Topics: Family and Household, Main Topic: Other, Jewish Continuity, Anthropology, Ethnography, Intermarriage, Intermarriage: Children of Intermarried Couples, Conversion, Gender, Jewish Women, Religious Observance and Practice, Jewish Community, Men and Masculinity
Abstract: There are less than 1300 Jews living in Finland who are members in the two officially Orthodox Jewish communities in Helsinki and in Turku. After the Civil Marriage Act was put in effect by the Finnish Parliament in 1917 the number of intermarriages between Jews and non-Jews started rising in the communities. Most of these marriages were officiated between Jewish men and non-Jewish women. In the beginning, the non-Jewish spouses kept their respective religious affiliations, but in many cases, their halachically non-Jewish children converted to Judaism. In the 1970s, adulthood conversions to Judaism became far more frequent in the communities—especially in the Jewish Community of Helsinki. Today, most of these individuals and their families concerned are still active members of the Jewish congregation. The high number of intermarriages and the conversions to Judaism have had a crucial impact on the development of the religious customs of local Jewry. Through the analysis of archival sources and new ethnographic material derived from semi-structured qualitative interviews, this case study investigates how intermarriages formed the traditions and habits in the families and in the communities. By relating the topic of intermarriage to the question of conversion, the study sheds light on institutional changes within the Jewish Community of Helsinki, and analyzes how women, who converted to Judaism in 1977, articulate and perform their religious practices, identities, and agencies when consciously aiming at building Jewish families.
Abstract: This book offers new ways of conceiving religious and cultural practices, as well as Jewish identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It brings together scholars from a number of fields, transcending the frontiers of Jewish studies. The volume tackles questions about how Jewish life, identities, and religious practices have been transformed amid various changes and challenges in Finnish society, and further considers the experiences of local Jewry through an interdisciplinary prism. Covering a wide range of subjects, the book examines how the customs, practices, and identities of Jews living in Finland have evolved amid cultural, religious, and economic transformations shaped by intercultural and interreligious encounters, recent historical events, gender, migration, and other contemporary influences. It also addresses the challenges of antisemitism in its traditional and contemporary forms and examines its effect on Jewish religious lives in contemporary Finland.
