A Guide to Yiddish Lawn Care, Part 2
Now featuring Psychic Courtyardism©
Jewish courtyards were particularly suited to sociability, maybe despite or because they were hard to define. Neither “in” nor “out,” neither public nor private.. These spaces created certain kind of relationships that adapted to this “weakness.” They created communities that were smaller than neighborhoods but larger than families. This small group is, in fact, another meaning of the word “court,” as in the “court” of King Arthur or the court of certain Rabbis.
The relationships created by these spaces is reflected further in the language. Being “courtly” or “courteous” is a code of customs, an extra-legal code of conduct that is expected in these spaces (compare with the legal “get off my lawn” type of relationships created by other spaces.)
The Ghetto
“America signified distance… America signified freedom.” - Joseph Roth
There is a dark side to the courtyard and enclosure. The ghetto is perhaps as old as the courtyard. Instead of being expelled from the gates in the Garden of Eden, the history of actual Jewish life features a lot more of being pushed inside gates. Courtyards are not ghettos, but they are never quite free of the association either. There are hints and traces. This is reflected in the presence of “Jewish Gardens” in European cities. Sounds great, but they existed because Jews were often not allowed in the other, better, park.
The ghetto, or the reservation, and the concentration camp are forever associated with the courtyard. In America, the courtyard is probably most popularly found in the prison “yard”.
This is the dark inverse of courteousness, places where dignity and self-worth are intentionally made nearly impossible. This represents a conflict that works itself over and over in culture. Is Yiddish culture a hortus conclusus of rich cultural treasures, or is it a tragic reminder of a history of enforced limits? Do we, as modern folks, remain within the walls of our ethnic communities (“bonds of social obligation”) or do we enjoy the distance and freedom Roth observed?
Why Did Courtyards Not Make it to US?
In the US, functioning courtyards are rare. Towns scramble to add parks and trails but never courtyards. It’s not clear we could even if we wanted to.
Courtyards are rarer in English speaking countries perhaps because the northern preference for a private block with a free standing house discouraged the more communal motif of the courtyard. - R. Nelson The Courtyard Inside & Out
This is, of course, obvious, and points to a fundamental flaw in our culture. Founded on democracy, but deeply suspicious of each other, we can only interact with each other in the space of the cash register or with the mediation of the police. This creates subjects that simply can’t reproduce democracy.
Mud
Romanticism for a pre-modern way of life is often seen as a “nostalgia pour la boue” (for the mud) but consider the courtyard as a strategy against literally, mud.
Green sentiment has urged all open spaces to be interpreted as landscaping rather than pavement, so that the social archetectonic space between facades is gardenized out of its former sociable traditions. Fortunately, there is more than enough in the record to salvage the motif from the lexical neglect of millenia and the aesthetic neglect of a century, because their virtues are enormous. R. Nelson, The Courtyard, Inside and Out.
In other words, as we concluded in the guitar thread, we crave the Social, but seem to have a blind spot when it comes to creating spaces and situations for it. Instead of landing on the social, we end up with an asocial but meaningless beauty that fails to satisfy something in us.
Postscript: Psychic Courtyardism©
If we can’t have actual courtyards, then we can invoke them in other ways. I suggest a science and art of Psychic Courtyardism©, whereby practical solutions can be proposed and evaluated based on their ability to duplicate the sociable and existential benefits of courtyards.
There is, of course, precedence for this in Jewish Life. The Sukkot sukkah, the wedding khupe the Eruv and the measured cemetery are all practical solutions to the psychic spatial needs of diasporics. There are certainly other traditions we can borrow, including this wonderful one which uses distance-overcoming technology against itself:
“On Nov. 11, Kafka recounted the following orthodox practice of the eruv. As a result of bribery, the telephone and telegraph wires around Warsaw were put up in a complete circle which in the sense of the Talmud makes the city a bounded area, a courtyard, as it were…” The Poetics of Eruv
Persian Rugs: Not all Persian rug designs are concerned with the Paradaida (the walled luxury garden), but it is a popular motif. In particular one often finds the central fountain and the four outflowing rivers. As opposed to other conjurations of the courtyard, the Persian Rug specifically makes the connection to paradise. We should be inspired by its portability and its ability to transform a raw space into a cooked one with a minimal of effort (except for the effort of weaving!).
Crepuscalar Acoustics: Psychic Courtyardism© need not be limited to the world of things. Busking, or playing music outdoors can also invoke the hoyf. In personal experience I’ve noticed that there is a musical golden hour during sundown. Combined with the light, such moments can turn areas designed simply to facilitate movement into areas of connection and even courtly romance. Birds are hip to this too- they often sing their territorial and mating songs in this dim light.
Yiddishland: Yiddishland is the name given to the imaginary space that is created whenever a handful of international dispersed musicians, scholars and enthusiasts are gathered. It pops up all over as a sort of Temporary Yiddish Zone. The term has always been a bit awkward because of its nationalistic pretensions. I feel it more like a Wandering Hoyf, which would honor the fact that we are delightfully trapped with each other in a confined space of our choosing and in a state of stateless decorum.
Dance
Books What I Read
Aden, Rob. The Enclosed Gardens
Nelson, Robert. The Courtyard Inside and Out
Reynolds, John. Courtyards Aesthetic Social and Thermal Delight
Petrovsky-Shtern, Yohann. The Golden Age of the Shtetl
Richardson, Tanya. The Place(s) of Moldovanka in the Making of Odessa.