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Jewish Odesa: Negotiating Identities and Traditions in Contemporary Ukraine

Author(s): Sapritsky-Nahum, Marina

Date: 2024

Topics: Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community, War, Religious Observance and Practice, Ethnography, Denominations: Reform/Liberal/Progressive, Denominations: Orthodox, Ukraine-Russia conflict (2014 onwards)

Abstract: Jewish Odesa: Negotiating Identities and Traditions in Contemporary Ukraine explores the rich Jewish history in Ukraine's port city of Odesa. Long considered both a uniquely cosmopolitan and Jewish place, Odesa's Jewish character has shifted since the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine gained its independence. Drawing on extensive field research, Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, examines how the role of Russian language and culture, memories of the Soviet political project, and Odesan's place in a Ukrainian national project have all been questioned in recent years. Jewish Odesa reveals how a city once famous for its progressive Jewish traditions has become dominated by Orthodox Judaism and framed by the agendas of international Jewish organizations embedded in a religiosity that is foreign to the city. Russia's war in Ukraine has forced Jewish identities with ties to Odesa to change still further.

L’Unione delle Comunità ebraiche italiane tra adesione all’ebraismo ortodosso e rappresentanza di tutti gli ebrei italiani: l’Intesa del 1987 è ancora attuale?

Translated Title: The Union of Italian Jewish Communities between adherence to Orthodox Judaism and representation of all Jew in Italy: Is the constitutional Agreement of 1987 with the Italian State still adequate?

Author(s): Sacerdoti, Giorgio

Date: 2020

Topics: Jewish Organisations, Main Topic: Other, Law, Diversity, Jewish Organisations: Representative and Umbrella Bodies, Jewish Leadership and Representation, Denominations: Orthodox

Abstract: 1 - Introduzione - 2. Il quadro pluralistico dell’ebraismo diasporico e delle sue organizzazioni - 3. Peculiarità dell’organizzazione dell’ebraismo italiano - 4. Pluralismo interno e tensioni nel contesto unitario delle Comunità - 5. Le origini storiche del peculiare assetto organizzativo dell’ebraismo italiano: l’assenza del movimento riformato in Italia e la normativa statualistica del 1930-31 - 6. La struttura unitaria e l’adesione delle Comunità all’ortodossia nello Statuto e nell’Intesa - 7. Conclusioni: la necessaria conciliazione tra pluralismo e unitarietà tra le varie anime dell’ebraismo italiano.

Иудаизм, правосла- вие или “светская религия”? Выбор российских евреев

Translated Title: Judaism, Orthodoxy, or “secular religion”? The choice of Russian Jews

Author(s): Nosenko, Elena

Date: 2009

Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity, Denominations, Denominations: Orthodox, Secularity, Secularisation and Secular Jews

Our Community is the Coolest in the World”: Chabad and Jewish Nation-Building in Contemporary Russia

Author(s): Zelenina, Galina

Date: 2018

Topics: Main Topic: Other, Politics, Jewish Organisations, Jewish Organisations: Representative and Umbrella Bodies, Jewish Politics, Denominations: Chabad-Lubavitch, Denominations: Orthodox

Abstract: In the early 2000s, the Russian branch of Lubavitch Hasidism embodied in the Federation of Jewish communities of Russia became a self-proclaimed speaker for Russian Jewry. The paper argues that the Federation is a nation-building project which succeeded in constructing a rather limited and imported real religious community as well as a large and amorphous “imagined community” and tries to offer some inclusive agenda for Russian Jewry as a whole. Most importantly, the Federation switched from the traditional lachrymose concept of the Jewish nation, and suffering as a core of Jewish identity, to the idea of Jewish and Russian Jewish success, achievement, and heroism. The paper seeks to demonstrate that the reason for this ideological innovation lies in Lubavitch mentality (part and parcel of which is the concept of miracle and ardent messianism) as well as in surrounding all-Russian trends. The Federation’s success story and development of optimistic memories and narratives has been parallel to Russia’s “rising from its knees.” The cornerstone of the Federation’s victory on the Russian Jewish scene - its effective and continuous alliance with Kremlin - shows the same pattern: on the one side, it follows the traditional Lubavitch path; on the other, it reflects the traditional Russian idea of state-church “symphony” and dependence of the latter on the former. The attitude to Judaism on the part of the Russian Jewry that supports the Federation may be defined as “vicarious religion,” and may be compared to the “light burden” of Orthodoxy undertaken by the majority of Russians.