Identity transformations of Ukrainian Jewry during the Russian–Ukrainian war: Odesa’s communities and religious leaders at home and in exile
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Abstract
Russia’s extended war on Ukraine has profoundly affected the country’s religious communities, institutions, and congregational networks. These networks were built on deep historical, cultural, and familial ties across the region. Most literature on identity transformations during the war has focused on the macro-level analysis of Ukraine’s majority populations and the relationship between Russian and Ukrainian cultural and linguistic elements in the rise of civic Ukrainian identity. This article expands this discussion by examining the experiences of Ukraine’s Jewish ethnoreligious minority as well as the roles of its community organizations and religious leaders in shaping attitudes and orientations towards emerging identities. It argues that the war has triggered a multidirectional process of identity transformation, and it challenges it conventional understandings of belonging in wartime Ukraine and in communities of the displaced. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted virtually and in the field, primarily with Jews from Odesa, the author shows how Jews at home and in exile have come to position themselves as more and more Ukrainian while at the same time deepening their Jewish identity through active participation in Jewish communal life.
Topics
Main Topic: Identity and Community Jewish Identity Jewish Community Jewish Leadership Jewish Organisations Ukraine-Russia war (since 2014) National Identity
Genre
Geographic Coverage
Copyright Info
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Original Language
Volume/Issue
67(1-2)
Page Number / Article Number
214-235
DOI
Bibliographic Information
Identity transformations of Ukrainian Jewry during the Russian–Ukrainian war: Odesa’s communities and religious leaders at home and in exile. 2025: 214-235. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1080/00085006.2025.2500199
