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NEXTBOOK FEATURE
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Gefilte Fish and Beautiful Shoes: Soviet Jews Describe the Ideal Jewish Woman
Anna Shternshis, assistant professor of Yiddish and Yiddish literature, University of Toronto
“If you can't go to synagogue, and you can't observe kosher, yet you know that you're a Jew, what makes you Jewish?” That's the question Anna Shternshis set out to answer when she interviewed 300 Russian Jews born before 1921. In spite of the religious repression they experienced in the Soviet Union after 1917, Jews there maintained distinct notions of identity often based in stereotype rather than truth—Jewish women dress and cook well, the men don't drink or beat their wives. Ethnic identity often emerged in discussions of courtship and family. “I asked them, 'What makes a good Jewish wife?' Or, 'What makes a good wife?' And some of them said, 'It doesn't matter to me if the woman I marry is Jewish or non-Jewish as long as she knows how to make gefilte fish, or as long as she knows how to speak Yiddish.' The woman has to have a positive attitude to Jewish culture.”
“I wouldn't mind marrying a non-Jew as long as she allows me to call my son Aaron,” one man told Shternshis. “That's not a big deal in the West, but having a Jewish sounding name in Russia is a big deal,” she said, since having one could invite discrimination at work, in universities, and elsewhere. Faced with anti-Semitism, however, cooking offered an acceptable arena in which to excel. As another man said, “I had this boss at work. He was anti-Semitic, he would say, 'You Jews have money. You Jews have gold.' I invited him home and my wife cooked this beautiful meal and he said, 'You Jews are wonderful people, you cook such a good meal.'” By the 1930s, the austerity of the Bolshevik revolution was replaced with a notion of “culturedness” which welcomed nice clothes, attractive shoes. Having those items meant being a “good person” and Jews, in their desire to get along in an essentially hostile environment, tried hard to exemplify those traits.
More from the AJS Conference:
American Jews and Marriage Counseling, 1920-1945
"Based on a True Story": Popular Imaginings among American Jews of Gender
in Ultra-Orthodox Society
Bi'ur Hametz and the Ancient Semitic Magic
Confronting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Jewish Studies Classroom"
Jewish Identity at Work
Lekhu ve-nelekhah (Come Ye and Let Us Walk): The Jewish Students of
Kazimir Malevich
Money in Jewish Eyes: Object of Desire or Derision?
Mothers' Dreams, Daughters' Choices: Envisioning Mothers of Ba'alot Teshuvah
and their Daughters
The "Normal" Mysticism of Jewish Meal Rituals
Piracy, Politics, and Product Placement: Hasidic Book and Magazine
Publishing Today
The Rise of the Ladino Theater in the Ottoman Empire
About the Conference
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