PROBLEMS IN STUDYING HIDDEN PEOPLE

Anthropological Aspects

by Seth D. Kunin, University of Durham

From HaLapid, Summer 2007

Alongside historical and literary methodologies, anthropological or more specifically ethnographic methods are particularly useful in coming to understand the nature of the way people interact and come to understand the world and make meaningful lives.  Ethnology includes a range of different practices, for example, participant observation, interviews both structured and unstructured and the examination of material culture, each of which has the potential to provide a qualitative picture of the culture being studied.  In this paper we will touch upon these practices and provide examples from the ethnographic study of crypto Judaism.  It is important to note, however, that each of these practices presents different problems for analysis, and those utilizing them must be aware of these to avoid a false picture of the community being studied.

      A fundamental aspect of anthropological and indeed all research is the need for objectivity.  In studying any subject it is important not to go into the field with preconceived ideas.  Although it is clearly impossible to do any research without a basis in theory, it is important not to have predetermined conclusions – the conclusions should be based on the research.  One also must be clear about the nature of ones research, that is, are you trying to understand the society in its own terms, that is, in relation to its own self understanding; or are you trying to evaluate its authenticity on the basis of an externally imposed model of authenticity.  By and large, anthropological research relates to the first approach – but this has limitations as it can not directly address issues of external authenticity.  The second approach is often taken by disciplines like folklore that are interested in demonstrating the origins of folkloric practices.  In either case it is essential to let the set of data speak for itself and to objectively address a sufficient body of data to have a compelling argument.

We must also be aware that the very practices relating to studying communities always involve social interaction, which by its nature must in some sense both shape the nature of what is studied and indeed the nature of the community being studied – this is perhaps best illustrated by a metaphor from physics.  In the study of elementary particles there are two main elements being analysed, the speed of a particle and its mass.  The problem is that one can only study one of these, and by doing so we change the other, i.e., to study the mass, we change the speed and visa versa.  In some senses, ethnographic study is similar; any form of observation or interview, no matter how well formed (and indeed even the process of asking questions itself), changes the context and asks the person being interviewed to be reflexive in a way different from their normal mode of being.  It is not unlikely that such a process can perhaps lead to individuals having a slightly different consciousness of their culture and thus a changed perception of their being.  This changed consciousness can have an effect on how people interpret their cultural practices and in some case lead them to change their practices in line with their new self understanding.

The primary method used by anthropologist is commonly called participant observation.  As suggested by the name this practice has two main elements, participation in cultural activities and close observation of the nature of those activities.  Due to the complexity of cultural activities participant observation is typically done over a long period of time.  It is closely associated with other ethnographic practices, particularly different forms of interviews and is intended to provide a detailed picture of both what people are actually doing and how they perceive and understand what they are doing.  One of the important aspects of participant observation is that it allows the anthropologist to map the nature of how people act, the variations within that activity and the relations of those activities to what people say about them and how they interpret them.

Participant observation has been an important tool in my research of Crypto Judaism.  My research strategy was longitudinal, looking at the same group of people over a number of different years.  In one instance, I initially spent time with one individual, interviewing her, participating in some ritual activities and seeing how her understanding changed over time.  This was important as it illustrated how Crypto Jews, like other modern individuals, utilize a wide range of resources, for example, books and the internet, to gain an understanding of whom and what they are.  Through this long term interaction, I also was linked into her circle of family and friends and was able to observe how they worked together to share information and to interpret and find meaning in their understanding of their Crypto Jewish heritage.

In looking at this period of research I am aware of some of the potential pitfalls in the nature of this kind of interaction.  The key element in observation of or participation in any form of activity or discussion is human interaction, which is expected from both the participants and from the anthropologist.  Thus, there is always the potential that this interaction will lead to interpretations of activities that do not arise from the individuals from the community, but from the interaction with the anthropologist.  In part this is unavoidable – in most cases, particularly in relation to Crypto Judaism individuals know why the anthropologist is there and thus will be unconsciously biased to interpret their activities in that light.  While such unconscious interpretation is unavoidable, conscious imposition of interpretation by the anthropologist is avoidable, and it is essential that the anthropologist (or others engaging in this type of practice) be passive in this respect.

In the critical literature relating to Crypto Judaism the issue of interpretation is writ large.  Neulander (and Carroll) suggest that a wide range of activities have been falsely interpreted as Jewish based on similarity rather than identity.  They suggest further that these interpretations are usually imposed by over enthusiastic individuals who study Crypto Judaism and want to find evidence to support their study.  If Neulander and Carroll are correct, and in some cases this may be true, then this would indeed be poor ethnographic practice as the interpretation is imposed by the observer rather than offered by the individual from the community.  If, however, the connection and interpretation is offered from within the community then it must be taken seriously as part of the understanding of that community – but not necessarily as a definitive statement of historical fact.  Individuals within communities reinterpret their practices based on their understanding of self and thus they may interpret and give new meaning to an activity that originally was not of Jewish origin, but in the act of interpretation they make that activity or practice part of their Jewish or Crypto Jewish practice.  This issue has implications for both sides; on the one hand it emphasizes that we can not externally assume that a ritual practice is Jewish because it looks Jewish to us; on the other hand we should also not assume that it is definitively not Jewish because we can find a different explanation for its origins – the important point for both in relation to the observation of practices is to take seriously the interpretation of those practices given by those who are doing them.

Another pitfall that can arise both in participant observation or interviewing is a focus on a small group of public individuals who are highly conscious and reflexive of their identity and thus may not present an accurate picture of the wider community.  In my own research it was often necessary to begin with these individuals – because they were the people we knew about.  In order to minimize the effect of this, I utilized a strategy of network analysis.  This strategy mapped out the connections these individuals had with other, less public crypto Jews, both as a means of looking at the way the community was structured, but even more importantly as a way of meeting people who were less reflexively conscious of their identity and practices.  In mentioning this I am now minimizing the significance of the interpretations or practices of  more public individuals, as they provide a window into process of interpretation and reinterpretation that is part of all identity construction.  The non-public individuals are engaging in similar process, but are less consciously reflexive of such processes.

Different forms of interviews are also key parts of ethnographic research.  Interviews can broadly be divided into two categories, structured and unstructured.  Structured interviews will have a fixed set of questions, with perhaps a small amount of space for follow up.  Unstructured interviews will follow whatever direction the interviewee chooses to take.  Each of the forms has advantages and disadvantages.  Structured interviews provide data that is comparable between different interviews – as each person is asked exactly the same questions.  They do, however, tend to keep the focus on what is of interest to the interviewer and do not allow for unexpected areas to become prominent.  Unstructured interviews lack the element of simple comparison, and require greater analysis in this area.  They do, however, give prominence to the person being interviewed, allowing the interviewee to shape the direction and content of the interview, with some guidance by the interviewer.  In my own research I have tended to utilize unstructured interviews, allowing individuals to go in their own directions, and ask question primarily for clarification or further detail.

In her discussions of Crypto Jewish research Neulander has often highlighted poor interview techniques as a primary reason for the weakness in the data.  She describes an occasion when she sat in on an interview and thought that the interviewer was asking leading question – thus creating an expected response rather then allowing the interviewee to express what they really thought.  While her description of the interview is problematic, and highlights the need for careful consideration of the questions asked and their potential effect in shaping the data.  Her conclusions are not sustained by the context of the interview.  In fact, it was not a primary interview but rather the follow-up of an interview in which the interviewer was trying to elicit answers that had been given in an earlier interview.  Neither Neulander, nor indeed the interviewer, took into account that each interview is a contextualised event.  Particularly when dealing with issues of memory or the past, there is good reason to argue that in different contexts and moments in life even similar question may elicit very different memories.  Thus we can not treat an interview like a scientific experiment, in which, provided that the questions are the same, identical answers would be given.  The main flaw in the follow-up interview was the attempt to recover the same information (which arose due to the wish of the interviewer to present primary data to Neulander) as the content of the original interview.  The process described also raises other issues, particularly that of trust.  Very often people, particularly with an identity that includes secrecy, will only give frank answers to individuals they come to trust, a follow-up interview with additional people unknown to the interviewee may lead to either a conscious or unconscious unwillingness to reveal themselves in ways that they had done with people whom they knew and trusted. 

I certainly found this aspect to be significant; in some cases needed to build up trust over many years.  This is illustrated in one case in relation to the location of interviews and the change in place in relation to change in levels of trust.  I was given the name of someone who had strong Crypto Jewish identity – I was told that I needed to call their rabbi who would then either agree to the interview or not.  When he agreed, the interview was set up in the synagogue and for the remainder of that summer all the interviews were held there.  In was only in the second summer that I was invited to the person's house; only in the third that I was introduced to other Crypto Jews with whom the person interacted.  This is a good illustration of the process of building up trust, and one that I would not have expected to be present in the interview described by Neulander.

Many factors can have an influence of the interview process – clearly location, as seen above, is one.  If the interview is in a person's home it may lead to very different outcomes than if it is in a noisy café or indeed if it is in a synagogue.  The cloths one chooses to wear can even have an effect.  Last year in Puerto Rico Stan and I were interviewing a Crypto Jew from Cuba, inadvertently I wore a shirt on which there was a picture of Ché.  Although we did not know in advance, the interviewee had been in the Bay of Pigs and the picture of Ché was not the best choice.  It clearly had an effect, though perhaps in the end, because the interviewee had a sense of humour it broke the ice.  This is a serious issue, and it is important to understand the person being interviewed and the context in making choices of clothing and tone.

Material culture is an important part of most ethnographic studies.  This includes ritual items that individuals use and art objects that they create for aesthetic or other purposes.  Within Crypto Jewish studies material culture takes the form of jewellery (often using symbols associated with Judaism, for example, the six pointed star), carvings on grave stones (again often using symbols interpreted as being Jewish), and various carvings (often of Moses).  All three of these examples are complex and require careful interpretation and analysis when using them within an ethnographic context.

The first two examples revolve around the interpretation of symbols.  Very often in discussions of these objects there is an assumption that symbols have a single and intrinsic meaning, which in some sense does not depend on the individual using it.  This kind of interpretation is very common in those discussions that are trying to demonstrate Crypto Jewish presence (or indeed the Jewish origin of other similar groups) and which use uncontextualised symbols as evidence of that presence.  Thus, for example, the presence of a six pointed star either on jewellery or a stone is taken as evidence of Crypto Jewish presence.  Anthropological studies have convincingly demonstrated, however, that symbols do not have intrinsic meaning; symbols gain meaning by the way they are used or understood by people – this meaning will therefore change depending on the context and the communities in which they are found.

Thus, good ethnographic method depends on the proper contextualization of such material cultural objects.  A good example of this is found in an interview that was conducted many years ago in Albuquerque.  The interviewee has a picture in which his mother was wearing a six pointed star.  He was asked how he interpreted the star, and answered that he saw it as a Jewish symbol, when asked about how his mother viewed it, he answered that he did not know.  Thus we find two different contexts – in one, the horizon of the man, the star is a Jewish Star, tied into his own understanding of self and past.  While he did have some memories of his mother's own connections with crypto Judaism, given the lack of data we cannot assume that in her horizon she shared the same symbolic meaning.

This is equally true of the symbols cared on grave stones.  While the presence of symbols that are often associated with Judaism might be seen as suggestive, and worthy of further research, they cannot be taken, in and of themselves, as evidence.  In a well structured study of this type of material the most important stage is to find either the individuals who put up the stone, and find out how they interpret the symbols, or just as importantly to speak to other people who use the stone to create meaning and gain an understanding of how they interpret the symbols.  In this second sense we can place individuals studying crypto Judaism (particularly if they are crypto Jews themselves) through the searching out of grave stones within an interpretive framework of a search for identity and authenticity – but not one that gives intrinsic meaning or finds incontrovertible proof of past meaning or authenticity.

The issue of art objects, be they santos, retablos or other forms of art has an additional level of complexity.  One needs to look at the artist and the reasons they have chosen to make the object and the purchaser or user and the reasons they have for owning or using the object.  While in some cases the issues seem clear; the objects have been created by artists with crypto Jewish heritage and are bought by either crypto Jews as a means of expressing their identity or by outsiders, usually from the Jewish community, who buy the objects because of their Jewish connection.  Even in this case the issues are more complex.  On the one hand the artist may create the object as an expression of their identity and see it as coming from within their tradition; on the other hand, they may see a niche in the market and make ‘Jewish' objects because they know they will sell to Jewish tourists interested in crypto Judaism.  The range and reasons why people buy the objects are equally complex.  One can also not make any assumptions about the identity of the artist based on the objects they make – we have interviewed a very prominent artist, who is part of a second generation of artists making Moses santos, who states that his family has no Jewish tradition and that his father started making Moses santos due to a vision.  This is a very clear example of the complexity of material culture and the need for careful interviewing of the full range of individuals involved with the objects before determining whether they are indicative of crypto Jewish identity.  The point that must be emphasized is that there is no such thing as an intrinsically Jewish object – an object becomes Jewish or crypto Jewish through the ways that it is used or thought about. 

A key issue, specific to the ethnography of crypto Judaism and other similar forms of contested post-modern identities, is the importance of not externally imposing or assuming that particular activities or use of symbols is necessarily associated with a particular identity, either historically or in the ethnographic present.  As we have seen in the case of practice and symbols, there is no necessary association of these elements with crypto Jewish identity.  The fundamental element is that the individual or individuals concerned interpret the practices or symbols as part of a crypto Jewish heritage.  This process of interpretation is not fixed, it will change as the individual's self-understanding in relation to that heritage changes. 

This is equally true of genotype (and even more of phenotype).  Although it may be demonstrated through genetic or genealogical research that an individual is of Jewish descent, this only makes the individual a potential crypto Jew.  If they do not have either any tradition of this, or any aspect of self-identification then they cannot be considered at that point in time a crypto Jew (though due to the fluidity of identity, the fact that they have this origin may lead them to rethink their past and thus become crypto Jews).  Thus, when looking at figures from the past, the demonstration that they are of Jewish origin in no way is a demonstration that they are crypto Jews.  In the absence of any other compelling evidence of identity they can not and should not be assumed to carry this identity. 

The issue of phenotype, that is what a person looks like is largely a red herring that has been suggested in many discussion of crypto Judaism and similar identities in the past.  It assumes that there is a particular Jewish ‘look' that one can identify and therefore use as evidence of Jewish origin (and indeed of Crypto Jewish identity).  While anthropologists do not downplay the significance of genes, the assumption that there is a Jewish look, e.g., dark skin and large noses) is to a large extent the product of European anti-Semitism and its value is belied by the range or phenotypes both within the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.  Further, even if phenotype was in some sense indicative of Jewish origin, it cannot be seen as indicative of Jewish or crypto Jewish identity – identity is a cultural feature passed down through cultural means and is separate from genetic features purely passed down through the process of generation.