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When Ytzig Met Shtrul: On Schmoozing and Jewish Conspiracy in Romanian Art
rect and eloquent, reproduce with ability a situation—replenished mildly by the
Jewish costumes and gestures—but they don’t offer any intention of the artist.”
We found out that later Bancila declared he had not taken an anti-Semite view,
but his reviewer is convinced this did not stop the viewers from believing he had
insisted upon the moneymaking nature of Jews. Because the artist was not Jewish,
his work was, “correct, but not moving; he was able to show only what the passers¬
by, over-gorged with malicious prejudices, wanted to see” (Steurmann 1899). The
author of the article returns upon the work after a few months, when the painting
was presented in a personal exhibition. He writes that his review was misinterpreted
and that he had never accused Bancila of anti-Semitism. He only regretted that,
“from the immense variety and richness of the modern Jewish life, the artist paused
upon the play of figures that was represented in the discussed Deal” (Steurmann
1900). Yet, in the next issue, another reviewer intervenes in the pages of the same
magazine: “[Bancila] surprised a figure, an expression, a gesture, artistically beauti¬
ful.—Should he have chosen other subjects from the Jews’ life? Well, this is exactly
what I want to point out: if Bancila didn’t grow among Jews and doesn’t know all
their intimacies, the note of A Good Deal is still characteristic for the Jew and ...
more or less favorable to him” (Kisinieff 1900).
In conclusion, representing a group of Jews talking business was seen as normal
even by the Jews. The accuracy of their gestural mechanics—the good-fortune sign
of the left Jew,!! the beard patting hand of the second, suggesting heedfulness—
and their intimate proximity were not called into question. The message was cor¬
rect though not emotional, stereotypical but not prejudicial—again, the prejudices
being accumulated by the viewer. We are in front of an ordinary informal street
brokerage, a situation that the Jews were very used to.'? Visually, a substantial
"| A gesture that is quite known today in the globalized era, the A-OK sign or the ring gesture had and
still has different cultural meanings, corresponding to different cultural spaces, expressing positivity
and negativity as well. A century ago, when Bäncilä completed this painting, the ring gesture signified
already in the Anglo-American culture “approval,” while for several European countries, especially
Mediterranean, it had an apotropaic function. Presumably the gesture had similar meanings for Jews.
In the Jewish folklore, connecting the tips of the right forefinger and the right thumb to form a circle,
followed by incantations and ritual movements, constituted a protection spell against robbers and ac¬
cidents when crossing a river (L6winger 1916: 57-58). Converting this gesture into a good-deal signal
was possibly indebted to the so-called Gebdrde des Geldzahlens, the counting-money sign. Rubbing the
index on the thumb meant good fortune, financial success, and it can be admitted that the pictorially
rendered ring gesture was, in fact, a frozen motion. Although not particularly Jewish, the gesture was
used by Jews and easily associated with their pecuniary nature. Samuel Astrachan, in Malaparte in
Jassy, visualized a scene from the early 1940s, involving the same Jewish community that Bancila found
interest in a few decades earlier: “Jews sidle up to Romanians and whisper into their ears, and they rub
their thumb and forefinger together at the level of their eye in gestures expressive of things long desired,
vaguely soiled” (1989: 47).
12 Schmoozing was not just small talk. In nineteenth-century Germany and Switzerland, Schmuser
was an appellative of minor trade agents. In an article, suggestively named “All talk or business as
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