Mysteries Of Good And Evil

We have to conclude that context is everything.

I am reading a book about Jews in the city of Old Odessa*. We have a traditional image of Jews in Europe wrapped up in their communities, tightly regulated by a religion that dictated rules about everything important in their lives. The environment around them was also designed to isolate them. We have the horrible image of passive Jews who were herded like cattle to their deaths during the Holocaust.

Then we have the stories about the Jews of Old Odessa. A sea-port town on the Black Sea, it was reported, like many other seaport towns, to be a den of iniquity. Commercially active in trade in the nineteenth century, and later, and growing, goods flowing in and out, far from the central government, open to the Mediterranean, it attracted many seeking to make their fortunes, legally or otherwise.

It was also reported to have attracted a numerically important number of Jews active in the many kinds of criminal activity, from prostitution and gambling to robbery and murder, so the story went. There were sure to be many Jewish swindlers to separate you from any money you might have.

The story goes that when the Bolshevik revolution occurred, many of these practitioners moved their activities to Moscow and other major Russian cities. It seemed the new regime offered many more opportunities for the practitioners of the arts learned in Odessa. And many of them moved to America and Israel when the opportunities presented themselves. Some of those who went to Israel, Jabotinski among them, helped found the Kibbutz movement.