Seite 496 [496]
When Ytzig Met Shtrul: On Schmoozing and Jewish Conspiracy in Romanian Art
during the service, but in the interpretation that the situation allowed for. In the
Christian mentality, not only did the synagogue concentrate a pure ungodliness,
but it was also home to evil scheming. Mihai Eminescu wrote in an article from
1876, around the same years when Grigorescu painted his work: “[The Jews] con¬
spire in the synagogue against the Christians. It’s there where they set the prices,
when they crush the Christian competition and when they feel they are in control
of some economic ground. It’s there where they decide the death of the Romanian
craftsman, under the occult authority of a state in state, in the unseen committees
of the universal alliance” (Eminescu 2000: 29). Though modern and contextual,
his attitude reflected, over the centuries, the powerful words of John Chrysostom:
“The synagogue is a brothel, a gang of rascals, a demonic temple offered to idola¬
try, a place of meeting for the Christ’s assassins, a place of perdition” (Oisteanu
2004: 304).
In Grigorescu’s case, we can only hypothesize what the artist intended. His
Jews were many, and although the historiography generally avoided discussing
a possible anti-Semitism, his interpretors praised his ability to capture the true
Jewish essence, especially their harmful character. But the dialogue in discussion,
evreiasca (the Jewish group or the Jewish synagogue) acquired the resonance of a behavioral symptom.
A classic Romanian writer, George Cosbuc, concluded that “the Jewish synagogue” was a condition of
the Jews’ noisy nature, manifesting when they gather together. The Romanians intended to say “just
like in the synagogue,” just as, with other occasions, they took the comparison from the Gypsies: just
like the tent-door. Cosbuc noted a similarity between them and Gypsies, due to their strange verbal
manifestations (1900: 242). In modern Romanian, there is still an outspread expression, that can liter¬
ally be translated “to swear like they [the Gypsies] swear at the tent-door,” with the English idiomatic
equivalent “to swear like a trooper.”
$ It was often speculated that, under the guise of religious usages, Jews were orchestrating economic
plans. The Romanian historian A. D. Xenopol wrote in a travel journal about the Jews from the Mol¬
davian town Vatra-Dornei: “They walk on the street in large droves, mumbling some prayers, but their
mind is somewhere else, as they stop often to ask how much is the fruit or a pair of oxen, continuing,
after having received the answer, to mumble their prayer” (1901: 10). Although Jews were known for
their passionate religious talks, in some eyes, being inside the synagogue or close-by did not offer the
Jews a spiritual alibi. As we have seen before, Rembrandt’s Jews were also believed to talk business
instead of sacred issues or to mix them together. The same judgment can be applied in the case of an
etching made by Alexandru Poitevin-Skeletti and exhibited at the Romanian Autumn Saloon in 1937.
The work, representing a synagogue from Jassy, lays focus, in fact, on two Jews engaged in a surrepti¬
tious conversation.
? Out of the many examples, we will draw upon an excerpt from Nicolae Vlahuta, perhaps his most
important biographer, relevant also because it refers to a group of Jews. When analyzing the painting
Fair in Bacäu (The National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest), Viahuta made the following an¬
notation: “In the middle—the core of the painting, a peasant, in his hour of need, sells his little cow
and her calf ... one of the three Jews, because there they work in groups of three, mesmerizes and makes
his head spin, insomuch that the peasant just stands flabbergasted, as if he was hypnotized. Certainly,
his wife whispers to him from behind not to lower the price anymore; but then, pondering with one
hand over her mouth, she looks like she is telling herself: "What can we do more?’ When one looks at
her, tears well up in his eyes” (Vlahurä 1936: 80). In this case, the Jewish scheme was taken one step
493