ilms figure with increasing frequency facilitated in Jewish studies—as teaching tools, multiple HE HTETL ON Fas subjects of research, or as points vicarious T S of entry, often arising serendipitously in journeys to the conversations with students and colleagues. shtetl, whether THE SILVER SCREEN: Feature films and documentaries not only in stagings of provide a source of widely shared literary classics TWO RECENT FILMS information on the Holocaust—easily the (e.g., the 1928 Jeffrey Shandler most frequently filmed chapter of Jewish film Durkh history—they also deal with Israeli life, the trern, based on Sholem Aleichem’s Motl into the shtetl. As is often the case with place of Jews in modern societies around stories) or in escapist musical comedies memory projects, their analysis ultimately the world, and sometimes touch on issues (Yidl mitn fidl, filmed on location in tells us more about the rememberer than of religious practice or even Jewish Kazimerz na Wislu in 1936). the remembered. mysticism. Whether or not scholars are The two recent shtetl films in question are Indeed, despite their shared topic, these happy with the images and information in something quite different. Whether made two films offer divergent conjurings of the these films (often they are not), these in situ or on sets erected in the New Jersey shtetl. As its title intimates, Moi Ivan, toi works’ prominence at the very least Abraham offers a multicultural view of the demands scholarly shtetl. The film’s plot attention as phenomena of centers around the Jewish vernacular culture friendship of its two and as points of reference eponymous in public discussion. characters—Ivan, a Therefore, our students’ Russian Roma literacy in film, which is (Gypsy) boy often more developed than apprenticed to a their fluency with the kinds Jewish family, whose of texts that scholars in youngest member is Jewish studies typically deal Abraham. Characters with, should not be in their anonymous disparaged; instead, it shtetl variously speak should be seized as a Yiddish, Russian, strategic opportunity for Polish, and Romani; engaging students in these languages analytic exercises. delineate ethnic Consider, for example, two divides and class French films portraying tensions as well as evince cultural shtetl life on the eve of the Production still from Moi Ivan, Toi Abraham, directed by Yolande Zauberman, 1993. Holocaust: Moi Ivan, toi hybridity and social Abraham (Ivan and Abraham), directed countryside (e.g., Yankl der shmid, 1938), fluidity. Ivan, for example, speaks Yiddish by Yolande Zauberman (1993), and Train Yiddish films of the interwar years draw on with his Jewish employers. de Vie (Train of Life), directed by Radu living memory, however attenuated, of The film’s image of shtetl life is gritty, Mihaileanu (1999). Their subject has, of Jewish life in Eastern Europe’s small brooding, and earthy. Characters are course, been a primary locus of Jewish towns, where millions of Jews still resided. repeatedly shown clinging to one another memory culture since the latter half of the A half century after World War II, efforts and are often sitting or lying on the nineteenth century, when Jews began to set a film in the shtetl face the daunting ground or floor, suggesting their leaving small market towns both task of reenacting a lost quotidian. rootedness in the shtetl milieu. Filmed in geographically and ideologically. In Moreover, they are works of memory that black and white, Moi Ivan, toi Abraham addition to an extensive corpus of rely not so much on recollections of actual recalls interwar photographs such as the literature, the shtetl has also been treated experience as on the received work of Alter Kacyzne or Roman Vishniac, in memoir writing, works of visual art, remembrances of others, encoded in which presented the shtetl through the eye music, theater, and—especially in the narratives and images produced by of an observer from outside, drawn to its decade preceding World War II—film. The previous generations. By virtue of their exoticism and decadence. The aura of interwar Yiddish cinema in the United elaborate scale, these films epitomize decay—crumbling buildings, shabby States, Poland, and the Soviet Union postwar efforts to imagine one’s way back clothes—pervades the shtetl of the film. 15 The vulnerable marginality of its setting is 1990s (including La Vita e Bella [Life is While ostensibly transporting viewers back established at the beginning by a title Beautiful, 1999] and Jakob the Liar to the same time and place, these two films locating the action “somewhere at the [1999], the English-language version of offer complementary visions of the shtetl Polish border during the 1930s,” the film, Jakob, der Lügner [1975]), Train on the eve of the Holocaust. Moi Ivan, toi culminating with the shtetl’s destruction de Vie relates a fantasy of Jewish ingenuity Abraham evinces a desire to remember the by antisemitic vandals at the film’s end. and pluck in outwitting Nazi persecution, shtetl as a site of doomed Jewish Train de Vie, set in indigeneity, imbricated another unnamed town, WHILE OSTENSIBLY TRANSPORTING VIEWERS BACK TO THE among other east also deals with the shtetl Europeans. Train de near its demise. The SAME TIME AND PLACE, THESE TWO FILMS OFFER Vie offers a vision of action takes place during the shtetl as playful, the summer of 1941, as COMPLEMENTARY VISIONS OF THE SHTETL transcendent, a mythic Germans are murdering locus of guileless the Jewish populations ON THE EVE OF THE HOLOCAUST. Jewish resilience. of small towns across Watching these films eastern Europe. Despite this grim setting, in which the town’s Jews flee en masse on together, or comparing them with prewar, Train de Vie offers a light, whimsical a train they acquire, masquerading as Yiddish-language shtetl films or works of shtetl; colorful, playful, and almost Germans. At the film’s center is Shlomo, shtetl literature (from Sh. Y. Abramovitsh exclusively Jewish in its population, it is as the self-proclaimed village idiot who to Jonathan Safran Foer), provides rich indebted to Fiddler on the Roof (1971), as concocts the escape plan. Whereas Moi opportunities to consider the range and Moi Ivan, toi Abraham is to the fiction of Ivan, toi Abraham is defined by the dynamics of shtetl remembrance, Isaac Babel or Isaac Bashevis Singer. And dynamic of its two youthfully naïve demonstrating the mutability of memory like Fiddler, Train de Vie offers postwar protagonists, Train de Vie has at its center in response to the changing relationship audiences a more accessible shtetl. Rather an adult naif. Both films thus facilitate an between the shtetl and those who wish to than simulating its complex innocence of the imminent consequences recall it. multilingualism, the characters in Train de awaiting their towns, providing audiences Vie all speak French, inflected with the entrée to the shtetl as if they were unaware Jeffrey Shandler is Assistant Professor in the occasional Yiddishism. One of a spate of of its fate. Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers “Holocaust comedies” made in the late University. DEPARTMENTS OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES IN THE PROFESSIONS AND TEACHING & LEARNING JOINT APPOINTMENT ASSOCIATE/FULL PROFESSOR The Steinhardt School of Education seeks an established scholar to direct a doctoral program in Education and Jewish Studies. The candidate must have a doctorate and an outstanding scholarly record in such fields as curriculum, teaching and learning, school leadership or disciplinary-based educational research, and at the same time, must be knowledgeable with respect to the current realities and needs of the field of Jewish education. Responsibilities of the position include research, teaching, program development and administration, grant development and mentoring students. Please send letter of interest, curriculum vitae, and contact information for three references to: Richard Arum, Chair, Jewish Education Search Committee, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Professions, New York University, Steinhardt School of Education, 246 Greene Street #300W, New York, NY 100003-6677. NYU appreciates all responses, but can only respond to qualified can- didates. Review of applications will begin immediately and will con- tinue until the search is completed. NYU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. 16.