Groups

There was nothing entirely exceptionally different about hanging out with Jewish young adults in Russia and Ukraine back when I was volunteering with the Joint Distribution Committee. Everyone had emotions, dreams; there were leaders and followers, hard-asses and gentle souls, the shy and the bold.

But I suppose I should say, there was almost nothing entirely exceptional. There was one very strange cultural habit that is seared into my memory. 

There were times when the administrators on the trips or visits needed group photographs. Normally, in America, group photos are a torture beyond compare. The sheer amount of patience and willpower that goes into getting people to just stand in some sort of helpful order and be presentable (and quiet) is herculean on the part of the photographer. These photos are understood to be some sort of annoying chore, whose only relief is the goofiness expressed from the self-consciousness of everyone being rounded up to do something they profoundly didn’t want to do.

In Russia and Ukraine, the moment a group photo was called for preceded maybe 15 seconds of everybody getting in perfect order and taking a good, but perhaps somber, photograph. Some institutions anticipate the obvious necessity for group photos. While seeing a photo backdrop somewhere outside of a gala is rare in America (though interestingly, the local food bank did have one for volunteers), it was evident that photo backdrops were part of the ordinary architecture of an institution of any worth.

Were people in Eastern Europe especially better behaved than those in America? Not from what I could tell. Yet the group photo seemed to cast a magic spell; nothing but military discipline was going to emerge from whoever I was travelling with.

As Jewish people, we have a certain semblance of historical evidence about how ingrained this behavior was in the former Russian Empire and environs in comparison to even early days in America. Take a look at the massive output of group photos that we still have from that region: all posed, group photos. Even our illusive Der Nister (pen name of Pinchas Kahanovitch) is found in many such photos, looking as though he’d rather not be there but knowing he had no choice. Looking for a group photo of this kind in America? It’s more likely that you’ll see a group gathered together in the middle of an activity, perhaps looking at the camera on purpose, not any sort of group posing. Take a look at one of the few photos passed around of Jewish Boyle Heights — a dinner. (This was the style at the time. Check out the photos of the early Academy awards at the Biltmore.) 

Group photos are a source of power. To the extent that the selfie or its predecessor, the portrait, is an emblem of social signaling, group photos serve the same function. They emphasize belonging, not in the sense of internal validation, but rather, showing membership in a unit that can stand strong in a society whose groups can prey on individuals standing alone. They serve as a passport. Passports are documents that guarantee, through the threat of violence from the leader of the person's country, the safe passage of that person in another country. Nowadays we tend not to think in such dramatic terms, but this was the original purpose: a letter from the king held by a diplomat guaranteeing the diplomat’s protection. Group photos, to be updated as often as possible, demonstrate membership (and implicitly protection) in a group.

In Eastern Europe, the size and cohesion of your ethnic group is very obviously the backdrop to your personal power. In America, we try to detach ourselves from the paradigm, but it still haunts us, some more than others. (Why is it that being a minority is a signal that society needs to protect a group? Even in places where the “minority” is a majority?)

Jewish philosopher and renegade Baruch Spinoza once claimed that the Jewish people go on as a people because of antisemitism alone. His opinion was extreme but the sentiment is powerful. Is it rejection from another group that retains us to our current group? Or can it continue without such need or threat?

Personally, I think this is too deep of a question to be properly answered. The building blocks of an answer lie within the idea of culture, and culture penetrates to the roots of the human psyche as intensely as gender or morality. Does it matter that someone’s culturally-induced habits or thoughts can be paved over by a larger culture? Or, like a dandelion spore, we really don’t care where we come from as long as we can grow where we are as we are?

Instead I want to pivot to the idea of being in a group, that is to say, membership. In America, the military is the closest thing we have to a group in its fullest sense. It is worshipped and reviled simultaneously, for molding people into patriots with a sense of duty, purpose and selflessness, and abandoning them into streets afterwards, unable and unwilling to reinstill the individualistic survival tendencies needed in regular “civilian” society. The molding process is brutal, breaking down any and every distinguishing factor of someone’s self-worth through boot camp and drill instructors. And you know they take group photos.

There are pseudo-military societies in America. Sports teams come to mind, as do fraternities and sororities. Intense hazing and brutality are all part of them; for some reason, nobody accepts the idea of being in a group without being broken. Maybe it is not they who are broken, but rather their sense of being important or valuable outside of a group?

People in these groups are worshipped because they manage to achieve what nobody else can, a functionality and glory that is greater than the sum of their parts, which individuals in turn receive the benefits of. Think of the high school football guy who can only draw personal value from his days on the team, and like the military veteran, sputters outside of it.

In Eastern Europe at least, nobody needs to be broken to join a group. They join these groups because they understand what a group is: a form of organization where everyone commits to support each other no matter how they feel about each other personally. (And many of them do hate each other.) It was just understood that it was worth the cost of individual autonomy. After all, what is autonomy worth when you are vulnerable when you have it? The self-defense groups of the Pale of Settlement grew out of the Zionist groups and the Bundist groups that worked hand in hand to defend against a common threat. Nowadays, groups like Hillel and JDC unite Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union.

In Torah, the worst punishment outside of death (or maybe including death) is karet. This means being cut off from either God or the people. It’s funny reading this with Americans, because it really doesn’t sound so drastic. After all, we get cut off from places and people all the time, including families and close friends. What difference does it really make?

Not all that much in America, a relatively safe society. Most of the time, being of a different ethnic group does not automatically make you subject of violence. (And if/when it does, like racist police violence or ICE raids, the consciousness to band together and fight is not hard to come by!) Being poorer than others can put you in a vulnerable position, but often the government gives just enough in the way of (hard-fought) benefits to prevent the bottom from completely falling out. But I am careful to say, America is safe in comparison to parts of the world where inter-ethnic violence is disturbingly common and widespread, and that includes also history, modern and biblical alike.

Many groups that began in America, but were conceptually born in Europe, have faded away over time. Fraternal organizations like the Workers Circle began with the charge to fight for workers rights, provided direct health insurance, and put on cultural activities. They no longer are in the health insurance business, and as such, the intense need for them is not as great as it once was — a time before businesses provided newly white-collar Jewish workers with insurance. 

We instead rely on business networks, associations, and acquaintances as a form of mutual support, when we know they are transactional in nature. We know that we need to have something for someone to be interested in us and to a decent extent, vice versa. In America, we believe that we have transcended the need to be obligated to support others in exchange for mutual support; we all have something of value, and we simply need to convince our interlocutor that it is valuable. As a result, we are left with no support. Americans turn to cults and gangs to find this bare minimum of mutual support when they don’t get it from families, friends or groups.

Places of worship can’t always create groups. As people become disconnected from religion, often the way to lure them back is by using a charismatic leader, or at the very least free food, to give them a promise of individual betterment in exchange for their presence and money. But those aren’t groups that pledge to give mutual support, but rather illusions that one need not give to receive (and so end up giving and not receiving when dragged in far enough.)

The embers of group consciousness, burned from a century of socializing ourselves into the idea that we are all or should be prosperous and safe individually, are intoxicating the youth. Whereas tech billionaires neglect the idea of even social giving that Carnegie once had, many others have given up on believing that they are prosperous and have things of value to exchange. Rental/home prices and health insurance costs, an old problem from a century ago, have made it obvious that groups are a need. And while many would rather organize themselves in ways that transcend ethnic or religious lines, the old loyalties call when none other are as compelling.

I really think that now of all times, we should learn that groups have what to offer America. Health insurance should be a mutual support system. We should sacrifice the belief that we need to be free from supporting others and turn to only those who we can do “deals” with. We will learn the group photos are a symbol of power and belonging. We should embrace the nobility of supporting others, and the freedom to dream with the knowledge that others have your back as our ancestors once did.