Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Female Speaker: Professor Edna Nahshon is Associate Professor
of Hebrew at the Jewish Theological Seminary and she served as Chair
at the Hebrew Department from 1990 to 1998.
Her specialty is Jewish theater and performance.
Her books include "Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art
and Politics of the Artef, 1925 to 1940" and "From the Ghetto
to the Melting Pot: Israel Zangwill's Jewish Plays,"
and I think we helped you with some material here at the Library
of Congress, including a very old screenplay for that.
She's the editor of a collection of essays titled "Jewish Theatre"
which is forthcoming and, of course, this book, "Jews and Shoes,"
which was just published a few months ago by Berg Publishers.
Dr. Nahshon's work has been published in numerous venues
in both Hebrew and English.
Her essay "Counter-text on the Yiddish Stage:
Maurice Schwartz's Production of 'Shylock
and His Daughter'" has appeared in the issue of Zmanim,
a Hebrew-language periodical published by Tel Aviv University,
the Open University, and Mercaz Zalman Shazar.
Another recent publication was her essay "Yiddish Theatre in America"
in "Jews and American Popular Culture," and an essay
on Yiddish theater in the "Encyclopedia
of American Jewish History."
She was also the guest editor of a special issue
of "American Jewish History" devoted
to the theme of Jews and performance.
Dr. Nahshon's Hebrew work has appeared in the United States
in "Ha'Doar" and in Israel in "Bamah" and "Qeshur."
She's also written for the popular press, notably "Ha'aretz" in Hebrew
and the "Forward" in English.
She served as the historical advisor to the television project "The Life
and Death of the Federal Theatre" which aired in 2003 on PBS,
and she's a member of the editorial board of All About Jewish Theater,
a multilingual electronic database for the preservation, deployment,
and circulation of the heritage of Jewish theater worldwide.
She's a member of New York University's Center for Religion
and Media's working group titled Jews, Media, and Religion,
and she's recently developed its unit on Jewish theater
with a special section on the "Dybbuk".
Dr. Nahshon has received grants and fellowships
from many different organizations, including the Center for Hebrew
and Jewish Studies at Oxford University,
where she's a Senior Fellow.
She studied at Tel Aviv University and Columbia University
and holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University.
Dr. Edna Nahshon.   [ Applause ]
Edna Nahshon: This is all so formal and yet Peggy told me
that there was one gentleman who opposed this particular --
well, was not thrilled, let's put it this way -
with the topic of this presentation.
He thought it was a frivolous topic; so, in that spirit of contrariness,
I must say, and as Hanukkah is really around the corner,
I wanted to show you one fun image, then we'll get
into the more serious stuff.
[laughter] But, as frivolous as this particular image may seem,
when you stop to think of it for a moment there are all kinds
of hidden messages here about women, about women and shoes,
about religion and shoes and so on and so forth.
So, if we have time at the end, we may go back to this,
but now let's go to the more serious stuff.
What is the central argument of the book?
It is that in addition to their obvious usefulness,
shoes convey theological, social, and economic concepts and as
such are an intriguing subject for inquiry within a wide range
of Jewish cultural, artistic, and historical contexts.
Shoes retain the personal imprint of their wearer
and thus can also be read as biographical documents,
from the bronzed baby shoes that many of us cherish to shoes
that are all that has remained of those
that perished in the Holocaust.
They signify social and symbolic meanings, indexing gender,
sexuality, social and economic status, lifestyle, occupation,
degrees of religious and ideological commitment, and a spectrum
of specific activities
within distinct ecological and cultural contexts.
They're also of particular interest in relation
to our upright posture and our mobility.
The concept of mobility is very central to the book.
The social and symbolic meanings of footwear are fully recognized
in traditional Judaism, with shoes functioning as ritual,
legal objects, as in the case of halitza.
Halitza is a ceremony whereby a widow
who has no children takes off her brother-in-law's shoe
and by doing this, she releases him of his obligation to marry her
and sire a son in the memory of the dead brother.
Literally, the word halitza in Hebrew means unshoeing.
Here we have an illustration of one such ceremony.
Here's another one that's pretty nice
with chains attached to the shoe.   She's releasing him of the chains.
We will see later on that shoes and their removal are associated
with religiously designated units of time and locality and with notions
of purity and contamination.
For example, mourners are not allowed to wear shoes during Shiva,
which is the seven days of mourning
where one is not supposed to go out of the house.
Kohanim, that is to say descendants of a priestly tribe
who have certain religious hereditary privileges and duties,
remove their shoes when they mount the bima,
the platform from which prayers are recited
to utter the priestly blessing.
As products, shoes reference the materials, mostly leather,
of which they're made and techniques
of productions, artistry, and design.
They're closely associated with those engaged in their production
and promotion, be it internationally-known designers
or old world shoemakers and cobblers.
The latter occupying a significant place
in Jewish occupational history and folklore.
And here we have one image - propaganda for the modern cobbler -
you see the old one at the bottom.
This is a vocational organization in the 1920s that promotes, of course,
the modernization of Jewish crafts.
And what we have here is, of course, something pretty new,
one of many such -- a very typical statuette of Jewish craftsmen
that are produced mostly for people on heritage tours in Poland.
Today's CEOs and accountants and what have you are looking
for the roots of their ancestors and finding them
in various craftspeople of the old world.
Now, shoes therefore occupy a very special niche
in what I call the Jewish closet of memories.
They're invoked in tandem with experiences of exile and immigration
and with nostalgia for a lost world of craftsmen and artisans.
Above all, shoes have become a metonym
for the victims of the Holocaust.
Their footwear and other personal effects were collected
by the Nazi killing machine in a gruesome attempt to profit
Jewish law, which regulates the life of the individual,
including certain specifics of attire, played an important role
in the inclusion of shoes in the repertoire of Jewish culture,
as did some well-known shoe references in the Bible.
We may add a more poetic reason: since the day of Abraham,
the first of the patriarchs, Jewish history has been punctuated
by voluntary and imposed migrations.
There is hardly a better metaphor for wandering than the shoe -
the most basic external facilitator of human locomotion.
It is indeed in this capacity that shoes appear early on in the saga
of the ancient Israelites when on the eve of the mythic journey
out of Egypt, they're instructed to be prepared, and I quote,
"with your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand."
The existential link between shoes and locomotion was synopsized
by Primo Levi, author and Auschwitz survivor who wrote, I quote again,
"When war is raging, one has to think
of two things before all others: in the first place of one's shoes,
in the second place of food to eat, and not vice versa
as the common herd believes, because he who has shoes can search
for food, but the inverse is not true."
End of quote.
Though shoes appear some 20 times in the Hebrew Bible,
we have no surviving artifacts or descriptions
that offer specific information about their design or materiality.
The Bible uses repeatedly the Hebrew word "naal" for all footgear
and there's no way to distinguish different types of shoes
from such generalized terminology.
The dearth of concrete information proves problematic not only
for scholars but also for costume designers
such as Salvatore Ferragamo, who in 1923 was commissioned
by Cecil B. DeMille to provide 12,000 pairs of sandals
for the first film rendition of The Ten Commandments.
Ferragamo ended up using some Victorian illustrations
and his own imagination.
His Hollywood work inspired him to create high-heeled sandals
that quickly proved popular evening gear in California
and of course are with us to this day.
It is noteworthy that while Hebrew employs naal as a general term,
in Arabic naal usually indicates the sole of the shoe.
This meaning emphasizes footwear's primary function
of assisting mobility by shielding
and separating the foot from the ground.
This detachment from direct tactile contact with the earth has led
to a whole range of metaphors from our dominion of the natural world
to our estrangement from nature to the promotion
of bare-footedness as morally uplifting.
The primordial connection of the naked or semi-naked foot
to the land was an important element
in Israel's Zionist pioneer culture, as you can see here.
It looks a little Soviet, but it's a very famous statue
and you can see the feet.
The Talmud exhorts Jews to wear shoes so much so that it proclaims
that one should even sell the roof beams of his house in order
to avoid bare-footedness.
Judaism even offers a special blessing for putting on shoes
that it is part of what is called the shachar -- the dawn blessings --
a series of blessings now incorporated
into synagogue morning service in which a person,
upon waking in the morning, thanks God for his physical body
and various routine elements of daily life,
such as walking, dressing, and studying.
The blessings were originally meant to be recited
when one actually performed the activity
for the first time that day.
"Blessed be he who has supplied all my needs."
was recited as a person was putting on and tying his shoes.
Jewish law even prescribes the order in which one ought to do this:
first you put on your right shoe, then the left; you tie the left shoe
and only then the right, with the order reversed when taking them off.
Symbolic meaning has been attached to this prescribed procedure
with one explanation making the case that the priests of the temple
in Jerusalem performed the sacrificial service
with their right hand and thus even the most mundane activities should
follow this sacred paradigm.
Others equated the two sides of the body with the two aspects
of the soul, commenting that because tying represents binding
and restraint, and as the right side stands for mercy and kindness,
it is the one in particular need of strength and protection
It is impossible to discuss in the limited time
that we have all the various biblical stories
where shoes have left their mark, but I will mention just a few.
One is the well-known story of the marriage of Ruth, a widowed Moabite,
to Boaz, a wealthy Israelite farmer, which involves the use of a shoe
as a formal, legal instrument in the acquisition of rights and property.
Chapter 4:7 describes it in detail.
It reads as follows, "Now this was the custom in former time
in Israel concerning redeeming
and concerning exchanging to confirm all things.
A man drew off his shoe and gave it to his neighbor
and this was the attestation in Israel."
And then it goes into the whole process of Boaz: takes off his shoe,
gives it to a kinsman and so on and so forth.
So, the ceremonial nature of this transaction makes it very clear
that the shoe was used in a legal, symbolic capacity.
Now in an effort to contextualize the woman-ownership-shoe nexus,
Jacob Naft, writing in 1915, cites a shoe ceremony practiced among some
of the Jews then living in Palestine, where it was customary
for the bridegroom to send a shoemaker to the bride's house
to prepare shoes for the bride and female family members,
this indicating that a date for the wedding has been set.
Naft emphasizes the symbolic nature of this tradition by explaining
that little importance was attached to the actual fitting.
In an attempt to offer western equivalency to the association
of shoes with material acquisition and in marriage,
he cites a decidedly non-Jewish custom practiced well
into the 19th century of throwing good luck shoes behind the
bridal pair.
The shoe representing a wish for material good fortune,
a custom later modified to the use of rice,
which we see, of course, to this day.
However, regardless of all such wedding customs, there is no need
to explain to you that hurling footwear at other persons
or their representatives is commonly regarded as an insult.
Hitting someone with a shoe is considered one
of the most demeaning acts in Arab culture to this day
and this image shows it very clearly.
When I first saw it in "The New York Times" it just looked
as if they're attacking the flag and congregating around it.
Look again to see what they're doing.
Shoes as commodity are conjured by the prophet Amos who railed
against social transgressors who, and I quote, "sold the righteous
for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes."
Bible scholar Robert Gordis dubbed the traditional explication
of the verse as the callous willingness of the rich
to trade human lives for worthless artifacts as substantially difficult
and textually dubious, noting that the idea
that the rich would sell the poor for a pair of shoes is excessive
and that silver and shoes are not even remotely parallel.
He suggests instead that the verse alludes to the role played
by the biblical shoe as either object or instrument
in economic transactions, citing the halitza ceremony
that I mentioned earlier.
And yet, the image, the idea of a shoe in exchange
of human life was too good to pass up, and so we find rabbinic tales
that link the verse of Amos with the story of the sale
of Joseph by his brothers.
They tie the brothers' treason to the mythologized death
of the ten martyrs murdered by the Roman rulers of Palestine.
It's a fantastic tale that involves a Torah-reading Roman emperor,
who after acquainting himself
with the Joseph brother-for-shoe transaction, plasters his walls
with shoes and then in line with the biblical command that calls
for the execution of anyone who sells another human being,
executes the ten sages as surrogates for Joseph's brothers,
The most famous mention of footwear in the Bible occurs during the scene
of the burning bush, when Moses is commanded to "draw not nigh hither;
put off thy shoe off thy feet,
for the place whereupon thou standeth is holy ground."
This comes from an early 18th century Haggadah.
The association of sacred space with bare-footedness was also reflected
in the ministry of the temple priests.
The absence of shoes from the detailed list
of priestly vestments leads many scholars to assume
that the priests administered with their feet bare,
a practice deemed imperative after the destruction of the temple,
when the rabbis pronounced a dictum: wherever the Shekhinah -
that's divine presence - appears, one must not go about with shoes on.
Indeed there's a strong indication that Jews worshipped with bare feet
in the early Palestinian synagogues of late antiquity.
In fact, shoelessness during worship has been, until recently,
the practice of several eastern Jewish communities.
A contemporary description is offered by Saul Bellow
in his 1976 book, To Jerusalem and Back, in which he tells
of a Friday visit to a Yemenite synagogue in Jerusalem
and he writes, "The early arrivals have left their shoes
at the door, Arab-style.
Bearded, dark-faced, they sit along the wall.
You see their stocking feet on the foot rest of their lecterns."
Bellow associates the custom with Muslim culture, however,
some scholars make the case that it was in fact Muslims
who adopted the custom of shoelessness
in devotional spaces from Jews.
There are references according to which Muhammad allowed his followers
to have their feet covered during worship saying, "Act the reverse
of Jews in your prayer for they do not pray in boots or shoes."
Muhammad would change the custom regarding shoes as impure,
which in turn led most Jews to give up bare-footedness in prayer.
It is possible that later on, under the influence of Islam,
Jews in certain Muslim and eastern territories adopted the custom,
as well as that of removing footwear upon entering the home.
As you can see, this Indian Jewish family all very formally attired
for the big photo and all are without shoes.
Although footwear figured prominently in the Muslim division
between consecrated and defiled spaces, the actual switch
between wearing shoes and bare-footedness was swift.
Dictated by the custom of shedding shoes before entering a house
or a mosque, and facilitated
by a relatively conducive climate in many Muslim lands.
This resulted in the common practice of wearing shoes pressed
down at the heel, which was common to all classes.
The baboush slipper worn by Muslims and Jews serves
as an excellent example for this liminality.
Look at this: some are with shoes, some are without shoes,
some are with one shoe on, one shoe off.
The removal of shoes has also been associated since biblical times
with bereavement and mourning.
Jews are buried barefoot, covered by a simple, white shroud.
Yet, the Jews of Tripoli in the 19th century were the exception
to this rule, burying their dead with all the shoes they possessed.
This may be regarded as a remnant of an ancient custom exemplified
in the Talmudic story about the prophet Jeremiah who was said
to have left instructions that he be buried in his clothes,
with his shoes on, and his staff in his hands
so he would be completely ready for the day of resurrection.
This desire to be ready for redemption is also demonstrated
by the thousands of shoe-shaped tombstones found in the Ukraine,
a unique phenomenon that has been under the radar until recently.
These are old Jewish tombstones and the sole, of course,
is where you get the information about the deceased.
Bare-footedness typified not only personal, but also communal mourning
over the destruction of Zion, notably Tisha B'Av.
That is the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av which occurs usually
in July or August, a fast day that commemorates the destruction
of both the first and second temple.   In the 4th and 5th centuries,
Jerusalem Jews would pay an excessively heavy fee
for the annual pleasure, if you will, Tisha B'Av privilege
of walking barefoot in the temple mound dressed in mourner's garment
and rolling themselves in the dust.
To this day, it is customary in some synagogues for worshipers
to remove their shoes on Tisha B'Av and to sit
on low benches while the Book of Lamentations is read.
It seems the Jews originally went barefoot or semi-barefoot
on Yom Kippur, the solemnest day of the year.
Some rabbis explain this custom
by comparing the intensely spiritual Jews on Yom Kippur to angels
who have no need for shoes.   Following Kabbalistic strands,
some equated the shoe with the human body.
Just as the shoe protects the body, the body protects the soul.
Hence, on a day of all-consuming spirituality, there's no need
for the materiality of shoes.
Others explain bare-footedness as disassociation
from Joseph's brothers' criminal shoe transaction
and the havoc it caused.
However, normative custom shied away from bare-footedness,
settling on the avoidance of leather shoes in favor of canvas footwear,
symbolizing the removal of the animalistic from people,
of intentionally creating vulnerability and discomfort
on a day that is full of denial of the physical self.
Let's go now to women.
Female footwear has long been associated with sexual allure.
William Rossi in the strange book titled "The Sex Life of Foot
and Shoe" rhapsodizes over the erotic magic of high heels.
He explains, Human gait is much more than locomotion.
Since perhaps the earliest days of mankind, women have used it
as an erotic instrument with great success, in the same way
as some forms of dancing have always been used
to arouse male sexual response.
The eroticism of the gait is most influenced by the way
that the feet are used often with the aid
of a certain kind of footwear.
The foot and the shoe, those are the real roots of erotic gait.
Long before Rossi, centuries before him, the ancients were fully aware
of the titillating effect of a well-placed shoe.
While the bride in the Song of Songs is met with the exclamation,
"How beautiful are thy steps in shoes, O Princess Daughter!
The roundings of thy thighs are like the links of a chain,
the work of the hands of a skilled workman,"
moralists took a dimmer view of this metonym of female sexuality.
Look at what Isaiah has to say -- just the beginning --
anyone want to read this and give me a break for a minute?
No? Why don't you?
Yeah.   Male Speaker: [inaudible]
Edna Nahshon: And then it goes on and on and on
Male Speaker: [inaudible]
Edna Nahshon: Now, it is true that shoes are not mentioned specifically
in this text, but the rabbis who espoused
on this text conjured even more damning details than this original.
Tinkling with their feet, one rabbi explained, meant that a woman used
to have a picture of a serpent on her shoe.
At that time, the depiction of serpents was associated
in rabbinic culture with idol worship and Jews were commanded
to destroy vessels bearing this shape by either grinding them
to dust or throwing them into the Dead Sea.
Out-fantasizing him, his colleague suggests steamier details --
here's an idea for a shoe designer -- she took a hen's gullet,
filled it with balsam and placed it between her heel and her shoe,
and when she saw a band of young men, she pressed upon it
so that the perfume went through them like the poison of a snake.
While the rabbis regard the female as aggressive seducer,
author Susan Brownmiller applied the feminist gaze
to the sexually-charged high-heeled shoe.
To her, and I quote, "the overall hobbling effect
with its sadomasochistic tinge suggests the restraining leg irons
and ankle chains endured by captive animals, prisoners,
and slaves who were also festooned
with decorative symbols of their bondage."
Freudians who analyze shoes as sexual fetish note the combination
of fragility and strength of the high-heeled female shoe,
which they claim suggests sexual ambivalence.
According to this approach, the prevalence of the high-heeled shoe
in pornography derives from the combination of the masculine heel
within a feminine frame of reference.
One scholar emphasizes that this, what he calls "ambisexuality,"
is particularly conspicuous in women's high-heeled sandals,
whose design mixes the hardness of the leather and heel,
the shaky footing resulting from the high heel,
and the lack of support offered by the straps of leather that extend
over the instep with the toe protruding phallically
from the front.
These qualities, as well as the fetishized aspect of a single shoe,
need to be kept in mind when approaching Nechama Golan's,
"Provocative Sandal," which tackles issues of religion,
male authority, and feminism.
Golan's journey from secular Israeli to orthodox feminist Jew
and cutting-edge artist is fascinating, and her work,
grounded in her religious commitment,
while challenging rabbinic tenets,
especially as they relate to women, is unsettling.
Her sandal made of paper, ink, and glue uses for its insole
and heel a well-known, sacred, rabbinic text now often criticized
as sexist and emblematic of religious male authority.
It begins with the statement, "A woman is acquired in three ways
and she acquires herself in two ways.
She is acquired through money, document, or sexual intercourse."
"The voice of woman," explains the artist,
"is silenced between the male rabbinic authority represented
by the text and the sandal designed by a secular,
male-oriented commercial industry whose aim is to endow woman
with the seductive appearance of the sexual object."
The will of woman be she religious or secular is absent here.
"The construction of the sandal from the perspective of the male concept
of woman," says Golan, "makes it a critical work
that questions the position of women."
In the original work, the sandal is
of the same size as the artist's foot.
Golan notes that by basing her works on the actual dimensions
of her own body, she makes it a point of departure for her artistic
and critical statement as her unseen foot imprints itself
on the shoe's insole while metaphorically erasing the
rabbinic text.
At the same time, Golan stamped the provocative image
with the designation, ganesa [spelled phonetically] --
it's the mark in purple -- "storage" referring to the prohibition
against discarding documents that include the name
of God in Hebrew letters.
Golan says this is the price she's willing to pay for using holy texts.
With this, she confirms her respect for and acceptance
of the religious world view she has adopted.
Shoes, as shown by many folk-sayings,
function as metonyms for personhood.
This is a very famous image and it pretty much speaks for itself.
Shoes are of course the only article of clothing that retain their shape
and position even when not worn.
They are never truly empty, always in waiting for the actual
or imagined owner, serving
as biographical documents of their wearer.
In light of the near symbiotic relation between shoe, foot,
and the physical and spiritual totality of one's being,
it is not surprising that people are greatly disturbed by the idea
of wearing the shoes of the dead,
more so than any other external garment.
This is reflected in the custom still in practice
in some religious circles of destroying the shoes of the deceased
to ensure that no other person would wear them.
The shoes are either thrown into separate cans of garbage,
cut up into pieces, or even set on fire.
Jews generally wore the same style of shoes
as the general population albeit with some minor modifications
such as the avoidance of shoes with laces on the Sabbath so as not
to be involved in knotting or preferences
for black laces as a sign of mourning.
In Muslim lands, footwear and bare-footedness were
at times imposed on Jews as part of a dress code system intended
to mark the differentiation and humiliation of the Dimi --
these are non-Muslims, prot g es, mostly Jews
and Christians, of the domain of Islam.
Some decrees required the use of visibly coarse
and unpleasant materials.
Others specified colors; and the most outlandish one, enacted in 1121
by the Seljuk Sultan of Baghdad, required women
to wear mismatched colored shoes, one red and the other black --
and a small brass bell on either neck or shoes.
Some of the clothing restrictions were either short-lived
or not enforced, fluctuating according
to regional policies and individual rulers.
Yet this was not quite the case in North Africa,
especially in Morocco's imperial cities: Fez,
Marrakech, and later Meknes.
In 1820 the "Boston Recorder" in an account
of the discriminatory treatment of Jews in Tangier, explained,
and I quote, "In some towns they must walk barefoot
and everywhere they take off their shoes when passing before a mosque
or the house of any Muslim man of distinction.
When they meet a Moor of high rank, they must hastily turn away
to a certain distance on the left of the road, leave their sandals
on the ground several paces off, bend the body forward and in
that humiliating posture, remain until he passes forward."
While most of the vestimentary discriminatory practices were
terminated by the early 20th century due to pressure exerted by the West,
bare-footedness did not cease in most parts of Yemen.
Images of Yemenite Jews walking barefoot towards the Holy Land
became staples of modern Zionism visual canon.
Yemenite bare-footedness was seen through the double
and ambivalent lens of Zionist romanticism and European elitism.
On the one hand, Yemenites were recognized as descendants
of the oldest Jewish Diaspora.
Indeed, dressed in their long tunics and wearing long, curly side-locks,
they looked like embodiments of biblical characters,
picturesque figures who provided geographic
and historical authenticity to the Zionist enterprise.
On the other, these exotic Jews were dark-skinned and not versed
in culture and thus regarded as "primitive"
by the secular, mostly European Yishuv.
At the same time, pioneering Dionism with its rejection
of bourgeois European values, its yearning for biblical roots,
dreams of pre-exilic sovereignty, and mythical devotion
to the reclamation of the land through intense
and painful physical labor, was not inimical to bare-footedness.
For instance, British writer Anita Engle,
in an enthusiastic essay titled "Haluziut" ("Pioneering"),
written in the 1940s, recalled she was told, "Take off your shoes.
One should walk barefoot on the land."
It is perhaps that in its quest to interface with the physical land,
while still protecting the foot, that the sandal, a quasi-shoe,
became the definitive footwear
of the first native-born generation of young Israeli Jews.
The rich metaphoricity of shoes attracted the imagination
of artists and storytellers.
Yosl Bergner, born in 1920, one of Israel's most celebrated artists,
recently produced a series of 18 paintings titled "A Lost Shoe."
Bergner, the son of noted Yiddish poet, Melech Ravitch,
settled in Israel in 1950 and features significantly
in the mainstream of Israeli artistic discourse.
Yet he has retained his identity as a non-native,
a Diaspora Jew grounded
in the vanished Yiddish world of Eastern Europe.
His shoe series was inspired by a lonely black shoe he found
on a Tel Aviv street, which in his drawings became saturated
with the images that constitute what he calls in Yiddish,
"my medine" -- my country.
Grey walls, mysterious windows, a crucifixion pole,
It is impossible to conclude a talk on Jews and shoes
without referring to the Holocaust.
Heaps of empty shoes have become its visual icon, an assemblage of death
that represents lives barbarously brought to their final destination;
each shoe, a story into itself.
The recently created memorial to the Jews of Budapest who were killed
by the Hungarian fascists highlights the iconicity
Why shoes?
Randolph L. Braham in his magisterial recording
of the Holocaust in Hungary records the minutest details of the events
that took place near the end of the war
when most Hungarian Jews had already been deported to death camps
and the Russians were practically at the city gates.
He explains that in the last few weeks before the liberation,
the Arrow Cross gangs invaded a large number
of Jewish inhabited buildings, those that were left.
He writes: Usually the Jews were first robbed
of their last remaining valuables, many were shot on the spot,
others were taken to the banks of the Danube and shot into the river.
The method of execution was to tie three people together,
place them at the edge of the Danube and shoot the middle one in the back
of his head at close range, so that the weight
of his body would pull the other living victims into the river.
Artists Gyula Pauer and Can Togay explained that the impetus
for their Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial was the public debate
generated by the inauguration of the House of Terror in 2002,
a museum that contains exhibits related to the fascist
and communist regimes of 20th century Hungary.
Some critics argued the museum was politically slanted
in its over-emphasis on Hungary's victimhood and minimization
of the role played by Hungarians.
When Can Togay, film director, actor and poet, was asked for his opinion,
he responded: "First this should be a statue depicting the shoes
on the Danube bank, and then everything would fall automatically
into its right place."
This visual image was inspired by the 1955 film "Springtime
in Budapest" which tells the story of the last two months of the war
in the city through the love affair between a Jewish girl
and a runaway soldier, and it includes a scene
that shows a long line of abandoned shoes that the Jews had been forced
to remove before being shot and dumped into the river.
Togay approached the conceptual artist
and set designer, Gyula Pauer.
They decided on the use of iron, its material simplicity
and roughness deemed most appropriate
to portray this historical event,
and chose a site near the river not far from the Hungarian parliament,
a location that highlights the importance of the monument.
The aim of the artists in their own words was, "to create an object
that would raise questions in and present questions to the observer,
be that a native or tourist who strolls
During the planning stage, the artists foresaw the possibility
of politically motivated vandalism.
Thinking of graffiti or paint spray, they were not quite prepared
for the physical extraction of four of the shoes,
probably requiring a metal chain tied to a motorized vehicle,
that occurred shortly after the memorial's inauguration on April 16,
2005 as part of the official commemoration
of the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust.
The shoes were later found in the river.
[ Applause ]
Female Speaker: Thank you very much, Professor Nahshon.
And if you have any questions I'm sure she'll be happy
Speaker: [inaudible]
Edna Nahshon: Well, of course, the more shoes you had,
the wealthier you were and if you had no shoes --
if you were barefoot, that meant that you were a very,
very poor person and the lowest standard of shoes were wooden clogs
which were worn by many peasants in Eastern Europe.
To give you an overall generalized view of shoes is very difficult
because each culture treats them differently
and sometimes things are the same and yet they mean different things.
When my son's Chinese friends came to visit,
they all automatically left their shoes before they entered the
apartment, and I said, "No, no, you can come in with your shoes!"
and they refused; that's the way they were taught.
I can more or less guess where it comes from,
but to give you really a detailed explanation
of this is truly impossible.
Of course in Chinese culture, you have a whole different issue
with shoes: with bound feet and so forth,
that it is very much a story unto itself,
and then the endless analysis of the Cinderella story
and what does it really mean to have such a small,
tight shoe, et cetera, et cetera.
But, clearly shoes always indicate some measure of affluence
because if you were dirt poor, you had no shoes.
Certainly, in centuries past, with the exception of the very,
very important and very rich and royalty, et cetera,
there were no precedents to Imelda Marcos, but that's part
of our modern culture and the affluence that we have.
We also don't feel the same kind of attachment to a pair of shoes
that is no longer biographical as they were at a time
where you had one or two pairs.
And I have to tell you, some 15 years ago when I was in Moscow --
I spent half a year in Russia --
buying a pair of boots was a big thing.
It consumed at least a month's salary.
It was an investment and you cared for them and they mattered
and they stood for something, unlike of course our culture nowadays.
Speaker: [inaudible]
Edna Nahshon: Well, it was almost a fluke.
Five years ago I was in Toronto for a conference
that had absolutely nothing to do with shoes.
The university placed us in a hotel that was literally across the street
from the Bata Shoe Museum, if you've heard of it.
It's a very large museum.
Bata was a major, major -- at this point, a distributor, I think --
but a manufacturer of shoes and it's quite a nice museum.
I had 45 minutes to kill; I was dead tired; I didn't want to read;
I was afraid that if I went back to my room, I'd fall asleep
and not be up for the next session.
So, I went into the museum, said, "I'll give it a chance;
I'll see what they have."
And as soon as I went in, I have to tell you, there are only
so many shoes you can look at; you tire of it, but, the two things
that came to my mind were first of all, the Holocaust shoe.
I think that had it not been for the Holocaust shoes,
this book would not have been written.
Secondly, I remembered the halitza shoe because as quaint
as it may sound to you, the ceremony's still practiced.
My own brother-in-law, who is not religious at all,
lost his younger brother at the Yom Kippur war
and the brother had been married for ten days,
and so the other brother had
to release the widow and went through it.
He never spoke about it; it took me 20 years to realize that he went
through it and never thought of it, but that went through my mind.
And then all kinds of personal memories that I will not get into,
but what cemented it also was my experience at the airport.
When you have to take off your shoes, you feel --
I think everyone feels - - very vulnerable, and especially
when it's winter and you have a coat on and the question then is why?
Why are we so uncomfortable?
We're not uncomfortable when we have our shoes off at home.
I mean the first thing I do when I come home is take off my shoes.
That got me thinking, what does it mean?
Does it imply that I'm no longer mobile,
that I'm sort of in a liminal state where yes,
I'm free, but I'm not really free.
That also made me think of this custom of removing your shoes
when you're sitting shiva.
Whatever the formal explanation may be,
but it means that you lose your mobility when you sit there at home
and so, once you begin to think of it, there were so many examples;
there were so many instances; that it came into being.
But it was not a planned, a priori, sort of thing.
It just ignited the imagination and that was it.
Edna Nahshon: Oh, wait a second -- are we talking about women
or shoe fetishes to a male?   Female Speaker: Women and men.
Edna Nahshon: No, there's a big difference.
There's a very, very big difference.
With women, I think since I'm one whose weight keeps changing,
I think that with us, shoes are an easy buy because you buy a dress
and it fits and then it doesn't fit.
It's too tight, it's too this, but shoes, unless you gain,
I don't know, 100 pounds, fit.   So there is a weakness for that.
I think women also realize consciously or not
so consciously the beauty, the sexual allure, and so on
and so forth that I discussed.
With men, it's a whole different story.
There we're getting into pornography and the like.
A good friend of mine, as I was working on the book,
told me that when she moved from one city to another,
she wanted to get rid of a lot of her things.
To make a long story short, she put an ad on the net
that she was selling an X number of shoes, and a guy got in touch
with her and asked her if they were high-heeled shoes,
so the purpose was very, very clear.
But, yes, it's there and it's very interesting
that the shoe always features in pornographic images and literature.
Edna Nahshon: Well, Jessica Parker I can understand.
I mean that was written into the characters, true,
but I'm sure you can find examples of all kinds of other ethnicities.
Imelda Marcos, when I last checked, was not Jewish
and there are many others.
So, I wouldn't read too much into it.
Jessica Parker is extremely short, don't forget, and she's very short.
She's a very small woman.
She's very thin and short, and so, there always these high heels
that give her presence, and if you saw that horrible picture
of the opening of "Sex and the City" in London, she was wearing
that awful hat which also gave her more height.
It was something with a feather sticking
out of her head; it was quite ugly.
But, in any event, I think there's a play for height there as well.
I would not base myself on two television shows
to make a generalized -- no, let's not go this way.
I'm sure you can find Catholics and shoes and Buddhists
and shoes, and so on and so forth.
So, I honestly don't think there's something intrinsic there.
I declare that Jews are not,
by virtue of their Jewishness, shoe fetishists.
If they are, they happen to be Jewish, but not vice versa.
Yeah?   Speaker: [inaudible]
Edna Nahshon: Yeah, but think of all culture --
who could exist without shoes?
Even when the weather is wonderful, regardless of rain, snow, et cetera,
with progress came a price and yes,
in the ancient world, many were shoeless.
But, even then, the moment they started walking,
the idea of distances, the idea of shoes somehow begins to enter,
even if it's just a sole to protect the foot.
All right, any other questions about shoes?
Female Speaker: Thank you so much.   Delight to have you here today.
[applause]
Female Speaker: This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.   [end of transcript]