Abstract: Anti-Semitism was a major feature of both late Tsarist and Stalinist as well as neo-Stalinist Russian politics. What does this legacy entail for the emergence of post-Soviet politics? What are the sources, ideologies, permutations, and expressions of anti-Semitism in recent Russian political life? Who are the main protagonists and what is their impact on society?This book shows that anti-Semitism is alive and well in contemporary Russia, in general, and in her political life, in particular. The study focuses on anti-Semitism in political groups, mass media and religious organizations from the break-up of the Soviet Union until shortly before the elections to the fourth post-Soviet State Duma which saw the entry of a major new nationalist grouping, Rodina (Motherland), into the Russian parliament. The author analyzes various "justifications" for anti-Semitism, its manifestations and its ups and downs during this period. The book chronicles Russian federal and regional elections, which served as a "reality check" for the ultra-nationalists. Several sections are devoted to the role of anti-Semitism in political associations, including marginal neo-Nazi groups, "mainstream" nationalist parties, and the successor organizations of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A special section covers the financial sources for post-Soviet anti-Semitic publications. The author considers anti-Semitism within a wider context of religious and ethnic intolerance in Russian society. Likhachev, as a result, compiles a "Who is Who" of Russian political anti-Semitism. His book will serve as a reliable compendium and obligatory starting point for future research on post-Soviet xenophobia and ultra-nationalist politics.
Abstract: In the wake of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has witnessed a substantial growth in organized anti-Semitism. Central to this development is an organization, known as the Interregional Academy of Human Resources, better known by its Ukrainian acronym MAUP. It operates a well-connected political network that reaches the very top of the Ukrainian society. MAUP is the largest private university in Ukraine, with 57,000 students at 24 regional campuses. MAUP is connected to the KKK; David Duke is teaching courses in history and international relations at the university. Funded by Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran, MAUP’s printing house publishes about 85% of the anti-Semitic literature in Ukraine. Until very recently, Ukrainian President Yushchenko and Foreign Minister Tarasiuk served on its board; former President Kravchuk still does. This paper is a study of anti-Semitism in Ukraine, of its intellectual roots, influence and strength. It traces the Soviet, Christian, German and racist political traditions and outlines the political ambitions of organized anti-Semitism in post-Orange Revolution Ukraine.
Abstract: Multiple identities are becoming an increasingly important issue in a globalized world. This study examines the interference of Jewish identity with other collective identities, national and transnational, as well as the influence of religion and values on Jewish and other collective identities in Jewish late adolescents in Belgium. We compared data with those of a previous study on native Belgians and Muslim immigrants (Saroglou & Galand, 2004) and found similarities between Jews and the other two groups in the hierarchies of collective identities and values; however, Jews differed in their weak European identity and the considerable importance to them of autonomy and self-enhancement values (power and achievement). Jewish cultural identity was unrelated to other collective identities, but a shift from a Jewish identity to a new, Belgian identity or to a broad, transnational identity (or both) was occasionally related to low levels of attachment to religion, tradition, power, security, and hedonism and to high levels of universalism, autonomy, and conformity.
Abstract: Que font les petits-enfants de l’histoire et des valeurs de leurs grands-parents quand ceux-ci ont connu l’immigration et traversé des épreuves majeures ? Comment tracent-ils leur propre chemin entre la fidélité au passé de leur famille, les tâches du présent, la préoccupation de transmettre à leurs enfants leurs références identitaires ? Comment se passent d’une génération à l’autre les traumatismes et les valeurs ? Quel regard les descendants des immigrés portent-ils sur leur histoire familiale ? Comment assument-ils la difficile responsabilité d’en témoigner ? Comment construisent-ils leur identité et leur place dans la société ? Les auteurs présentent et analysent vingt-cinq entretiens qu'ils ont menés avec des petits-enfants de Juifs venus de Pologne, qui ont connu l'exil, la difficile intégration en France, la guerre et la Shoah, les bouleversements historiques du XXe siècle. Deux entretiens réalisés en Pologne les complètent. A travers des récits de vie intense, les auteurs proposent une réflexion originale sur ces questions dont l'actualité récente en Europe a montré l'importance des enjeux individuels, sociaux, politiques. Ils éclairent aussi des aspects méconnus du judaïsme. A une époque où les migrations tendent à devenir un phénomène généralisé, où les guerres et les génocides se multiplient, les auteurs souhaitent contribuer à une réflexion sur le devenir des immigrés et de ceux qui ont été confrontés à un traumatisme historique majeur, et sur l'aide qu'ils pourraient recevoir.
Abstract: [From the introduction to the article]
Between March and November 1999, under the auspices of the Minority Research Institute of the Department of Sociology, Eötvös Loránd University, I conducted a sociological survey of the current situation of the Jewish community in Hungary. In the course of the survey, 2015 respondents were interviewed. The most important demographic and social data were collected for four generations – from respondents’ grandparents to their children. Participants in the survey were asked to respond to questions concerning their relationship towards Jewish traditions and their acceptance or rejection of various forms of Jewish identity. They were also asked for their opinions on assimilation, integration and dissimilation, on Israel, and on the current significance of the Holocaust. Finally, an attempt was made to gauge the opinions of Hungarian Jews on the state of their own community, on their relationships with non-Jews, and on antisemitism in postcommunist Hungary.
My purpose in this article shall be to analyse the data that we collected in this latter area. Firstly, I shall reveal how Jews living in Hungary define antisemitism, and whether – when it comes to classifying particular statements as antisemitic – there are any significant differences between younger and older groups of Jews, between those who are better educated and those with less education, and between those with a stronger and those with a weaker sense of Jewish identity. I shall then explore how the various respondent groups judge the extent, intensity and gravity of anti-Jewish sentiment in the country, examining in particular whether respondents themselves have experienced such sentiment or have been subjected to discrimination. I shall reveal whether respondents think that antisemitism will increase or decrease in the coming years. Finally, I shall touch upon the policies that respondents consider desirable when it comes to tackling antisemitic phenomena. Evidently, the images formed by Jews and non-Jews shall determine in large part the relations between the two groups of one other.
Abstract: Unwillingly and unwittingly, Jews have become 'icons' in Europe's new commemorative pluralist democracies. They have now set the standard for national commemoration of specific historical wrongs, for victimhood, for public visibility, for community organisation, for the right to multiple loyalties, and for a position that one can call selective national belonging; in brief, for real but also highly symbolic power. The main challenge Jews will be facing in the future will be that of making sure these 'iconic' rights are spread more globally in a setting of greater collective justice. But Jews, more than any other group, can also set the limits to too strong an identity pursuit. I believe there is an urgent need to recast a common belonging inside our respective countries and societies. The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of sanctified specific identities. The time has come to move it back toward a more moderate centre. Commemoration should lead to reconciliation, overcoming of the past, and healing, not to exacerbated identities. And Jews, precisely because of their iconic quality, now hold the keys to such a swing back. Otherwise we should not be surprised if Europe's Muslims follow the Jews in the path of declared victimhood, selective belonging, even disintegration through an implicitly hostile reading of the larger society outside.
Abstract: In the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, extreme criticisms of Israel (e.g., Israel is an apartheid state,theIsrael Defense Forces deliberately target Palestinian civilians),coupled with extreme policy proposals (e.g., boycott of Israeli academics and institutions, divest from companies doing business with Israel), have sparked counterclaims that such criticisms are anti-Semitic (for only Israel is singled out). The research in this article shines a different, statistical light on this question: based on a survey of 500 citizens in each of 10 European countries, the authors ask whether those individuals with extreme anti-Israel views are more likely to be anti-Semitic. Even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors, they find that anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic, with the likelihood of measured anti-Semitism increasing with the extent of anti-Israel sentiment observed.
Abstract: Minority and immigrant Germans' embrace of the derogatory term Kanake as a self-ascription and of the low-status ethnolect Kanak Sprak has been compared to US rappers' combative use of "niggah" and Black English. This essay, however, compares the revaluation of the term Kanake, a non-assimilatory Kanak identity, and the ethnolect Kanak Sprak to some early 20th century German Jews' revaluation and embrace of Eastern European Jewish culture and Yiddish. It demonstrates also how non-minority and non-Jewish Germans have used Yiddish and Kanak Sprak in literature, theater, film, and popular culture to re-inscribe ethnic difference, especially at times when minorities and Jews were becoming indistinguishable from non-minority Germans (emancipation edicts or nationality law reform). Because Kanak Sprak is inseparable from HipHop culture, the second half of the essay examines the many parallels between the importation and naturalization of German HipHop and German Klezmer. Both were imported from the United States in the early 1980s; and following the fall of the Berlin Wall and German re-unification, both have played a role in German Vergangenheitsbewältigung [mastering the past]. While HipHop and Klezmer have become the soundtrack of German anti-racism, anti-Nazism, and multiculturalism; some observers are critical of non-minority and non-Jewish Germans' appropriation or instrumentalization of ethnic music, and have cited instances of antisemitism and racism in German Klezmer and HipHop.
Abstract: Ce rapport contient:
une analyse générale;
une comparaison des actes antisémites pour les années 2000 à 2006;
le total des actes antisémites pour l’année 2006;
le total des incidents par type d’incident;
le total des incidents par type de cible;
ainsi que le total des incidents par ville.
Analyse des incidents antisémites recensés au cours de l’année 2005
Du 1er janvier au 31 décembre 2005, 60 incidents antisémites ont été recensés en Belgique. Les villes les plus touchées sont Bruxelles et Anvers, suivent la région du Brabant wallon (banlieue sud de Bruxelles), Knokke, Namur et Eupen. Certains actes touchent plus largement toute la Belgique de par la spécificité du support (presse écrite, internet…).
Deux constats clairs peuvent être mis en avant pour cette année 2005 et confirment clairement les tendances rencontrées en 2004.
Le premier est le maintient d’un nombre important d’incidents à Anvers. Alors qu’en 2002, sur les 62 incidents recensés, 7 seulement ont été perpétrés à Anvers et que, pour l’année 2003, on n’en a compté que 3 sur 28, en 2004, 20 incidents antisémites ont été recensés sur Anvers et 19 nouveaux ont pu être enregistrés pour l’année 2005.
Quant au second constat, il pointe la différence claire de la nature des incidents antisémites entre Anvers et les autres villes du pays. Sur la base des incidents recensés, 75% des attaques sur les personnes ont été perpétrées à l’encontre de membres de la Communauté juive anversoise. A Bruxelles, on relève par contre une grande augmentation des actes de vandalisme (croix gammées, celtiques…).
Ces constats ne relèvent aucunement du hasard et plusieurs raisons peuvent être avancées pour le confirmer. Tout d’abord, la grande majorité des victimes d’actes antisémites à Anvers sont les juifs orthodoxes. Ceux-ci sont victimes de bien plus d’actes antisémites que ceux recensés. Seulement, ces victimes ne réagissent que très peu. Ce n’est que grâce à un travail de sensibilisation des organisations juives anversoises que les victimes issues de de la communauté orthodoxe prennent maintenant de plus en plus l’initiative de déposer plainte. Cette tranche de la communauté est plus facilement reconnaissable en tant que juive de par l’habillement de ses membres et constitue par conséquent une cible beaucoup plus facilement repérable pour les auteurs d’agression. Enfin, l’AEL (Arab European League) est très bien implantée dans la Communauté arabo-musulmane anversoise. Ses nombreux communiqués sur l’actualité au Proche-Orient, visant à combattre l’ennemi sioniste et à stigmatiser Anvers comme la capitale du sionisme européen, devant, à leurs yeux, devenir la Mecque du combat pour la liberté du peuple palestinien, importent le conflit et amènent des jeunes habilement manipulés à commettre de tels actes.
Le nombre d’actes antisémites peut paraître élevé puisqu’il égale presque les 62 actes recensés en 2002, année où s’est déroulée en Israël l’« Opération Rempart », opération qui a fait des vagues partout dans le monde et a, entre autres en Belgique et en France, été prétexte à l’importation du conflit et au passage à l’acte antisémite de certains au nom de l’antisionisme. Le nombre élevé d’actes antisémites ne signifie pas pour autant qu’il y a une augmentation de l’antisémitisme en Belgique mais est plutôt le résultat d’une meilleure communication des incidents et d’une meilleure collaboration avec les autorités compétentes.
Enfin, au niveau politique, deux résolutions du Sénat et du Parlement bruxellois ont été adoptées afin de demander aux autorités compétentes de réagir plus fermement contre l’antisémitisme, en poursuivant de façon systématique les auteurs d’actes antisémites, négationnistes et révisionnistes. Il est également demandé aux autorités compétentes de prendre toutes les mesures nécessaires pour assurer la protection nécessaire et indispensable des membres des diverses communautés dans le cadre de leurs pratiques religieuses ou lors de la fréquentation de leurs écoles et de leurs lieux communautaires. En 2004, l’ancienne ministre de l’Egalité des Chances, Marie Arena, avait déjà, suite à plusieurs actes antisémites graves, présenté un plan en 10 points pour lutter contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme. Toutes ces initiatives doivent encore être concrétisées dans les faits…
Abstract: This philosophy addresses the complex educational issues arising in
Anglo-Jewish education catering for a community which is rooted in two
cultures: the Jewish-Orthodox and the Western-liberal, a community that
incorporates all aspects of Western culture that do not conflict with Jewish law
or its value system.
Underpinned by diverse ontologies and epistemologies these cultures
differ in many aspects, most significantly for educators, in their value systems
and therefore in the hermeneutic understanding of the "excellences" to be
designated as ultimate and proximate aims for the education. Whereas the
liberal Western culture endorses anti-authoritarian, individual autonomy, the
Jewish thesis endorses such only in areas for which Jewish law has not
legislated. For all other, free choices are to be exercised against the divinely
commanded value system.
The National Curriculum, through which secular subjects are delivered, and
Judaism both require holism in education. In both, all knowledge is to serve
also as a vehicle for pupils' overall personal and social growth: the
cognitive/intellectual, ethical, spiritual and physical. Since holism necessarily
has to be governed by an overall organic quality of wholeness, in which all the
educational aims permeate every area of education, it is axiomatic that
contradictions in the aims cannot be accommodated within any specific
educational structure.
This unitary philosophy responds to the requirements of holism by
establishing an educational structure which, in itself, is free of conflict. This is
achievable due to the liberal National Curriculum's acceptance, qua being
liberal, of non-public values to overlay the statutory political ones in the entire
school's curriculum — which, for Jewish education is the Halakhic value system.
A conflict-free philosophy, however, does not guarantee conflict-free
development of pupils who live their lives within both the Jewish thesis and the
all pervasive, multi-media imposed Western culture. The unitary philosophy
sets out strategies for dealing with these conflicts within carefully structured programmes.
