As a playwright I have no political responsibility. I’m an artist. I write plays, not political propaganda. If you want easy solutions, turn on the boob tube. Social and political issues on TV are cartoons; the good guy wears a white hat; the bad guy a black hat. Cartoons don’t interest me. We are living through a time of deep transition, so everyone is unsettled. I’m as angry, scared and confused as the rest of you. I don’t have answers.

David Mamet

Growing up in an environment of whackily dedicated theatre aficionados, I have had more than any deserved share of Oedipuses, Hamlets, Seagulls, and Doll’s Houses. Do not get me wrong, I would not trade the innumerable hours of aesthetic enjoyment for any digitally mastered wonder; however virtuously drawn these technological contraptions may appear to be, nothing can replace the thrilling sensation of seeing people ‘make’ theatre. I’ve repeatedly asked myself, before and after curtain calls, what does it all mean? How do we make theatre in a contemporary world which fosters many forms of cultural disenfranchisement and individual annihilation?

How does one make theatre in/of the multi-vocal spaces of let’s say American cultural life? Can drama as a literary genre and at the same time a popular culture good foster intra/intercultural communication, allowing space for dialogue between the private and the public consciousness? If so, does this re-scripting of drama as both a ‘dramatizing’ and a ‘politicizing’ theatre act suggest a final departure from the ‘aesthetic formalist’ discourse that tends to nurture and shelter this artistic form?

Coming to American Studies via a Comparative Literature charter, I almost dare not say that I strongly believe that the recent work (namely, in the last fifty years) of American dramatic traditions attests to the emergence of a theatre whose commitment to an artful and at the same time, socially-conscious drama continues to question the ‘democratic framework’ of our present-day reality. For that and other particular reasons, I have patiently admired the selection of theoretical readings assigned in Professor Tucker's theorizing of America seminar, week in and week out eagerly awaiting for the revelatory piece of theoretical fiction which would lead me unquestioningly into the promised land of engaged theatre practice.

However, since my epiphaneous mountain never fully arrived, I decided to pay it another visit. Roaming through my extemporaneously taken notes during the seminar's theoretically challenging festivities, I slowly came to realize that there is a great deal of theatrically useful scholarly work amidst the weekly readings. For example, Adorno and Horkheimer’s theoretical work on the futility of mass-produced goods in the cultural climate immediately preceding and following the Second World War, titled “The culture industry: enlightement as mass deception” has provoked my late twentieth-century popular culture sensibilities, while, at the same time encouraging me to become more closely acquainted with the Frankfurt School philosophers’ writings on the relationship between culture (as a multi-faceted concept and practice) and aesthetic criticism (as a theoretical tool, a metronome of sorts, dissecting its every representation).

In the last few weeks, I have immersed myself in the long process of deconstructing (for my layman scholarly potentials) the theoretical assumptions of the ‘double character’ in/of drama and theatre (as a ‘high art’ form) postulated in Adorno’s larger-than-life theoretical evocation simply called Aesthetic Theory. Written in the last years of his life, after Adorno had said his final good-byes to the United States, the work sets out (bravely) to examine art’s autonomy, art as a product of the immanent division existing between intellectual and physical labor. Profoundly affected by revolutionary Marxism (a shared trait with other intellectuals reared in the decades of the Great Depression and Hitler’s totalitarian rule over Germany), Adorno sets out to reject the idea of committed art as seen by two other leading western European intellectuals at the time (Bertold Brecht and Jean-Paul Sartre), since he dismissed their acquiescence of art’s political platform. However, by using the metaphor of Leibniz’s monad (i.e., entities as individual and internally dynamic unities) and translating it to the realm of art, Adorno views each work of art as one such monad, a symbol awaiting its interpretation, drawing attention to socially volatile spaces without always directly addressing pertinent social conditions. On the other hand, Adorno’s lassiez-faire view of art that is strong enough to transcend the pettiness of map lines and time slots tends to blur the historical specificity of the time we live in, and thus proving itself insufficient enough to relate the reality of multiple political, social and historical forces engaged behind the cultural formation and production of contemporary American theatre. Reading Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s insightful take on the preeminent presence/meaning of race as “an unstable, “decentered” complex of social meanings being transformed by political struggle”, (55) in past, present and future U.S. society, adequately titled Racial Formation in the United States, has profoundly stirred up my “old world” views on the ethnicity theory as a dominant paradigm of race and racial dynamics.

And, there is also the unavoidable work of scholar extraordinaire Judith Butler on the re-conceptualization of the category of gender as a “perfomative act”, aptly titled Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. In it, Butler contests the prevailing idea around gender as a surface expression of a deeper “sex”, thus marking a noteworthy step forward in a long-awaited scholarly attempt to consider the ways through which language constructs all objects it contends merely to describe. Both of these works help me raise questions with my own approach to the study of commercially successful and socially appealing culture products, such as for example the dramatic work of Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Amiri Baraka, Spalding Gray, August Wilson, etc., i.e., they challenge me to look for alternative ways to be constructively critical of social normativity and its tightening grip on otherwise ‘liberated’ politics of art’s cultural legitimacy. These culturally significant theories, in turn, allow for my broader understanding of the distinct ways through which race and gender discourses engage the dynamics of American contemporary theatre as a socially art-FUL commitment.

Coming full circle, I am reconsidering Mr. Mamet’s words about ‘artistry’ and ‘not having all the answers.’ I can’t speak for the entire theatre-going community when I say that the least thing we are looking for in a play, in a David Mamet text, is the answer to it all. What we look for are artistically-driven spaces of culture performance through which both author(s) and active participants can engage in a multi-vocal discourse, listening and commenting on each other’s different cultural views and understandings.

I remember the exact moment when theatre got under my skin. I am not certain if this is the most suitable phrase to describe what seems like a life-long relationship with all that is good and transformative about our world. Words of exactitude aside, I was spending my summer break in Ohrid, with my maternal grandparents who had always insisted on art-filled days of leisure. So, as expected we attended a performance at the Ohrid Summer Festival, one that both of them were excited about attending (we left the house earlier than necessary, a sign, for me at least, that something exciting was on its way). After entering the provisional doors to the atrium of St. Sophia church (in the past a favorite venue for Ohrid Summer Festival’s performances), and locating our seats, I heard nothing. It was as if someone had turned off the sound, all of the sounds around me. No, it was not a case of temporary deafness, or an ear infection working its way through a young system. It was, well, that precipitous moment before the beginning of something great, something worth the while, all the while. The next few hours were a blur: today I only recall the sensations – exhilaration, trepidation, awe.

Is it relevant then to remember that this particular performance belonged to a renown theatre house based out of Belgrade, or that it starred the now fabled Branislav Lecic (yes, the same one from ‘Sivi dom’, a TV show which paved the road for all that is holy on former Yugoslav television), or that it was a rendition of an incredulously difficult to stage Shakespearean play from his last period? I suppose it might, if I were writing this piece for any trade papers. Or if I was called upon to discuss, in less formal circumstances, my own relationship with Serbian theatre and all of its course in the last 15 years.

Yet, these same sensations – this trinity of foretold manifestations, usually accompanying an engaged response on the behalf of the spectator – I have not had the privilege of being in the company of, simultaneously, for a long, long time, in the confines of a theatrical space. Do not get me wrong, I have had the honor of seeing and engaging with superb theatre over the course of the last few years, perhaps some of the best one done on these Balkan grounds in their entirety. Needless to say, I have traveled solely for the purpose of seeing exceptional work, whether by Pandur, Madjeli, Savin, Mijac, Susha, Stojanovic, Unkovski, Popovski, or Bradic. And each time, the price of the ticket-fare was never spent in vain. But this triple sensory excitement had not come: I had either had the company of one, or if blessed two of these hallowed sensations, but never like that warm July night, when I knew that my life would be marked, for good, by this deceptive art.

Then last Tuesday came, and I was taken by surprise. The preceding night I had seen a wonderful play at Atelje 212, one I had not had the chance to catch during my previous travels. So, my hopes were there – but I have learnt not to push the boundaries on sensation too soon. When I entered JDP (Yugoslav Dramatic Theatre), on the evening of the 15th of April, to sit for a 2 hour and some change production of Vida Ognjenovic’ ‘Don Krsto’, I came with the hopes of taking witness of some excellent theatre. Some of my favorite actors, and favorite people for that matter, star in this production of Ognjenovic’s play, done in co-production with the Budva City Theatre, and I had longed to see how they might wrestle with the nuances of Ognjenovic’s challenging text. The lights were dimmed. I tuned my senses, and it just came to be: all of it, the exhilaration, the trepidation, the awe.

Now, as I sit, and try to recall the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’ of this partaking, I am torn between these two elements – was it the text, and the actors skillful delivery, or was it the context, and our not-so-skillful existence in it that brought me closer to my original fascination with theatre?

Meaning: Ognjenovic’s text discusses the almost hidden, historically speaking, character of Don Krsto Ivanovic, a contemporary of Moliere and Gallilei, a nobleman from Budva, who after serving as a teacher in his local church, moves across the Adriatic Sea, in pursuit of all the world of letters has to offer: education, fame, infamy. Earning a law degree in Padua, Don Krsto moves to Venice, becoming a renowned opera librettist, while serving the famous St. Mark church. Yet Ognjenovic is not interested in creating yet another history play; none of her work, in and of historically present characters, deals with re-creation and/or re-production. If we trust the words of Bozo Koprivica (and we should, to a point), Ognjenovic’s main facilitator is atmospheric – namely, that melancholy marks all of her texts, as a state of being and a state of mind. Don Krsto, Ognjenovic’s ‘Don Krsto’, is a man plagued by the compelling forces of family, and thus belonging, and science, and thus education. He leaves a fiancé, a beloved twin brother, in pursuit of what he finds needed and necessary: knowledge. When he reconnects with his twin brother, after a prolonged period of 15 years, he admits, in part to a sense of emptiness and what might originally seem a disappointment with his choice. Yes, he is famous, and indeed learned and respected, but his Luce is now another man’s wife, and a mother to a son that is not entirely his.

Cetkovic and Bosiljcic are exemplary actors, the finest of their respective generations (I am referring to their stage work; as of TV lore, I care not to discuss, not here and now that is). Their Don Krsto and his twin brother Tripo, respectively, are perhaps the two liveliest and life-like characters I have had the chance to see in a while. But my dilemma still looms large: skillful delivery aside, what brings forth the ubiquity of emotions when viewing this production – text or context? See, I understand, most ardently and even somewhat plastically, what it feels like to pursue knowledge, out there, outside of one’s home. I ‘get’ Don Krsto’s self-questioning: did I do the right thing, when I left my hamlet for good? I have lived out, and still do, in parts, through the context of this questioning – making a place for oneself in the world does not necessitate a healthier existence. It can, and indeed it does, cause a permanent state of rootlessness, what today we have come to accept as a quirky denizenship. Thus, I am still at odds with my response to this production: I’d like to believe that at the end, it was a combination of both – strength of text and delivery, plus accessibility of context – but something makes me wonder. And doubt, a bit. So, I go and try to find the next production that might make me grasp the magnitude of this response. I’ll keep you posted.

In an interview with María Henríquez Betancor, Gloria Anzaldúa discusses identity as a continuously rearranging process, rather than a stagnant surface metaphor for a static consciousness. Anzaldúa proceeds to identify this dialectic process “as an arrangement or a series of clusters, a kind of stacking or layering of selves, horizontal and vertical layers, the geography of selves made up of the different communities you inhabit.” Her seminal text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza projects a possibility of reading about one such identity-in-process through the author’s almost prototypical “autohisteorías”. Anzaldúa’s work, which defies genre conscription on every single page -turning, generates the construction of a 'mestiza consciousness', a dynamic new paradigm capable of deconstructing the hegemony of many insfoar “acceptable” cultural paradigms. Her mestiza consciousness combats the unspoken acceptance and affirmation of culturally determined roles, imposed on people’s individuality by various mechanisms of compliance (governmental decisions, communal practices, tradition and gossip).

Since its initial publication in 1987, Borderlands/La Frontera has initiated numerous discussions regarding the author’s treatment of life in “the spaces in-between”, Anzaldúa’s (and our) borderlands. The voice of Anzaldúa’s “mestiza identity” comes across as an angry voice, overtly political, some would even say unnecessarily extreme. Anzaldúa’s newly redesigned mythos has been questioned by scholars, critics, students of culture as they have tried to come to terms with its paradigmatic reenactment of one’s identity by examining the ways in which we as people, as a society of dominant and minority cultures help enforce socially enslaving binaries (for example, WHITE IS GOOD, BLACK/DARK IS BAD; WOMEN ARE BIOLOGICALLY INFERRIOR; MEN ARE THE DOMINANT RACE; HOMOSEXULAITY IS A DENEGRATE PRACTISE, etc.).

No matter how angrily the voice comes across for some, I have found Anzaldúa’s “new mythos” an indispensable concept in the borderlands of our global existence. We seem to crave metaphors, archetypes, images, in other words indicators, that will help validate our choices, our struggles, our unsheltered existence in the wake of “the changing times”, similarly to the way our ancestors craved the myth of human origin in all of its colorfully various forms. By creating her mythos of “the many different mixes” consciousness, Anzaldúa asserts the power to restructure the audience’s collective unconsciousness through her own use of metaphors.

Metaphors play a defining role in our everydayness. They reshape our individual reality by forming our socially (un)acceptable existence. The Metaphors in Borderlines are not just figures of speech; they allow Anzaldúa to commence a process of finally transcending the culturally imposed “boundaries” that have labeled her an outcast. Many of her metaphors are cross-cultural and inter-/intra-referential, thus what we encounter in her text is a validation of experiences belonging to people from different racial, ethnical backgrounds, different class and sexual orientation. The metaphors of the serpents, otherwise indigenous to her home borderland of the Southwestern Texas/Mexico border, are both part of the Aztec and the Judeo-Christian mythology; they represent, on a number of levels, the source for her distress in her home of the American Southwest. They reflect the societies from which they have entered her borderland; they are a mirror projection of socially constructed gender roles. They are also a vehicle for Anzaldúa’s resistance. She resists being treated as an object of physical threat (as a woman, she does not allow for herself to be maltreated by a man – a gringo, an eagle, a coyote); she does not want a husband; she refuses to be a silent drone, overpowered by the dominance of men, culture, religion.

By appropriating these oppressive forces within her cultural heritage, she tries to lay claim to her final liberation. How successful is then her renewal? How content is her perpetually displaced self?

Taking into account the book’s success signaling “a new visibility for academic programs on the study of the U.S.-Mexico border area”, while crossing “rigid boundaries in academia as it traveled between Literature (English and Spanish), History, American Studies, Anthropology and Political Science departments,” and instigating “multiple theories of feminism in women’s studies and Chicana studies,” Anzaldúa’s act of self-cultural renewal is quite successful. The book is widely read and commented. It is visible. Personally I do not identify with her identity-in-process as constructed by the mestiza consciousness; however, I do not need to fully identify with it to be able to understand its correlation with my own Balkan borderland consciousness. My identity as a Balkan woman of multiple ethnic backgrounds, engaged in a never-ending battle with one another, is a day to day reassessment of what is a personal experience, what is a collective experience, what is the space-in-between. In that respect, when Anzaldúa says in her interview with María Henríquez Betancor that “identity is not just a singular activity or entity. It’s in relation to somebody else because you can’t have a stand alone; there must be something you’re bouncing off of…identity is not just what happens to me in my present lifetime but also involves my family history, my racial history, my collective history…,”

I listen, understand and dramatize.

For a long time coming, I had a feeling that life, my life would change. A bit of a cliché sentence, for an opening sentence, it might seem, but the heck with it, I knew what I knew. I could feel deep down that something was going to shift, something would come off. I almost prayed that it might come sooner, the tornado of a shift this feeling precipitated.

I wanted to tell my children of this sensation that became a day’s companion but I felt foolish. Why did they need to know; I never heard anything about their hunches. Not in a long time, anyway. Perhaps since they were teenagers. I am not stupid, I get the generation gap and all the hullabaloo that it brings forth. I just, well, to tell you the truth, I miss it, all of it, the shouts, the screams, the murmurs, the confessions, the feeling of being there, in their lives. A part.

Back to the sensation that is, my gut feeling. I’ve had it a while, almost a year. First I thought that it might have something to do with menopause, but I’ve rocked that boat a long time ago. Then, I was afraid that something would crack, a bone, a tendril, a heart beat. But after the second operation and the sixth chemotherapy, I’ve vowed to give up on the health worry – what is to come, is to come. And then, it dawned on me. Like a stealth image of a sinking: the sinking of a dream. I knew, that awful September night, that it had everything to do with my daughter, our wallflower. My late husband liked pet names; it made him feel complete, to be surrounded by a garden: with me as his rose, Jacob as the ever-hanging birch, and our youngest, a gentle lilac. Our own wallflower.

I rushed out of bed, and despite my gut feeling, which welled inside, a volcano in the making, called her on the phone. I am aware that young people keep strange hours when it comes to bedtime and visits, but there was something improper about calling her after midnight. It took four rings. As I was about to hang up, a voice, a man’s voice answered. The man she’d been living with for the past seven years, a polite hick she felt I disapproved off greatly. His manners, she was under the impression, insulted my Roman Catholic upbringing. She was wrong, the way young people are wrong about those old ones, who love them, fully. But who was I to intrude on this misconstrued belief. At least it gave us something to talk about on her monthly visits.

Randy, it’s Rosemary. I wonder if I… - I sensed that he gave over the receiver. He did not like the interruption. As all polite hicks, he pretends to be insulted by the absence of intrusion. He’s waiting for the sky to open, and the heavens to thunder an apology, for his lousy childhood, bad complexion, hair loss. It’s her choice, and I have taken time to learn to live with it, with him.

Mom, what’s wrong? My daughter’s drowsy baritone creaks on the other end. Why are you up so late? She beckons.

I hesitate. These things, these strong guttural feelings are difficult to share, almost impossible. I should have thought this true, I’d like to scold myself. If only I could afford myself some time to ponder over the sensation. What I need to tell her, what she needs to hear, it is not easy. It’s never easy to tell your child that you know. That you know them, all of them; that there is no mystery to unfold, no niche to be scavenged. They are a complete utterance. And it is ok.

I go against my instinct, I hide my feeling. I say – Oh, darling, I just felt like hearing your voice. Hope I didn’t wake you up. I know how you like your late movies. Are we still on for the weekend?

She growls. I know that know, and I accept. Out of the polite subterfuge of her upbringing and schooling, instead, she answers: It’s alright mother. You can always call in to say hi. Got to get back to sleep. Tomorrow is a work day.

I stay on the line for another moment, a breath’s pause. A little eternity in its own right. It’s my second unsuccessful attempt to tell her, all I know. I chicken out – she gets that after me, the timidity under pressure. (of all my qualities, I unfavorably passed on the last thing I ever wish upon another human thing. Genetics, hell of a thing). I falter, as predicted, and add in a heartbeat: See you Sunday. Give my love to Randy. And the receiver is done. In a flash.

For a long time coming, I’ve lived with this. I’ve known this. And now, as I am putting it down in words, I cannot see how I had it tucked away for such a long time. I know my daughter. I know my son. I miss my husband. It is time to let them know, all of this knowledge before it’s too late. Before they all decide to abandon me for something, someone greater, louder, happier. I make myself a promise; have to put it in writing before I retort to more fear. I promise to tell her, my wallflower, all about it, next weekend.

I promise to tell her – it’s ok to be mediocre. It’s ok. Now.

Central and (South) Eastern Europeans dedicate a fair amount of their spare time to what most contemporary Americans may consider quite trivial. We are slaves to our appearance outside the home, at our jobs, at the restaurants and the cafes we visit regularly, in the crowded stations of the metro, in the public buses, in the taxicabs, at the stadiums, in the parks, at the tennis courts, and especially at the schools and universities we attend. “Come as you are” refers only to one’s financial condition, never to one’s physical attire. However superfluous it may all seem to an outsider, “dressing up” is a defining force of our cultural identity.

When tourists visit these semi-exotic cultural remnants in the old countries, they are exposed to a world that seems to stem and re-root its existence in the home. They are fascinated by the fact the home is more than a haven to the Eastern European; it is an extension of his life. And somewhere in between the realization and the fascination with this understanding, the average tourist notices the native’s attire. It is worn by time, yet clean and crisply pressed. It may even smell of the hand soap that the tourist used in the morning in his hotel room. Yet when the tourist and the native leave the premises of the home, a transformation takes place. The native is transformed into a mannequin, beautifully new and shiny clothes adorn his body. Every time they go outside the home, the host is transformed by new clothes, an ensemble best befitting of all of the different themes for the outings: coffee in the afternoon, a dinner and a movie, a night at the ballet, a casual afternoon stroll by the river bank, a game of tennis in the park; each time, the host’s appearance is changed as he puts on a new suit, a new pair of pants, a new blazer, a new pullover, at least one of the accessories is replaced and the rest of the “new garments” shift the order of their appearance on the host’s body. It is almost like an unstoppable game of hide and seek, without anyone being found out from their hiding place. And even more fascinating is that both men and women in Eastern European societies are great at this game.

What would then be an outsider’s estimate of the identity of the Central and (South) Eastern European cultures and their participants? Will they view the average Eastern European as a “man” of trivial property, someone whose way of life and perspective on the world largely consists of how he or she appears in the eyes of the immediate surroundings? Will they find this charade to be a little bit precious?

I cannot claim to have an answer to these semi-rhetorical questions. I can only attempt at juxtaposing my insight of contemporary Eastern European culture(s) with Andrew R. Heinze’s enlightening study of the eastern European Jewish immigrant life in New York City between 1880 and 1914 and its striking influence on the role of consumption in the process of cultural assimilation.

The book’s title, Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity , discloses Heinze’s estimated goals in carrying out his evocative analysis of perhaps the most important moments in the lives of the urban Jewish immigrants. However, the focal point of Heinze’s examination, the relationship between the acculturation of eastern European Jewish immigrants and the rise of the role of mass consumption within American society in general, does not hinder the analysis’s pervasive scope. What makes it accessible to other people and other cultures is the methodology that the author relies on, while weaving his tale of consumption as a bridge between cultures.

Heinze, the student of immigrant life in all of its color, dedicates the last part of his book to the various sources behind his research. To a student of both American culture and academic research techniques, I was very much taken by the way he chooses to include the extensive list of resources that have helped him, that have inspired him, to continue with his research in the field. The bibliographical essay can be easily read as any expository essay, giving the future researcher a starting point, and certainly providing the common reader with more than just a survey of articles, budget studies, autobiographical texts, advertising campaigns, theoretical works on historical and sociological issues, examples of useful marketing techniques. By sharing with the readers his personal attachment to these invaluable sources, Heinze brings us closer to what at first may seem to be quite an impersonal study of very personal choices.

The book is tentatively divided into five parts, each one subdivided into a number of chapters, whose ending paragraphs provide the reader with the subject matter of the following chapter. There is a fitting introduction and a conclusive summary of the work’s goals in the epilogue. Nonetheless, one may pick out a chapter of the book and read it in isolation, as a separate article on a particular aspect of consumption by eastern European Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century, in American society. If read in this way, the reader will find out, for example, only about the relationship between the most prominent holidays in the Jewish calendar (Sukkot, Chanukah, and Passover) and the role of the eastern European Jewish immigrant as a prominent consumer within American society, acclimating himself and his family to the American standard of living. Or as Heinze concludes on page 71, “But among the multitude of American Jews, the popularity of Chanukah had little to do with ideology. It stemmed instead from the powerful presence of Christmas as the American right of consumption” and its proximity in the calendar. Thus, the reader will miss out on a wonderful opportunity to witness the (re)shaping and (re)structuring of a cultural identity that has previously considered itself to be the superior to all other ethnic groups and nations in the world.

There are, however, parts, passages in Heinze’s narrative that are not as tightly connected to his concept of the eastern European Jewish immigrant and his role as a consumer in the period between the 1880s and the 1910s, mostly because in them the author’s generalizations are not as relevant to the analysis’s main focus, and are greatly “buffed”.

In the chapter titled “The Immigrant as a Consumer”, Heinze attempts to summarize the differences between the various groups of immigrants from central and eastern Europe who came to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He examines the data behind a comprehensive study of industrial workers of immigrant heritage in the United States conducted at the time by the British Board of Trade. The study’s findings lead Heinze to build further on his argument relating the difference between the eastern European Jewish immigrants and those who immigrated from the regions of central and eastern Europe at the same time and were of “gentile” origin, the former claiming the role of consumer over laborer, thus undergoing a smoother integration within American mainstream culture, whereas the latter who chose not to play the role of consumer to such an extent, acculturated with greater difficulty. This analysis is more than accurate and continues to be a valuable point in the examination of eastern European immigrant experience at the turn of twentieth century. However, Heinze does not stop there; he continues to explicate the reasons for the eastern European Jewish immigration to the Promised Land. On page 35, he says: “Estranged from the land, the Jews of eastern Europe endured material conditions that differed somewhat from those of the surrounding peasantry. Working primarily as artisans and merchants, Jews had much greater familiarity with urban refinements, and their autonomous, communal institutions helped the poorest among them to enjoy the special foods of the Sabbath and holidays.” (Italics added)

Using a very powerful past participle, Heinze, purposefully or not, makes a very inaccurate claim. The eastern European Jews were not estranged from the land due to a lawfully supported decision in the countries of the Pale of Settlement, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Their very own remarkably uniform culture had always discouraged them from working the land; they could and were encouraged to own land, but they ought to have employed others to cultivate it. This particular segment of the eastern European Jewish culture and the positions that prominent urban Jews held in the social milieu (as infamous money-lenders), at the same time obediently working for a totalitarian regime (a bowed head is not cut by the saber), were the true reasons for the rising sense of anti-Semitic sentiments of the non-Jewish peasantry that could not even afford the little luxuries that Jews were able to enjoy during the observance of the main holidays.

I do not presume to disavow the undeniable historical fact of the increasing rise of anti-Semitic political persecution following the assassination of the Russian Tzar Alexander II at the end of the nineteenth century; I simply want to point out to an oversight in Heinze’s otherwise solid analysis of the eastern European Jewish immigration to the United States and its impact on the habit of mass consumption. His lucid portrayal of the gradual “greening out” that American Jews experienced (since to eastern European Jews America was not a means to an end but an end in itself) through a specific force of acculturation – consumption – remains a remarkable study of one immigrant’s pursuit for the American Dream (the clothes, the photographs, the new furniture, the Sabbath shopping, the rise of the importance of the white-collar worker, the parlor, the piano, the day trips to Cony Island, the mandatory summer vacations in the Catskills, the garment and retail industries, the ownership of major publications, the influence on the rise of marketing as a commercial enterprise, the development of the motion picture entertainment industry).

This notion of narrowing the gap between two distinct cultures, one already set in its ways, the other an immigrant one, through the power of mass consumption is a living, breathing, everyday practice of present-day societies that may already seem to be set in their ways. If for example, we examine contemporary eastern European societies, we come across firmly rounded cultures where one’s notion of physical appearance has to meet certain criteria. An Eastern European man, woman and child need to rise to the occasion, letting the people in their surroundings know that they are of a certain social standing, of a certain age, of a certain profession, of a certain income, with a certain intent. But this “flexible form of silent communication” provides the eastern European consumer with freedom from the self-assertion of a rigid social, cultural, religious status. (90) Through the accessibility of internationally recognized brands of clothes (Gap, Benetton, Phard, Nike, Levis, Diesel, New Balance, Lacosta, Sergio Tanchini, Mango, Bershka), Eastern Europeans can communicate a different social, cultural, religious status than the one they are bound to by heritage and income, at the same time remaining “true” to their cultural identity of “being presentable in public”. In this respect the contemporary Eastern European resembles the eastern European Jewish immigrant at the turn of the twentieth century, striving to pass as a respectable member of American mainstream society.

Most contemporary critics of Central and (South) Eastern European societies will largely disagree with this juxtaposition, claiming the unique nature and development of these European societies that have always advocated the power of the hand-made, hand-sold, hand-crafted cultural products over mass produced goods (foods, furniture, house appliances, garments). And they wouldn’t be entirely off key. However, the rise of super-market shopping has brought down the once popular store around the corner; people no longer have the time nor the money to hire a private carpenter to do their furnishing, or to build a house themselves, one which they cannot afford to own, so they rent spacious apartments in urban neighborhoods; almost all households have an almost reliable washing machine, vacuum cleaner, dishwasher; and unless the individual has the time and the energy to have custom-made clothes and shoes specially made, or have someone in the immediate family circle who has the time and the skills to do it for them, most people shop at major department stores or shops that carry popular and accessible brands. Therefore, whether we want to admit it or not, the products of mass consumption are unwittingly “liberating” the spirit of the contemporary eastern European, whose acculturation is not the result of a geographical displacement, but of a fictitious social transgression and cultural mimicry.