Abstract: Keine sechs Jahre nach dem Ende des Holocaust schrieb Theodor W. Adorno, einer der bekanntesten Vertreter der Kritischen Theorie, in seiner Schrift Minima Moralia: „Der Antisemitismus ist das Gerücht über die Juden.“ Der Philosoph und Soziologe wollte mit dieser schlichten Definition das formulieren, was kennzeichnend für den
Antisemitismus ist und sich häufig hinter der Verbreitung von Verschwörungsideologien verbirgt: Das Konstruieren einer homogenen Gruppe, der pauschal negative Eigenschaften zugeschrieben werden. Das Wort „Gerücht“ drückt zugleich etwas „Heimliches“ aus, etwas, das im Verborgenen passiert. Ein Geheimnis also, von dem nicht alle
Menschen wissen sollen oder dürfen. Sogenannte Verschwörungsmythen kommen selten ohne Antisemitismus aus – und umgekehrt. Das zeigen nicht zuletzt aktuelle verschwörungs- ideologische Diskurse um SARS-CoV-2. Wie das
Virus, so breiten sich weltweit in ebenso rasanter Geschwindigkeit Geschichten um dessen Herkunft und Ursprung aus. Das „Gerücht“, nach dem die Krankheit von einer geheimen Macht erfunden worden oder harmlos sei, glauben in den USA viele Menschen bis hin zum amtierenden Präsidenten Donald Trump, und sie haben inzwischen auch in Deutschland Hochkonjunktur. Insbesondere die extreme Rechte versucht, sich diesen Verschwörungsmythos zunutze zu machen. So entwickelte sich von den Vereinigten Staaten ausgehend ein neues Phänomen, das zum Synonym für viele Verschwörungsideologien wurde. Das Schlagwort hinter diesem Phänomen lautet:
QAnon.
Abstract: A la suite de Maurice Bardèche, Paul Rassinier, Robert Faurisson, des hommes, remettant en cause l’authenticité de la Shoah, se sont prévalus du terme de révisionnistes ». Les historiens leur ont opposé – leur travail étant révisionniste par définition – le mot « négationniste ».
Cette histoire est l’histoire d’un délire, mais, comme tout délire, bâti sur une démarche rationnelle. Cependant, derrière cette apparente folie interprétative, un des buts politiques ne tarde pas à se révéler : il s’agit, en France comme dans les autres pays où le négationnisme s’est répandu, de nier les fondements historiques de l’État israélien.
Cet ouvrage retraceavec minutie la genèse d’une idéologie et ses variations dans le temps et dans l’espace. La soutenance d’une thèse d’histoire par l’auteur en est l’origine.
Abstract: Emma was born in 1956. Her parents survived the Holocaust with the help of false documents and their Slavic appearance – goes the family legend. Emma was brought up by her parents, according to communist principles. She is already 17 when she first learns from her aunt that she is Jewish. She meets her husband, Ben, a Nigerian, in 1976, and they leave for Nigeria. A year later Emma returns alone, pregnant, and from then on, her relationship with Ben is almost completely cut off. In 1990, Emma sends her child to a Jewish school. The analysis of the narrative interview reveals that for Emma, the meaning of choosing a stranger from a different culture was to get rid of a stigma. The presence of the colored child born from the relationship comforts her – if she manages to hide the Jewishness of the child, this covers her Jewishness as well. Along with this, she seems to be trying to protect her son from her identity problem: the color of his skin gives clear evidence of who he is and where he comes from. A decade later, she changes her strategy: now she wants the hidden stigma to be revealed and seen. And once more she uses her son to achieve this: if her son attends a Jewish school, he becomes Jewish. And if he is Jewish, that means that she too is Jewish.
Abstract: This report contains a short description of Judaism as a theological, ethical and juridical system, as well as main stages of its history, of modern trends in its development, particularly, of
its traditional and reformist segments. A considerable attention is devoted to Khasidic branch
of Judaism, namely to the Khabad-Lubavich movement, because it plays an important and
ambivalent role in the Judaic communities of the post-Soviet Russia. The report demonstrates
activities of main all-Russian Judaist organizations, and analyzed their mutual relations. It is
noticed, that really religious, or, at least, practicing Jews, represent only a minor fraction in
the contemporary Russian Jewry, while the predominant part of it is composed of practically
religiously indifferent people.
Abstract: This study examined cognitive aspects of coping with stress, how these related to religiosity, and how they related to outcomes (positive mood and distress). Participants (n=126) were of Protestant or Jewish background, and had all experienced recent major stress. They were assessed on measures of religiosity, religious coping, perception of the consequences of the stressful event, attributions for its occurrence, and distress, intrusive unpleasant thoughts, and positive affect. Religiosity affected ways of thinking about the stressful situation, namely: Belief that G-d is enabling the individual to bear their troubles (religious/spiritual support), belief that it was all for the best, and (more weakly) belief that all is ultimately controlled by G-d. Religiosity affected neither the proportion of positive consequences perceived as outcomes of the event, nor the causal attributions examined. Religious background (Protestant vs. Jewish) had negligible effects on the cognitions measures. Causal pathway analysis suggested that religion-related cognitions might directly affect positive affect, but not distress. Problems of design and interpretation are discussed. The study suggests some cognitively mediated means by which religion may have comforting effects.
Abstract: My dissertation addresses the sociocultural processes which contribute to the construction of ethnocultural identity among Zagrebian Jews. I argue, contrary to the often essentialized perception of Jewish identity imposed by e.g. the Croatian government and Jewish international organizations, that Jewish identity in Zagreb is actively chosen in ways that are both idiosyncratic and contingent upon the surrounding sociocultural environment. At the heart of my argument is an appeal to the dynamic and contextual nature of identity negotiation, and the influence this has on the maintenance and survival of the Zagrebian Jewish community. In support of this, I have employed ethnographic methods to assess (i) the ways in which Jewish identity is negotiated by community members and (ii) the ways in which the meaning of Jewish community is sustained in Zagreb. With regards to (i), I conclude that Zagrebian Jews understand their identities in terms of symbolic ethnoreligiosity, i.e. in terms of feelings and nostalgic ideas about Jewish culture and tradition. With regards to (ii), I show that the history and development of Jewish identity in Zagreb can be traced through patterns of membership participation in various Jewish organizations prevalent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These patterns reveal the predominantly secular nature of the Zagrebian Jewish community. In light of this, I argue that community for Zagrebian Jews is ultimately defined symbolically through various types of social interaction among members. It is for this reason that the recent attempts of both international Jewish organizations and the Croatian government to impose an essentialized image of Jewish identity on the community are at odds with, and ultimately destructive to, the secular and improvisatory self-images of the members themselves.
Abstract: Porträts von 17 jüdischen Gemeinden in Europa.
Am Ende eines für Europa geschichtsträchtigen und vor allem für Juden tragischen Jahrhunderts entwerfen 18 Autoren individuell gestaltete, einander ergänzende Porträts jüdischer Gemeinden, die Auskunft geben über das Leben und Wirken der Gemeinschaften, über deren Gegenwart und Vergangenheit, ihre Strukturen und Voraussetzungen. Diese Bestandsaufnahmen des jüdischen Lebens führen quer durch Europa: nach Österreich, England, Frankreich und Deutschland. Es folgen Beiträge über die Türkei, einen jahrhundertealten Zufluchtsort für Juden, den jüdischen Nachwuchs in Osteuropa, über Thessaloniki, die Juden im Gebiet der ehemaligen Sowjetunion, deren Gemeinschaft durch anhaltende Emigration bedroht ist, und über die wirtschaftliche und soziale Not der ukrainischen Juden. Der Leser erfährt von der Entwicklung der kleinen aber dynamischen jüdischen Gemeinde von Litauen, von jener in Estland und von der unerwarteten Wiedergeburt des Judentums in Polen, dem einzigen Land in Europa mit einer wachsenden jüdischen Bevölkerung. Nach einem Beitrag über die neuerwachten Gemeinden Prag und Bratislava gibt der Band einen Überblick über die Geschichte des Judentums im Rumänien des 20. Jahrhunderts, erzählt von der »ungarischen Renaissance« und porträtiert die kroatische jüdische Gemeinde, die nun, nach beinahe 50 Jahren wieder einen Rabbiner hat. In einem abschließenden Essay fordert die französische Historikerin Diana Pinto das Wiederentstehen einer europäischen jüdischen Identität und gemahnt die Gemeinden an ihre Pflicht der Erinnerung.
Abstract: Before 1991, approximately 60,000 Central Asian Jews lived in Uzbekistan. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, their centurieslong history in the region underwent dramatic changes. The lifting of emigration restrictions coupled with fear of economic chaos, political instability, growth of national movements and a rise in antisemitism, provoked massive Jewish emigration. Today, only about 4,000 Central Asian Jews remain in Uzbekistan. The others have emigrated primarily to the United States, Israel and Austria. The following piece is about the Central Asian Jews who still live in Samarkand, Uzbekistan's second largest city. Today, about one thousand—only ten percent of the city's former community—remain there. Those who have stayed have all watched while relatives and friends have packed their belongings, sold their homes and left the country. They have witnessed the community structure crumble and they have seen the city's old Jewish quarter been sold off, house by house, to outsiders. Today, they are each faced with the question: What is home and where is it now? The work is fiction, informed by an anthropological perspective. The narrative was woven from ethnographic data that I collected during field work among the Central Asian Jews in Samarkand.
