Abstinence (conscription) explained

Abstinence (he|הִסתַגְפוּת, Ashkenazi pronunciation: Histagfus) was a form of draft evasion and a form of hunger strike (or other forms of self-harm, such as sleep deprivation, tending to cause tachycardia, or self-inflicted wound) employed by young men in the Russian Empire's Jewish Pale of Settlement (and in the neighbouring Austrian Empire's Galicia) in order to be found unfit for military service by the Imperial authorities.

Russian Empire

The "Abstention" resistance by self-harm was most extreme in the Russian Empire under the Cantonist system implemented for Jews from 1827 to 1856,^[1] but self-harm actions continued afterward. A secret 1835 report by the chief of the Special Corps of Gendarmes in Vilnius expressed the government's difficulty in preventing self-mutilations.^[2]

The phenomenon was covered in the Russian Hebrew press, and Ha-Melitz warned against the practice as violating Jewish law as well as Russian law.^[3] The phenomenon of self-induced hernia received attention in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1891.^[4]

Just before World War I, the Jewish author and folklorist S. Ansky conducted an ethnographic survey of Russian Empire regions of Volhynia and Podolia and devoted a section of his large questionnaire to conscription-related cultural practices.^[5]

Austrian Empire

Concription among Jews in Galicia was introduced by Joseph II in 1788.

In some Galician communities like Tlumach,^[6] Liuboml,^[7] Kalush^[8]), deprivation efforts among young men became a rite of passage, and fasting during the day was followed by communal all-night sessions of excessive caffeine, excessive exercise, chain smoking and sometimes taking on a pranking Mischief Night character.

Further reading

Memoirs

• Book: Fass, Paula S.. Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second-Generation Memoir. 2008. Rutgers University Press.
• Book: Miller, Andrew. The Earl of Petticoat Lane. 2006. Random House. 49.
• Book: Elliott, Geoffrey. From Siberia with love: a story of exile, revolution and cigarettes. 2004. Methuen. 57.
• Book: Spiegelman, Art. Maus. 1980. Art Spiegelman. I.
• Book: Cohen, Joseph Jacob. The House Stood Forlorn: Legacy of Remembrance of a Boyhood in the Russia of the Late Nineteenth Century. 1954. Éditions polyglottes. 127.

Stories

• "Grandfather and Grandson" - Isaac Bashevis Singer
• "The Conscription of Troops" and "A Hunger Artist" (Jewish self-degradation themes) - Franz Kafka
• "Out of the Depths" - Yosef Haim Brenner
• "The Automatic Exemption" - Sholem Aleichem

History

• 1890s account - Book: Budnitskii, Oleg. Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. 2012. University of Pennsylvania Press. 129–130.

See also

• Segula

External links

• "The Conscript" - from the diary of Russo-Japanese War veteran Jacob Marateck

Notes and References

1. Book: Dubnow, Simon. Simon Dubnow. History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II. Chapter XVII. The Last Years of Nicholas I, 3. New Consciption Horrors. http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/pageview/920894.
2. Book: ChaeRan Y.. Freeze. Jay M.. Harris. Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia: Select Documents, 1772-1914. Self-Mutilation to Avoid Military Service. https://books.google.com/books?id=F3QiAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA520. 2013. Brandies University Press. 520–521. 9781611684551 .
3. Book: Penslar, Derek. Jews and the Military: A History. 2013. Princeton University Press. 31, 48–49.
4. Medical Items: Hernia Among Russian Army Recruits. Journal of the American Medical Association. 18 April 1891. 560. 10.1001/jama.1891.02410680018007. XVI.
5. Book: Deutsch, Nathaniel. Nathaniel Deutsch. The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement. O. Military Conscription. 2011. Harvard University Press. 191–194.
6. Book: Blond, Shelomoh. Tlumacz: sefer ʻedut ṿe-zikaron. 1976. Yotsʼe Ṭlumats be-Yiśraʼel. Tel Aviv. 67–68. he. The Abstinence (English translation). http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/tlumacz/tlue033.html#PageLI.
7. • Book: Kagan, Berl. Luboml: The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl. 1997. KTAV Publishing House. 55–56. Early Days: Mortifications of the Flesh and Fistfights. 2014-05-03. https://web.archive.org/web/20120229132337/http://legacy.www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/pdf/luboml_memorial_book.cv02.pdf. 2012-02-29. dead.
8. http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/kalusz/kal179.html Kalusz: Amusing Memories