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When Ytzig Met Shtrul: On Schmoozing and Jewish Conspiracy in Romanian Árt Discussing the same streets of Sighet, Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga, some years earlier, made several literary observations, possibly overfeeding the painting’s social message: “The Jewry walks or stays in group, in front of the big houses that host shops ... In every corner, two or three Jews are lurking” (1907: 557). For lorga, the Jewish gatherings were unquestionably conspicuous, and perhaps just as well were for Biltiu-Däncus. There is an unexpressed social stratification that can be deciphered in his painting, the traditional division between the poor downtrodden working class, represented in totality by Romanians, all with specific professional attributes, and the exploiting or benefiting class, in this case, the Jews. In the growingly anti-Semite climate of that moment, the two conniving characters, clearly outlined through their otherness, were most likely perceived, and maybe by a considerable number of viewers, as a social anomaly and threat, and the whole composition as a civic protest.” Significantly, while the painting was still being exhibited at the saloon, a law that racially defined Jews was issued in Romania. There is indeed a differential dynamic in the Biltiu-Dancus’s Jews. While the Romanian loggers from the left are involved in a static dialogue, suggesting a general lethargy, the Jews gesticulate. Could these two mirroring states—the inaction and the action—reenact the emotional polarity from the medieval Passions, an inert and silent Christ opposed to a vociferating crowd of Jews?"* The artist might have been indebted to nationalist ideas and the religious iconography, but he was also reflecting a social reality, as we will see further. David Efron observed that gestures are strongly connected with nationality. A supporting example for this acknowledgment was the fact that eastern European Jews characteristically conversed in very close proximity, and with much gesturing. The rampant corporal movements contributed to their collective image, insofar as the eastern European Jews were strongly associated in the popular mind with the notion of frequent and lively gesticulation (Efron 1972: 60). Their self-perception cemented this belief, considering that the behavioral expressions became a subject for many stories and jokes. An eloquent example is a Jewish anecdote of two friends who, due to their colloquial gestures, overturn the boat they were sailing 5 Another version of the painting, today in the custody of the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum, signed with the year 1939, displays a very similar composition, except one important detail: the two Jews are missing, their place being taken by what seems to be a well-dressed tax collector or superintendent, which was, after all, just another type of beneficiary. Although it is not possible to conclude which painting was finished first, it is clear that the presence of the two Jews (no matter if they were painted and afterwards eliminated, or if the artist repainted the scene with the clear intention of placing an ethnic add-on) was not just another formal element, but a consciously examined situation. Both paintings use the same social contrast, only the actors, filling the same role of a profiting category, differ. '6 This opposition was analyzed by Jean-Claude Schmitt, in his remarkable study dedicated to the symbolism of gestures in medieval western Europe (1998: 324-325). 497
