neighbors tended to resort to physical aggression. Violence was an essential part of the relationship—rarely lethal but always there as a possibility, a memory, an essential part of peasant manhood and Jewish victimhood. In Sniatyn, “A Jewish boy would never venture into the streets inhabited by Christians, even when accompanied by an adult. Christian boys would make fun of them, call them names, throw stones at them, and set their dogs upon them. Also, for simple fun, Christian boys would drive pigs into the Jewish streets and throw manure through the open windows of Jewish homes.” 10 In Uzliany, not far from Minsk, “the most innocent threats Jews faced were boys’ pranks: during Easter they would crack painted eggs against the teeth of the Jewish boys and girls who happened to be outside.” Religious holidays, market days, weddings, departure of army recruits were all legitimate occasions for drinking, fighting, and, if Jews were close by, assaults on the Jews and their property. The superiority of the “big soul” over the “little Jew” was most effectively expressed through violence—just as the superiority of the “Jewish head” over “stupid Ivan” was best achieved and demonstrated through negotiation and competition. Like all Mercurians and Apollonians, the Pale of Settlement Jews and their peasant neighbors needed each other, lived close to each other, feared and despised each other, and never stopped claiming their own preeminence: the Jews by beating the peasants in the battle of wits and boasting about it among themselves, the peasants by beating the Jews for being Jews and bragging about it to the “whole world.” But mostly—for as long as the traditional division of labor persisted and they remained specialized Mercurians and Apollonians—the Jews and their neighbors continued to live as “two solitudes.” Ivan rarely thought about Itzik Meyer unless he was drunk and feeling sorry for himself. For Itzik Meyer, thinking about Ivan was work, an inevitable part of the profane portion of the week. 11 There was no meaningful way of measuring legal discrimination in the Russian Empire because there was no common measure that applied to all the tsar’s subjects. Everyone, except for the tsar himself, belonged to a group that was, one way or another, discriminated against. There were no interchangeable citizens, no indiscriminate laws, no legal rights, and few temporary regulations that did not become permanent. There were, instead, several social estates with unique privileges, duties, and local variations; numerous religions (including Islam, Lamaism, and a wide assortment of “animisms”) under different sets of regulations; countless territorial units (from Finland to Turkestan) administered