Mirosul a fost dintotdeauna un factor discriminator, unind sau, cel mai adesea, despărțind societăți, comunități, grupuri sau indivizi. Una dintre cele mai răspândite și mai vechi prejudecăți este aceea privind mirosul specific (urât) al evreilor, care a fost asociat cu trăsături fizice aparte (nasul mare). Nu este singura prejudecată de acest fel, însă ea a căpătat proporții uriașe, cu consecințe la fel de uriașe, culminând cu holocausturilor din timpul celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial. Despre prejudecata privind mirosul evreilor, cităm mai jos un fragment din instructiva carte a lui Jonathan Reinarz, una dintre cele mai bune sinteze a istoriografiei moderne despre miros(uri).
Jonathan Reinarz, Past Scents. Historical Perspectives on Smell, University of Illinois Press, 2014
(capitolul III: “Odorous Others. Race and Smell”)
The belief that Jewish bodies exuded a foul odor, or foetor Judaicus, was commonly accepted among medieval Europeans of both the literate elites and lower orders. It is a particularly poignant example of the way smell was used to register distaste for a racial group whose “evil” traits were assumed to relate to actual physical characteristics (in this case the nose).
The historian Eric Zaphran has traced these ideas back to the medieval Arabic scholar Abu Ma’shar, who wrote about the saturnine personality. In particular, it was the Jewish people’s association with the astrological sign of the god Saturn that reputedly gave them a fetid odor. Such references also extend back to the Roman period, although Semitic scent references are associated more often with religious practices distinct to Jews, such as fasting. The Roman poet Martial, for example, referred to the stink of “the breath of fasting Sabbatarian Jews.” Later, Guido Bonatti — the celebrated Italian astrologer and adviser to the Holy Roman emperor — described this scent as “goatlike,” at once correlating Jews with the devil and developing an associated personality type. Like goats, Jews were regarded as filthy, but they were said to have become foul from not working, producing nothing, and scavenging from European Christian society, a notion alien to England until the expulsion of 1290. This barrier between the two religious communities was regarded as one between barbarism and civilization but was not considered insurmountable. If a Jew were converted to Christianity, it was said, the Jewish stench transformed immediately into a fragrance sweeter than ambrosia. The allegation that Jews sacrificed Christian children in order to employ their blood in Passover rites and rid them of their distinctive “fetid” odor has also been argued to have an English archetype. Some even claimed that the aroma associated with Jews was a positive sign symbolizing devotion; smelling bad to mortals outside their faith, the devout at least smelled good to their God. There may occasionally have been more practical reasons for such perceived differences, as the daily washing of the genitalia was regarded as a Jewish custom and was not tolerated by medieval Christians.
As older notions attributing foul odors to Jews gradually declined, many continued to reiterate views that the food and personal habits of Jews violated civilized standards. Jay Geller has explored these ideas in the context of nineteenth-century Germany. During this period Jews were evidently denigrated and depicted as primitive or base. Rather than emphasizing any heightened senses, however, they were merely said to stink and were situated at the bottom of any imagined scent hierarchies. For example, the author of an article on urban sewage systems in Harper’s Magazine in 1885 pointed out that “cleanliness was a relative term; the ideas of a Polish Jew of the lower classes, of a New England housewife, and of a chemist are very different.” Presumably, the order in which these were listed was also intended to highlight a readily understood hierarchy of cleanliness. Cleansing communities, on the other hand, could also easily translate into campaigns aimed at eliminating those associated with filth and corruption. Efforts to purify the social body of perceived “corrupt elements” plumbed new depths in Nazi Germany, with Adolf Hitler clearly articulating the perceived links between smell and racial pollution in Mein Kampf:
The cleanliness of [Jews], moral and otherwise, I must say, is a point in itself. By their very exterior you could tell that these were no lovers of water, and, to your distress, you often knew it with your eyes closed. Later I often grew sick to my stomach from the smell of these caftan-wearers . . .
All this could scarcely be called very attractive; but it became positively repulsive when, in addition to their physical uncleanliness, you discovered the moral stains on this “chosen people.”
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