when they were Apollonians). The villains of Cossack mythology are mostly Tatars and Poles, with Jews featured episodically as Polish agents (which, in the economic sense, they were—especially as estate leaseholders and liquor-tax farmers). 4 Most Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants of the Pale of Settlement shared the same fundamental view of what separated them. Like all Mercurians and Apollonians, they tended to think of each other as universal and mutually complementary opposites: mind versus body, head versus heart, outsider versus insider, nomadic versus settled. In the words of Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog (whose account is based on interviews with former shtetl residents), A series of contrasts is set up in the mind of the shtetl child, who grows up to regard certain behavior as characteristic of Jews, and its opposite, as characteristic of Gentiles. Among Jews he expects to find emphasis on intellect, a sense of moderation, cherishing of spiritual values, cultivation of rational, goal-directed activities, a “beautiful” family life. Among gentiles he looks for the opposite of each item: emphasis on the body, excess, blind instinct, sexual license, and ruthless force. The first list is ticketed in his mind as Jewish, the second as goyish. 5 Seen from the other side, the lists looked essentially the same, with the values reversed. Intelligence, moderation, learning, rationalism, and family devotion (along with entrepreneurial success) could be represented as cunning, cowardice, casuistry, unmanliness, clannishness, and greed, whereas the apparent emphasis on the body, excess, instinct, license, and force might be interpreted as earthiness, spontaneity, soulfulness, generosity, and warrior strength (honor). These oppositions were informed by actual differences in economic roles and values; sanctified by communal traditions and prohibitions; reinforced by new quasi-secular mythologies (as Marxists and various nationalists employed them more or less creatively but without substantive revisions); and reenacted daily, ritually, and sometimes consciously in personal encounters as well as in prayers, jokes, and gestures. The non-Jewish words for “Jew” were all more or less pejorative, often diminutive, permanently associated with particular modifiers (“cunning,” “mangy”), and used productively to coin new forms (such as the Russian zhidit’sia , “to be greedy”). The Jews were equally disparaging but, like all Mercurians, more intensely concerned with pollution, linguistic as well as sexual and dietary. Not only were goy (“Gentile”), sheigets (“a Gentile young man”),