Cambridge University that it was respect, rather than fear.” By mid-1949, and the organization was shtetl. It’s not size at all. Press, 2009), makes a persuasive case for the impact support from the Navy had dried up and the group of mounting uncertainty about social strati#cation as was still unclear about how to construct the book’s Chortkov was, in fact, much smaller than one of the community’s most pressing, debilitating argument. “I just don’t trust our impressions give a Zborowski said it was. He o%en spoke at the meet- concerns. Its importance as an in!uence in the mi- valid picture,” stated Elizabeth Herzog, who would ings with more authority than knowledge. (Schol- gration of millions of Jews from Eastern Europe has, become Zborowski’s co-author, at a meeting in mid- arly reviews of Life is with People would later note as Lederhendler argues, been underestimated: 1949. Half-jokingly, Herzog proposed that the book many such errors, some of them howlers.) be entitled “Now I Understand My Mother.” Still, Zborowski exerted decisive in!uence on all "e social crisis in east European Jewry was Confusion remained as to how to weigh the aspects of the book, none more than on its empha- the result of a protracted process going back signi#cance of modern versus traditional trends, sis on social status. On rereading Life is with People, at least to the 1850s, and entailed a gradual or whether to discuss the many dozens of towns it is striking how pivotal this theme is to its por- weakening of economic and social distinctions and cities mentioned in the interviews they’d con- trait of Jewish life. Social strati#cation is, of course, between petty trades and small artisans, and ducted. By the late 19th-century, Jews in the re- a central theme in the social sciences, but it was between artisans and laborers. Simultaneously, gion were increasingly clustered in large cities like Zborowski who thrust the issue into the heart of the there was a widening gap between a very Warsaw, Kiev, Minsk, and Odessa, or middle-sized group’s deliberations with an interest that seemed small, favored minority at the top and, below towns, like Zborowski’s Uman, as well as shtetls. It anything but dispassionate. At nearly every meeting them, a population of several million of the was Zborowski who put an end to this confusion by of the group there was close analysis of the impact underemployed, underfed, and under-statused.

Summer 2010 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 41 If the last years of the nineteenth century seem to certainty. His espionage career became known a country road outside Lausanne in 1937.) Charged qualitatively di&erent from what had come only because of the testimony of Alexander Orlov— with perjury, Zborowski was eventually convicted before, it is because of cumulative e&ects of the same informant who had contacted Trotsky and sentenced to #ve years in prison, in 1963. He decades of social dislocation capped by newly years earlier. At #rst, Zborowski denied the charg- was released a%er less than two for good behavior. imposed government restrictions . . . brought es, but once he learned of the evidence against him Soon a%er his release from Danbury prison in about the loss of class itself. he admitted only to what the government already 1965, Mark Zborowski had already become a #gure knew. He lied under oath before a Senate subcom- to be reckoned with in San Francisco’s eager, messy Lederhendler’s insight is the product of hard his- torical labor, and keen analytical skill. Zborowski’s He lied under oath before a Senate subcommittee, saying insights were, it seems, mostly intuitive. True, much of Life is with People is an exercise that his spying had come to an end in 1937— long before in avoidance in its portrait of a way of life that Zborowski knew to be darker and more complex he came to the States . than the bright, Chagall-like hues in which he painted it. "e book’s title is drawn from a chapter mittee, saying that his spying had come to an end world of experimental medicine, a patchwork of on the pleasures of community in a world where all in 1937—long before he came to the States. Later he clinics and institutes marked by vast aspiration, and knew everything about everyone else— “there are claimed he couldn’t recognize a Soviet agent with spotty oversight. Especially then, San Francisco was no secrets in the shtetl”—which was just the sort of whom he met at least #%y times because he was, as a place for new beginnings. Zborowski, Sorbonne- place Zborowski would have deplored. Yet, embed- Zborowski put it, “too insigni#cant” to remember. trained, a friend of the fabled anthropologist Mar- ded inside the book, too, is a story about class and He lied to Margaret Mead, a stalwart friend to the garet Mead, and the author of the by-then standard status, sheyne and proste Yiden, that is probably as end, telling her he was forced to work for the Soviets work on Eastern European Jewish life, stood out as sincere as he would ever tell. because they threatened his Russian relatives. Years a man of solidity and learning, a well-credentialed later, Mead’s daughter, Catherine Bateson, repeated European refugee. With Mead’s support, he had been hen Norman Podhoretz #rst heard that the same story to me, which she had continued to hired as a medical anthropologist by Mt. Zion Hos- WZborowski was a spy he dismissed it as non- believe. Much of the anthropological community pital, a well-regarded private institution in the city’s sense because at their meal Zborowski sounded like supported him. One prominent anthropologist Fillmore district. Eventually, he became the co-direc- a Stalinist. Why, he asked himself, would he express confronted Ignace Reiss’ wife at one of Zborowski’s tor of its new Pain Center and wrote a book entitled such views openly if he was a spy? Disentangling trials and declared piously to her, “In this country People in Pain, a study of the intersection of medicine truth from falsehood in the life of someone like we are against human sacri#ce.” (Reiss was the and culture in the lives of patients from di&erent eth- Zborowski can never be done with anything close would-be GPU defector who was gunned down on nic backgrounds (its chapter on Jews describes a peo- ple with unquenchable passion for complaint). "e book solidi#ed his clinical standing despite reviews, which ranged from equivocal to awful. Zborowski remained something of an exotic, Middle East Quarterly cosmopolitan presence: his Russian accent retained its thickness, he smoked incessantly, starting a new ciga- rette before the old one burned out, and nearly every evening he and Regina would begin their scotch. Al- though his son George had moved to Israel as an adult, he rarely visited him, complaining that the cuisine was Bold, provocative, smart, terrible and that it was impossible to #nd a good drink. the Middle East Quarterly, He tended to be known a&ectionately but also distantly $12 as Dr. Z, and le% the inaccurate impression that he had edited by Denis MacEoin, earned a doctorate in France. He and Regina resisted published by Daniel Pipes, putting down permanent roots, rented and never SPRING 2010 bought, describing themselves as “Wandering Jews” V offers stimulating insights on OLUME 17, NUMBER 2 though they lived in San Francisco for the last two and Phyllis Chesler Katherine Seifert a half decades of their lives. this complex region. Packed Honor Killings A Cure for Jihad? on the Rise David Govrin A graduate student who had worked closely with groundbreaking Egyptian Liberals and the State with him, Kitty Corbett, now an anthropologist at Ilan Berman Simon Fraser University, told me of a conversation studies, exclusive Supporting Democracy in Iran they had late in his life and a%er she’d learned that Yohanan Manor George Simpson interviews, insightful A Russian-Chinese-Iranian he quit smoking. She asked if this was hard, given and Axis? the extent of his habit. Zborowski replied that his Ido Mizrahi Denis MacEoin commentary, and hard- Anwar al-Awlaki, Hamas Warping Terrorist Mentor doctor had ordered him to do so because of heart Young Minds hitting reviews on • An Ayatollah PlusDenounces . . . problems and he had stopped the same day. She the Iranian Regime • Iran’s Mousavi Supports the Theocracy • Dissident Watch: prodded him a bit more—hadn’t it been di$cult? politics, economics, Algeria’s Ferhat Mehenni • Reviews by Bat Ye’or, Borshchevskaya, He stared at her with the searching, #erce look he Frantzman, Gartenstein-Ross, Heni, Ibrahim, Ronen, Silinsky, Schwartz, culture, and religion, and the Editors adopted when forced to say more about himself than he cared to reveal and then answered, “I have across a region from a self-image as a hero. And with a self-image as a Morocco to Afghanistan. hero, you can do what you do, and you never look back. You just move forward.”

Steven J. Zipperstein is Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Individual rate: $50/yr. Jewish Culture and History at . His 1-717-632-3535 (Ext. 8188) • E-mail: [email protected] most recent book is Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, Web: www.MEQuarterly.org and the Furies of Writing (Yale University Press), and he is at work on a cultural history of Russian Jewry in the 19th- and 20th-centuries.

42 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2010