Rural Jews, Urban Mennonites and Diaspora Identities

Actor Rob Morrow as Dr. Joel Fleischman

Northern Exposure, ep 3.13 

Things Become Extinct 

(20 Jan 1992, No. 77513)

Dr. Joel Fleischman: I'm not a vanishing breed.
Ed Chigliak: Well, you're Jewish. That's pretty rare.

"This is not homesickness.  This is more than homesickness.  I'm facing serious personality meltdown.  Joel Fleischman, the Jewish doctor from New York.  You take that away and who am I?  What am I?"
"Well, Fleischman, just forgetting a few subway stops..."
"This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Don't you understand?  It's like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.'  I'm being replaced by some insidious replicant, a Joel Fleischman look-alike that talks about crop rotation and carburators.  I've got to stop it before it's too late." (sic)
        - Joel to Maggie

"You had me do a two hour turn around to Anchorage to pick up *bagels*? They were supposed to be medical supplies!"  - Maggie, to Joel

“You know, I tried.  I really did.  I gave it my best shot.  It just didn’t work.  Scratch the plum pudding, there’s a matzo ball underneath.  I’m a Jew.  That’s all there is to it.”  Joel to Maggie after dismantling his first, and unsuccessful, Christmas Tree and re-establishing it in Maggie’s front yard.

   As a Postmodern prairie dweller, I was raised on episodes of the Beachcombers, Ann of Avonlea and Little House on the Prairie with a few reruns of Grizzly Adams.  In college, it was reruns of Northern Exposure that fired my imagination and appreciation for the world I left behind – and when I had to return to that country for to bury the dead, it was Northern Exposure that enabled me to laugh painfully at the rapid, if semi-consensual change from downtown Chicago to the mountains of Montana’s Yellowstone.  Where Fleischman missed his bagels, I longed for my bitter Starbucks coffee.  Fleischman longed for his lost Bordeaux, I missed my Art Institute – Fleischman’s golf course was my softball fields.  All in all, a little bit different, yet very much the same.

   Apart from humor, Northern Exposure exemplified numerous socio-ethnic situations and struggles for identity as individuals, as communities and as historic ethnic groups assimilating into something new – both an inclusive new and an often exclusive new.  Ed Chigliak’s statement Fleischman about being a vanishing breed was both a statement as to Fleischman’s personal Jewish identity and Fleischman’s need to adapt to new realities and to establish himself as something new – not exclusive of his Jewish New Yorker past, but rather inclusive of the new person Fleischman was becoming outside of the social and cultural reinforcements of the ethnic Jewish diaspora.  Tellingly, much of Fleishman’s humor stemmed from his travails to adapt to the Postmodern reality as an individual while longing for the communal support of the Modern New York Jewish community.

Artist Jacob Kane

   Jacob Kane is a graduate of the non-denominational, Mennonite-affiliated Lustre Christian High School in Lustre, Montana, Class of '91.  Born in Montana, Kane moved to San Francisco, California after serving in the United States Navy.  His work is now part of the on-going digital art endeavor, Omnetra (see link:  Jacob Kane Omnetra).

ne Launtschoft (Heritage Landscapes)

Henderson Community, Nebraska, courtesy Mennonite Archive, Goshen, IN.

Mennonite Baseball Hall of Fame

Mennonites in Major League Baseball

   Mennonite participation in Major League Baseball is a much longer, if much more American story.  Of the 13 identified Mennonites, Russian Mennonites and Amish playing professional baseball, only one is known to be of Canadian background -- all others being American (the opposite of the National Hockey League (NHL)). 

   Mennonites have been quite the characters in the Majors.  Overall, six have been catchers and four pitchers.  Connie Mack, the longest serving manager, is of Mennonite heritage as was Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first Baseball Commissioner and Federal Judge who handled both the 1915 Baseball Anti-Trust challenge and the clean-up of Chicago's "Black Sox" scandal when in 1919 the Chicago White Sox were accused of purposefully throwing the World Series.

   There is a lot of history in these players' profiles.  Early Mennonites -- Landis, Mack and the Bergens, for instance, assuredly knew of each other.

   While Klassen is the only hard-core Russian Mennonite (Jantzen is presumed to be Russlander), it is still the story of the United States' national pastime and the unique contributions Mennonite men and boys have made to it.  Enjoy -- and catch a game -- especially if anywhere near Chicago's Wrigley Field, Target Field in Minneapolis or Toronto's Exhibition Stadium.  Play Ball!

   Most of the information used to build these profiles is either general in nature or based heavily on guidance from the appropriate Wikipedia articles.

(click read more to see players' profiles)

Jeff Wall, Jewish Russlander Photographer

Eena dee schienent Bilda aufnemmt

Jeff Wall by Hermann Wendler, 2007

   IIn tracing and detailing the extent of the Russian Mennonite diaspora, one spends a lot of time on the look-out for key names – such as Toews, Unrau, Wiens, etc.  Many names, however, exist well beyond the diaspora – Becker, Unger, Wall, etc. 

   Regarding the surname Wall, I have always been intrigued by the artist Jeff David Wall of Vancouver, British Columbia – is he of the Dutch Wall’s, the Norwegian Wahl’s, the Irish Wall’s (who are actually Dutch) or the Mennonite Wall’s – if he is Mennonite, is he of the Belgian Vanderwalle’s  or de Walles, or of the Frisien Walde / Waldens?  Nor is Wall’s photo of any assistance.  I, for example, look just like my father, grandfather, great-grandfather – all the way back to C.M. Wall, the earliest for whom an image exists.  Wall does not look unlike a Dutch-Flemish Wall, but they have also, possibly due to shared heritage, also looked suspiciously Irish.

   So leaving off the Jerry Springer – Montel Williams investigatory work , Arthur Lubow, of the New York Times, actually published the answer to the dilemma in his bio-piece on Jeff Wall , 25 February, 2007.  In a piece title “The Luminist,” Lubow reveals that Jeff Wall, that great Canadian photographic artist is actually – “Jewish”.  “Jewish?” one asks.  “Jewish” he says.

Apologetics and Charisma

   A good Mennonite friend of mine from Buhler, Kansas, posted the attached video onto her Facebook™ Timeline. The video is produced by Matt Slick of CARM ministries and is called Are Roman Catholics Saved?

   Obviously, I have disclosed that I fellowship with a Roman Catholic group on Saturday evenings when in Chicago (no – I am Mennonite, not Catholic).  I fellowship with them because I enjoy the method by which they delve into the scripture readings for the service and because I have found within the Roman Catholic church a continued, obstinate dedication to old Mennonite values such as Communitarianism, Pacifism, Social Outreach, personalism in one’s relationship to Christ, and Grace – especially amongst the orders (Franciscans, Jesuits, Vincentians and the Poor Claire’s).

   Having similarly attended numerous Baptist-oriented services, I have found myself all too often discouraged that while the evangelical Mennonites and certain “Baptist” groups share a commitment to Biblicism and the Evangelical message, that I have left too many of those services feeling that the fruits from that service were negative, judgmental and counter-productive – or just as often, having experienced what I often refer to as Evangelical-lite – meaning that I experienced Truth but was leaving the service still spiritually hungry.  I have found certain Roman Catholic services (or Evangelical Free Services) to be a better mix for my own personal spiritual “character.”   So I am a bit ecumenical by nature.

What's in a Name?

    This blog is mostly concerned with examining the construction, maintenance and viability of a specific ethnic religious identity.  While no one really bothers getting excited over such a project, it is none-the-less a bit controversial – not in its particular expression but in the perception of its aims.  Does this project contribute towards the preservation of a particular and valuable ethnic “particular’ experience or does it contribute towards further divisiveness and discrimination.

    It is important to reiterate that just because one identifies a particular ethnic experience as viable and worthy of study, that one does not necessarily denigrate or negate the viability and value of all other ethnic or ethnic-religious experiences.  Just as a single rose can be examined and cultivated along with many other roses in the garden, or just as the genus rosa is worthy of study but no more so, nor more to be preferred than is iris or syringe or paeonia…  each is worthy, necessary and valued both in and of itself and also for the contrast and complementary impact each unique group has on the others and on the inclusive group as a whole.

    Nor is this conundrum the sole propriety of the ethnic Mennonites, or even of ethnic-religions in general.  Similar questions and dilemmas have been grappled with in many other examinations or manifestations of “unique” identity – at various national or regional Jewish heritage institutions, at the Swedish-American Museum (SAMAC) in Chicago, or even in defining participation in and inclusion in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights now under construction in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Political Mennonite Decals (TM)

    

    Here are some fun Russian Mennonite (TM) Decals that you can download for personal (non-commercial) use.  It is important to show your pride in your political system.

    Click on the decal and save image to your computer.  Then print it out onto a T-shirt iron on paper (available at your craft store) or onto a bumper sticker printer sheet.  You might adjust the size with the correct software.

fon Schäp, ne Schoo, enn ne dijchtewauss*

Klein -- won't read the blog ... but he supports it.

Schriewa

    The world of Mennonite and Anabaptist bloggers is a wild and exotic one indeed – which always intrigues me – when and where did we learn to talk like this?

    Generally speaking, it seems that Mennonite (and Amish) blogs can be relegated to six general categories:  Recipes, sermons, non-Mennonite church historians, the culturally irate Mennonite, non-Mennonite tourists taking pics of the cows, horses and barns, and everything else (my aim is to end up on the latter).  I am also a bit bemused that so many of the largest, best written blogs about Mennonites, really have very little to do with Mennonites – I mean, I guess I am glad to see others feeling comfortable and welcome to associate with us – but also feel a bit overwhelmed – couldn’t they just invent their own label – like Boyd Anabaptists or the Mars Hill Amish?  I mean it’s one more group to add to the differentiation list of definitions – and threatens to overwhelm with their high-impact websites and polished prose, the already ginger balance between religion and historic ethnic identity that ethnic Mennonite bloggers face on-line.