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Chabad emissaries in the mountain Jewish communities: negotiating religious and cultural practices in the North Caucasus
Author(s): Redmond, Varvara
Date: 2025
Topics: Chabad-Lubavitch, Mountain Jews, Main Topic: Other, Outreach, Social Media
Abstract: In this paper, I focus on online and offline practices of community-building within two specific religious communities that remain active despite mass emigration. These communities are based in Derbent, Dagestan, and Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria, with members located in Moscow and the North Caucasus. Both communities have formally accepted rabbis from Chabad-Lubavitch, who are likely to promote Chabad-Lubavitch values among community members. I investigate the strategies and methods used by Chabad emissaries in the region to facilitate the process of chabadization. In addition to outreach activities, the visual manifestations of chabadization are significant in this study, as they are presented across multiple online platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other social forums, chats, and websites. My research combines online analysis with fieldwork conducted in Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Moscow between 2018 and 2020.
"To a Tanya Lesson in High-Heeled Shoes": Observance, Modernity and Deviance in the Moscow Chabad Community
Author(s): Zelenina, Galina
Date: 2023
Topics: Baal Teshuvah, Jewish Revival, Jewish Women, Chabad-Lubavitch, Main Topic: Other, Religious Observance and Practice, Orthodox Judaism
Abstract: After the seventy-year break in religious life under the Soviet regime, Jewish communities in Russia revived and multiplied, now consisting mostly of new "returnees to the faith," ba'alei and ba'alot teshuvah. This article, based on biographical interviews and other sources, examines the outlook, self-image and everyday life of women "returnees," ba'alot teshuvah, in a contemporary community of Lubavitch Hasidim in Moscow. Chabad women's claims to modernity and their understanding of it, their view of their community and the social hierarchies in it, and their prioritizing of religious practice over meaning and of action over belief are examined in the contexts of women's religiosity in historical Hasidism, in present-day ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel and America, and in other traditional cultures (focusing on the "alternative modernity" of voluntarily traditional subjects) and in light of Lubavitch movement policies, late Soviet "authoritative discourse" and the current Russian move toward "conservative modernization."
Фартук, философия, фитнес: о женском образовании в хасидской общине
Translated Title: Family, Philosophy, Fitness: On Female Education in a Chassidic Community
Author(s): Зеленина, Галина Светлояровна
Editor(s): Белова, Ольга
Date: 2018
Topics: Main Topic: Education, Jewish Education, Education: Adult Education, Baal Teshuvah, Health, Health Education, Jewish Women, Chabad-Lubavitch
Abstract: Статья посвящена баалот-тшува («вернувшимся» в иудаизм женщинам) в московской общине хасидского движения Хабад Любавич. Их взгляды на свою жизнь, свою роль в семье и общине и отношение руководства любавического движения к женскому вопросу рассматриваются сквозь призму одной конкретной темы – практики регулярного образования для взрослых. Наряду с традиционными уроками Торы и религиозных практик, за которые ответственны женщины (диетарные законы, чистота семейной жизни), Хабад поощряет лекции по здоровому питанию и семейной психологии или занятия фитнесом, с тем чтобы позволить членам общины чувствовать себя современными людьми, сохраняя при этом традиционные ценности и патриархальную иерархию.
История обряда капарот и его сегодняшняя практика в московских общинах
Translated Title: The History of the Kaparot Ritual and Its Current Practice in Moscow Communities
Author(s): Бирюкова, Ирина Викторовна
Date: 2019
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Ritual, Religious Observance and Practice, Festivals and Holidays, Charity / Tzedakah
Abstract: Статья посвящена истории обряда капарот и его сегодняшней практике в московских общинах. Автор рассматривает различные версии возникновения обычая и его интеграции в еврейскую среду. До начала XX в. обряд капарот был популярен среди ашкеназского еврейства, но после Катастрофы ситуация изменилась.
Последующие годы в Советском Союзе также не способствовали восстановлению религиозной жизни и любому проявлению еврейской идентичности. О капарот напоминали лишь пословицы и поговорки. Но со сменой власти многое в жизни российских евреев изменилось, появилась возможность «вспомнить» обряд. Однако в новых реалиях обычай выглядел совсем не гуманно, поэтому большинство из тех, кто придерживается этой практики, заменяют живую птицу (в обряде ее крутят над головой и затем режут) деньгами, что тоже встречается в еврейской традиции. Представителями московского еврейского общества капарот воспринимается в том числе как акт благотворительности. Можно предположить, что такое
понимание обряда со временем может отодвинуть на второй план идею искупительного замещения, которая была изначально в нем заложена.
Еврейские Школы Москвы: Культура И Традиции
Translated Title: Jewish Schools in Moscow: Culture And Traditions
Author(s): Аксёнова, Эльвира Айсеновна
Date: 2016
Topics: Jewish Schools, Main Topic: Education
Еврейские Ценности И Самоидентификация У Еврейской Молодежи В Москве
Translated Title: Jewish values and identity among Jewish young people in Moscow
Author(s): Писаревская, Дина
Editor(s): Молчанова, B. B.
Date: 2012
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity, Youth, Surveys, Birthright (Taglit)
Abstract: The article is dedicated to the Jewish youth of Moscow. It is based on results of a survey conducted during 2011–2012 and their comparison with data of analogical research carried out in 2010–2011. The author stresses that Jewish self-identification among Jewish young people who actively participate in Jewish programs for the first year, exists. It has been impacted by their participation in Jewish enterprises and Jewish life, family archive and celebrating Jewish holydays. The self-identification of respondents who took part in the “Taglit” program has been also supported by their trip to Israel. The “newcomers” are also interested in lectures and seminars on Jewish history, culture and traditions whereas those, who participated in these programs for several years, are more interested in unusual actions and enterprises.
Экономическая трансформация практики «ѓахнасат кала»: случай в общине Московской хоральной синагоги
Translated Title: Economic Transformation of “Hakhnasat Kala” Custom: a Case of Moscow Choral Synagogue Community
Author(s): Полян, Александра Леонидовна; Карасева, Екатерина Николаевна
Date: 2020
Topics: Marriage, Synagogues, Ritual, Economy, Finance, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Статья посвящена трансформации, которую претерпел обычай «ѓахнасат кала» в современной российской еврейской общине. Заповедь «ѓахнасат кала» была впервые упомянута в талмудической литературе как
предписание увеселять жениха и невесту, однако позже, в XVII–XVIII вв., в Ашкеназе получила новое содержание: община должна была собирать на приданое бедным невестам, с тем чтобы они могли выйти замуж, – тем самым нищие девушки удерживались от социальной маргинализации или крещения. В современной российской еврейской общине (и, как выяснилось впоследствии, среди русскоязычных ультрарелигиозных евреев Израиля) это название стало употребляться по отношению к совершенно новой практике – сбору денег на организацию свадебной церемонии для жениха и невесты, уже выбравших друг друга, а нередко живших в гражданском браке и пришедших к иудаизму. В отличие от традиционной ситуации, когда стоимость свадебных расходов покрывается взносами гостей, в данном случае спонсорами свадьбы становятся пользователи интернета, сочувствующие данной паре, а бенефициарами – члены общины с высоким статусом. Таким образом, организация дорогой свадебной церемонии становится
для будущих супругов своего рода подтверждением их статуса в общине. Подробно анализируется один такой случай, произошедший в общине Московской хоральной синагоги в 2019 г. Делаются выводы о структуре общины, о ее экономике и роли краудфандинга в современной российской еврейской ортодоксии.
Reversed Diaspora: Russian Jewry, the Transition in Russia and the Migration to Israel
Author(s): Trier, Tom
Date: 1996
Topics: Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Aliyah, Emigration, Jewish Identity, Post-1989, Diaspora
Study Report "Anti-Semitism in Today's Russia"
Date: 2016
Topics: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Monitoring, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Surveys, Antisemitism: Attitude Surveys
Социологический портрет участника массовых благотворительных акций в современной еврейской общине Москвы
Translated Title: Jewish fundraising campaign in contemporary Moscow: a sociological survey
Author(s): Членов, Матвей
Date: 2007
Topics: Jewish Organisations, Fundraising and Philanthropy, Main Topic: Other
Kaddish in a Church: Perceptions of Orthodox Christianity among Moscow Elderly Jews in the Early Twenty‐First Century
Author(s): Shternshis, Anna
Date: 2007
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Christianity, Oral History and Biography, Ageing and the Elderly, Age and Generational Issues, Jewish - Christian Relations, Religious Observance and Practice
Inside the Museum: The Museum of Jewish History in Russia, Moscow
Author(s): Kaspina, Maria; Kazovsky, Hillel
Date: 2015
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Museums
Inside the Museum: Torahs, Tanks, and Tech: Moscow's Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center
Author(s): Nathans, Benjamin
Date: 2015
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Museums, Memory, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education
The shtetl in the museum: representing Jews in the eras of Stalin and Putin
Author(s): Yalen, Deborah
Date: 2015
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Museums, Post-1989, Jewish Revival, Memory, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Communism, Soviet Jewry
Abstract: This article considers the representation of the shtetl in two museum narratives devoted to Jews in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The first, the state-funded 1939 exhibit “The Jews in Tsarist Russia and the USSR” was organized by the Jewish Section of the State Museum of Ethnography in Leningrad and remained on display to the Soviet public until the Nazi invasion in June 1941. The second is the privately funded Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, which opened in 2012. Though conceived under radically different ideological and political circumstances, each exhibition conveys a significant message about the place of Jews in Soviet and post-Soviet society, respectively, and each positions the shtetl as a formative arena for Jewish civic identity vis-à-vis the Russian homeland. Across the chasm of over seventy years, these two museum projects raise strikingly similar questions about how and why cultural institutions are mobilized to define the relationship of Ashkenazi Jews and the state. In both cases, the shtetl plays a significant role in narrating this unequal relationship.
The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow: Judaism for the masses
Author(s): Gershenson, Olga
Date: 2015
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Museums, Post-1989, Jewish Revival, Memory, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education
Abstract: In 2012, a new Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opened in Moscow – an event unthinkable during the Soviet regime. Financed at the level of $50 million, created by an international crew of academics and museum designers, and located in a landmark building, the museum immediately rose to a position of cultural prominence in the Russian museum scene. Using interactive technology and multimedia, the museum's core exhibition presents several centuries of complex local Jewish history, including the Second World War period. Naturally, the Holocaust is an important part of the story. Olga Gershenson's essay analyzes the museum's relationship to Holocaust history and memory in the post-Soviet context. She describes the museum's struggle to reconcile a Soviet understanding of the “Great Patriotic War” with a dominant Western narrative of the Holocaust, while also bringing the Holocaust in the Soviet Union to a broader audience via the museum. Through recorded testimonies, period documents, and film, the museum's display narrates the events of the Holocaust on Soviet soil. This is a significant revision of the Soviet-era discourse, which universalized and externalized the Holocaust. But this important revision is limited by the museum's choice to avoid the subject of local collaborators and bystanders. The museum shies away from the most pernicious aspect of the Holocaust history on Soviet soil, missing an opportunity to take historic responsibility and confront the difficult past.
Introduction: New Jewish museums in post-communist Europe
Author(s): Gershenson, Olga; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara
Date: 2015
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Museums, Post-1989, Jewish Revival, Memory, Holocaust Commemoration
Who Are These "Mountain Jews"?
Author(s): Chelnov, Mikhail A.
Date: 2009
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community, Mountain Jews, Rural and Small Town, Diaspora
Abstract: Mikhail Chlenov, secretary general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, introduces the classic volume Mountain Jews, edited by Iosef Begun and Valerii Dymshits. This essay presents the significance of the group as well as the book. Mountain or "Highland" Jews have cultural roots in the history of a far-flung Persian Jewish archipelago. Many Jews from mountainous villages in Dagestan and Azerbaijan in the post-Soviet period have fled long-established rural communities, often landing in Moscow as outsiders within an already "outsider" group.
Fistfights at the Moscow Choral Synagogue: Ethnicity and Ritual in Post-Soviet Russia
Author(s): Goluboff, Sascha L.
Date: 2001
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Synagogues, Jewish Communal Politics, Jewish Identity, Jewish Community, Ritual, Ethnicity
Abstract: In this article I investigate ritual life at the Moscow Choral Synagogue, the largest and longest running Orthodox synagogue in the Russian capital. Unlike many Eastern European synagogues, this synagogue is a thriving prayer community due to its unique congregation of Russian, Georgian, Bukharan, Mountain, and visiting Western Jews. I focus on a fistfight that took place between an Israeli and a Georgian Jew during prayer. I detail how Russian and Georgian Jews interpreted the incident to be a result of their different ethnicities, Russian and Georgian respectively. The fight elucidates how ritual in post-Soviet society provides the means for the production of ethnicity and Jewish identity. Arguing for localism within Judaism's transnational ideology, I suggest that Jewish identity, like ritual, is performative and contextual. I also show how the shifting power relations in post-Soviet society have reshaped ethnicity, making state-endorsed market reform a reference point of ethnic differentiation.
The Changing Jewish Community in Europe: Conference June 26, 27 and 28, 2002 in Berlin
Date: 2002
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: Contents:
Introduction
Drs. Hans Vuijsje, Director Jewish Social Service
The Netherlands
Welcome words
Mr. Abraham Lehrer, Chairman ZWST Germany
Opening words
Mr. Gabriel Taus, Former Director ECJC
Overview of social demographic changes in the Jewish communities
throughout Europe
Prof. Barry Kosmin, Executive Director, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, London
The influence of migration on a Jewish community from a multicultural perspective
Prof. David Pinto, Multicultural Communication, University of Amsterdam
The Dutch method for building new communities,
Identity strengthening as a way towards integration into a new community
Dr. Hans Vuijsje, Director Jewish Social Service, The Netherlands
The changing Jewish community in Spain
Dr. Mario Izcovich, Coordinator of PAN European Affairs, JDC Paris
The changing Jewish community in Germany
Mrs. Paulette Weber, staff member, ZWST Germany
The changing Jewish community in Germany viewed from Moscow and
an overview of the Jewish community in Moscow
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, Chief Rabbi of Moscow
Hesed models of community organization and adaptation of charity
to community changes
Mr. Leonid Kolton, Director, Hesed Avraham Charity, St. Petersburg
The implementation of community development concepts during
the buildup phase of viable new communities
Mrs. Nicolienne Wolf, Head, Community Development Department,
Jewish Social Services, The Netherlands
Summary and conclusions
• Dr. Hans Vuijsje, Director, Jewish Social Services, The Netherlands
• Prof. David Pinto, Multicultural Communication, University of Amsterdam
Closing words
Mr. Beni Bloch, Director, ZWST Germany
Jewish Russians: Upheavals in a Moscow Synagogue
Author(s): Goluboff, Sascha L.
Date: 2002
Topics: Synagogues, Ethnography, Race, Racism, Ethnicity, Diversity, Pluralism, Conflict, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: The prevalence of anti-Semitism in Russia is well known, but the issue of race within the Jewish community has rarely been discussed explicitly. Combining ethnography with archival research, Jewish Russians: Upheavals in a Moscow Synagogue documents the changing face of the historically dominant Russian Jewish community in the mid-1990s. Sascha Goluboff focuses on a Moscow synagogue, now comprising individuals from radically different cultures and backgrounds, as a nexus from which to explore issues of identity creation and negotiation. Following the rapid rise of this transnational congregation—headed by a Western rabbi and consisting of Jews from Georgia and the mountains of Azerbaijan and Dagestan, along with Bukharan Jews from Central Asia—she evaluates the process that created this diverse gathering and offers an intimate sense of individual interactions in the context of the synagogue's congregation.

Challenging earlier research claims that Russian and Jewish identities are mutually exclusive, Goluboff illustrates how post-Soviet Jews use Russian and Jewish ethnic labels and racial categories to describe themselves. Jews at the synagogue were constantly engaged in often contradictory but always culturally meaningful processes of identity formation. Ambivalent about emerging class distinctions, Georgian, Russian, Mountain, and Bukharan Jews evaluated one another based on each group's supposed success or failure in the new market economy. Goluboff argues that post-Soviet Jewry is based on perceived racial, class, and ethnic differences as they emerge within discourses of belonging to the Jewish people and the new Russian nation.
Spiritual Potential of the Communal Revival: Yiddish Culture and Post-Soviet Jewry
Author(s): Chernin, Velvl
Date: 2002
Topics: Yiddish, Aliyah, Jewish Culture, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
Abstract: Even though Yiddish as a spoken language will most likely disappear in the former Soviet Union, it will still be needed as a symbol of Jewish identity – one that is not overtly Zionist or religious. Yiddish, with its rich culture and literature, can be utilized to help Jews reconnect with their roots. In Israel, older immigrants, whose knowledge of Yiddish is not fluent, and who are unable to master Hebrew, employ Yiddish in order to communicate. Zionist Yiddishism has become one of the ideological components in the identity of immigrants from the former USSR, and enables them to link up with some form of Jewish culture as they integrate into the life of Israel.
. «Быть или чувствовать?» Основные аспекты формирования еврейской самоидентификации у потомков смешанных браков в современной России
Translated Title: "To Be or to Feel?" The Main Aspects of the Forming of the Jewish Identity among Mixed Marriage Descendants in Contemporary Russia
Author(s): Носенко, Элана
Date: 2004
Topics: Surveys, Intermarriage, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Intermarriage: Children of Intermarried Couples
Abstract: Книга посвящена изучению формирования еврейской самоидентификации у потомков смешанных семей в современной России и построена на материале опросов, проводившихся автором в Москве и Петербурге. Автор выделяет несколько типов этнической самоидентификации у людей частично еврейского происхождения и анализирует различные факторы, в той или иной мере влияющие на ее становление.
Евреи Москвы в 90-е годы XX-го века: действительно ли происходит религиозный ренессанс?
Translated Title: The Jews of Moscow in the 1990s: Is the Religious Renaissance Really Taking Place?
Author(s): Козлов, Семен Яковлевич
Date: 1999
Topics: Jewish Revival, Religious Observance and Practice, Outreach, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Yiddish in the Former Soviet Union since 1959: A Statistical-Demographic Analysis
Author(s): Tolts, Mark
Date: 2012
Topics: Censuses, Demography, Yiddish, Language, Statistics, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Post-War Jewish History
Abstract:

This paper is based mainly on the results of the post-war Soviet censuses concerning respondents' native language and second language. The statistical data on Yiddish were studied for the former union republics of the USSR and their capitals. For Belorussia, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the data were also studied for their different regions. In the 1994 Russian microcensus, a question on the primary language of conversation at home was asked for the first time, and the respective data concerning Yiddish in the city of Moscow and Birobidzhan ("Jewish") oblast were analyzed.

This paper was presented at the conference "Yiddish in the Contemporary World" at Oxford, 19-21 April 1998, and revised in May 2012.
Immigrant Jews of the Caucasus in New York and Moscow: Ethno-Cultural Identity and Community Organization
Translated Title: יהודי קווקאז כמהגרים בניו-יורק ובמוסקווה: זהות אתנו-תרבותית והתארגנות קהילתית
Author(s): Bram, Chen
Date: 2008
Topics: Diaspora, Mountain Jews, Jewish Identity, Jewish Culture, Jewish Community, Emigration, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: This article brings together two case studies from a larger research project on collective identity, ethnic categorization and community life among Jews of the Caucasus who migrated from their homelands to Israel, USA and Central Russia. It shows how this distinctive group of Jews strives to preserve its culture, language and social ties by building community organizations and forging new relationships with the surrounding majority and other Jewish groups. Specifically, the author focuses on the encounter between Jews of the Caucasus with Russian Jews that challenges the accepted binary oppositions between Mizrahi/Sephardic and Ashkenazi identities used in the Israeli and American Jewish discourse.
Anti-Semitism in Moscow: Results of and October 1992 Survey
Author(s): Brym, Robert J.; Degtaryev, Andrei
Date: 1993
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Surveys, Antisemitism: Attitude Surveys
The Emigration Potential of Jews in the Former Soviet Union
Author(s): Brym, Robert J.
Date: 1993
Topics: Emigration, Immigration, Aliyah, Antisemitism, Surveys, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Antisemitism in the Former Soviet Union: Recent Survey Results
Author(s): Brym, Robert J.
Date: 1994
Topics: Antisemitism, Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Attitudes to Jews, Antisemitism: Attitude Surveys
Abstract: The report is based mainly on a survey of 989 Muscovites conducted in October 1992 and a survey of 1000 Jews conducted in Moscow, Kiev and Minsk from February to April 1994. The report discusses findings on negative attitudes to Jews by non-Jews and Jewish perceptions of antisemitism. The report is based in part on other publications FSU3 and RUS1
White Piano in a Shtetl: Material Culture and Ethnic Identity in the Post-Soviet Jewish Urban Community
Author(s): Shternshis, Anna
Date: 2010
Topics: Post-1989, Jewish Revival, Yiddish, Jewish Music, Jewish Culture, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
Abstract: The revival of Jewish culture in post-Soviet Moscow manifested itself in tremendous interest in Yiddish music among both Jewish and non-Jewish artists and viewers. Large-scale in their scope and original in their unorthodox interpretations, performances of Yiddish music filled the largest concert halls of Moscow in the early 2000s. What do the production, content, and reception of these shows teach us about post-Soviet Jewish identity? This article examines works by Efim Alexandrov and Alexander Tsaliuk, contemporary Russian artists who chose to devote their careers to the revival of Yiddish music in post-Soviet Russia.