The Dynamics of Benefice among East European Jews

T HE patterns of giving and receiving are basic in the life of the East European Jews, Attitudes, behavior, beliefs associated with giving form a cornerstone of the ethical system and also represent a major mechanism governing interpersonal relations. Giving is both a duty and a joy; it is a source of heavenly approval and also a source of earthly prestige. The fortunate man is the one who is in a position to give. The unfortunate is the one who must accept under humiliating circumstances. Granted the correct situation, accepting is not necessarily painful-but under any circumstances, giving is counted among the great gratifications of life. Giving serves not only to enrich the donor and succor the recipient but also to perpetuate the community and maintain the status quo. The welfare and stability of the community are felt, not as remote and impersonal, but as immediate and personal needs of its members. The shtetl, or Jewish town community in Eastern Europe, represents a culture island, sharply differentiated from and strongly influenced by the surrounding community. The shtetl itself may be either a separate Jewish small town or a section of a small town that also includes non-Jews. It represents the most distinctive form of Jewish life developed within the Pale of settlement. The behavior and attitudes discussed here are described as they have flourished in the shtetlakh little affected by the standards prevailing to the West. Although they represent ideals of behavior, sometimes more honored in the breach than in the observance, to a large extent they are actual * This paper is a report from the section studying East European Jews of the Columbia University project, Research in Contemporary Cultures, which was inaugurated by the late Professor Ruth Benedict in 1947, under a grant from the Office of Naval Research. This research is conducted in area seminars, and the author has drawn upon the work of collaborators: Dr. C. Arensberg, Dr. S. Benet, Dr. T. Bienenstok, Miss D. Freudmann, Miss L. Giventer, Mrs. E. G. Herzog, Mrs. R. Landmann, Miss J. Nicklin, Miss I. Rozeney, Miss R. Spiro, Mr. M. Zborowski, and Miss C. Stopnicka. The project employs some standard procedures of cultural anthropology, draws upon some methods of clinical psychology, and has developed some additional lines of research. The interviewing techniques of field anthropology and clinical psychology are checked and augmented by findings secured through projective testing on the one hand and, on the other, through intensive analysis of selected written materials, films, photographs, etc. Interview data are analyzed with a view to building up a systematic picture of regularities in the characters developed by individuals within the culture. These regularities are viewed in their relation to the institutions of the societies that produce them. Cultural anthropology provides the methods used to check the findings drawn from intensive interviewing against the formal patterns of a culture, and also furnishes methods for analyzing folk lore, social organization, ritual behavior, etc. Clinical psychology provides the methods used to interpret the dynamics of the character patterns revealed by intensive personal interviewing, and to systematize our understanding of the way in which specific child rearing practices perpetuate a given culture. During the last ten years these methods have been used effectively in the United States for study of contemporary cultures which were inaccessible to field study because of wartime conditions. The methods described are necessarily inappropriate for the establishment of statistical frequencies of any sort. They are concerned with main regularities in character structure, not with establishing to what degree some particular facet of these regularities is manifested in any given group, or at any particular time. Nevertheless, they may be used as the basis of testable predictions. The present study is based on intensive interviewing of informants directly or indirectly familiar with East European Jewish culture-including individuals who have grown up in East Europe, or have lived there, and individuals whose parents were natives of East Europe; and on intensive analysis~ of selected written materials, films, photographs, etc. In its present formulation it applies only to the East European Jews of the late prewar period, in the selected groups discussed. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from interviews and, as far as possible, in the informants' own words. The system of transliteration followed is that used by the Yiddish Scientific Institute in New York.