Abstract: A progresszív judaizmus egy reformer zsidó vallási mozgalom és ideológia, amelynek gyökerei a felvilágosodásig nyúlnak vissza. Ma világviszonylatban követőinek számát tekintve a legnépesebb zsidó vallási irányzat. Magyarországon az első progresszív szervezetet a rendszerváltozás időszakában alapították. Vallási vezetője egy női rabbi lett, ami különösen szembetűnővé tette újító, szabadelvű, emancipált felfogását és gyakorlatát. Integrációs törekvéseit határozott elutasítás fogadta a tágabb zsidó vallási mezőben. A disszertáció a progresszív judaizmus hazai megjelenésének társadalmi körülményeivel és szerepével foglalkozik. Megvizsgálja, hogyan és milyen tényezők hatására alakult a hazai progresszív szervezetek helyzete – társadalmi bázisa, támogatottsága, elfogadottsága és erőforrás-ellátottsága – fennállásuk óta. Igyekszik megragadni a közösségi-felekezeti vonzás fontosabb elemeit, és arra keresi a választ, kik számára és miért vonzó, milyen igényeknek tesz eleget, milyen funkciót tölt be a hívek életében és a társadalomban. A több mint egy évtizedet átfogó kutatás első eredményei rávilágítottak arra, hogy a progresszív közösséghez való csatlakozás motivációi nem szűkíthetők le a vallásosságra és a valláshoz való visszatérésre, ezért a kutatás a továbbiakban kiemelt figyelmet fordított annak megismerésére és magyarázatára, hogy milyen tényezők alakítják az egyéni és társadalmi cselekvéseket. A mozgatórugókat az egyének saját interpretációin keresztül, a társadalmi cselekvéseket a maguk természetes közegében, alapvetően résztvevő megfigyelésen alapuló terepmunka során vizsgálta. Az empirikus tapasztalatok arra engednek következtetni, hogy a zsidó vallásnak és hagyománynak a zsidó identitásépítésben is komoly szerepe van, és az egyének társadalmi cselekvését zsidó önazonosságuk, illetve ezzel kapcsolatos útkeresésük irányítja. A szerző a szakirodalom vonatkozó elméleteinek és téziseinek áttekintésével, az azokra való reflexió során igyekezett kialakítani egy olyan keretet, amelybe a kutatási tapasztalatok értelmezése komplex módon ágyazható.
Abstract: Culture is the cornerstone where societies have always supported their respective identities. It is a way of life, as long as it expresses not only the values, but also the education, the art, and the daily life of all those who live and work in a society. Thessaloniki has been a multicultural city, gathering populations from different nations and religions over time. The city was a refuge destination for many persecuted Jews in Europe, between 1492 and 1943, which led to the creation of a large Jewish community. As a result, the long tradition combined with the several elements of Jewish cultural interest attracts a large number of tourists from Israel every year. This paper presents the main research results conducted in Thessaloniki regarding tourists’ from Israel motivations and characteristics, but also their main elements of interest. Thessaloniki has all the essential elements, such as history, tradition, monuments, infrastructure, and services for the development of cultural tourism. These, however, need to be improved, so that the city of Thessaloniki becomes a more popular tourist destination for Israelis.
Abstract: Jewish emigration from Israel of the recent decades brought the creation of the communities of Israeli passport holders in the various countries of the world, including Russia and other post-Soviet states. Although this fact is commonly accepted as a totally new phenomenon, the returned migration of Russian and other Jews, who first immigrated to their historical Homeland - the Land of Israel/Palestine, and in a period of time came back to Russia has centuries-long history. In the 17th - 19th centuries this trend included Jerusalem and other Palestine Jewish communities' envoys, educators and fundraisers, who visited Russian and East European Jewish communities and sometimes stayed there for years, as well as Russian Jewish pilgrims to the Holy Land, who on returning were often respected as «representatives» of the Land of Israel and its Jewry. Some members of First, Second and Third Zionist Aliyot (waves of Jewish ideological repatriation) to the Land of Israel/Palestine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries created another substantial group of «Israeli Returnees» to Russia and the USSR. The article shows that typical patterns of immigrants from the Palestine to Russia and the early USSR are very close to, or even similar with «ideological re-immigrants», envoys, labor migrants, «economic refugees», and other relevant subgroups among current Israeli diaspora in Russia and the CIS.
Abstract: La civiltà ebraica, lungo più di tre millenni e in tanta diffusione di luoghi, ha conosciuto, sulla base di fondamenti essenziali, per influenza degli eventi, una varietà di pensiero, di riti, di aspetti. La modernità, dal Settecento illuministico, e l’emancipazione, seguita dall’integrazione, in paesi progrediti, ha suscitato un fermento di riforma, per esigenza di adeguamenti. È così sorta, a partire dalla Germania, una corrente dell’Ebraismo, detta Reform o Liberale o Progressiva, con sfumature di termini e gradazioni. Si è propagata, per somiglianza di situazioni, in altri paesi europei e specialmente negli Stati Uniti di America. Contrapposta alla Riforma si è configurata, sul versante più tradizionalista, una Ortodossia ebraica, a sua volta suddivisa in riti e tendenze. Si è anche formata una corrente intermedia detta comunemente Conservative. Entro la stessa Riforma vi sono stati i radicali e i temperati, con tendenza al ricupero della tradizione e dell’identità ebraica di popolo. Una innovazione cospicua è la parità dei generi nel culto. Altra denominazione è il Ricostruzionismo che si incontra nel libro.
Tra gli ebrei d’Italia si sono manifestate nell’Ottocento sia propensioni riformistiche, sia maggiormente tradizionaliste. La nascita nel nostro paese di una organizzata corrente progressiva è recente e dovuta in parte agli aumentati scambi con i correligionari di altri paesi, così come gli scambi hanno reso più accentuata, su talune questioni, la linea del Rabbinato italiano. La presenza progressiva è esigua in Italia, ma anche le minoranze meritano di esser conosciute, tanto più essendo parte dell’Ebraismo italiano, esso stesso una minoranza.
Abstract: En transformant les Juifs en citoyens, la Révolution française bouleverse leur statut. La logique révolutionnaire, hostile par principe aux corps intermédiaires, incite les Juifs à renoncer à leur structure communautaire propre. L'intégration à la Nation est désormais leur but : c'est seulement dans la sphère privée qu'ils peuvent préserver leurs traditions et leur fidélité.
Pierre Birnbaum ne se contente pas de retracer l'histoire des épousailles entre la France et ses Juifs, avec ses temps forts, ses moments de crise et ses grandes figures. Il développe une thèse originale : après avoir été longtemps l'agent de l'uniformisation républicaine et laïque, c'est aujourd'hui l'Etat qui incite les Juifs à se constituer en une communauté, largement « imaginaire ». Philosémitisme républicain et antisémitisme nationaliste se renforcent curieusement et « communautarisent par le haut » les Juifs français, tentés eux-mêmes de reconstituer, « par le bas », une communauté.
Le chemin de la Révolution française à Carpentras symboliserait-il le passage imprévu de la citoyenneté à la communauté ?
Abstract: This thesis critically examines the public representation of medieval Anglo-Jewish history today through a cross-section of medieval Anglo-Jewish communities which act as case studies; Winchester, York, Norwich, Bristol, and Northampton respectively. These case studies frame the investigation of issues associated with the limited and often contested archaeological evidence relating to England’s medieval Jews, as well as the frequent tendency of contemporary public facing history to focus on the negative aspects of medieval Jewish life, notably by highlighting persecution and victimisation. It also analyses the development of the most recent public facing interpretations of medieval Anglo-Jewish history in each location, which have been deliberately chosen to provide a range of towns and cities which contain evidence of alleged medieval Jewish human remains.
The assessment of key stakeholders in the public representation of medieval Anglo-Jews was central to this study, and as such this thesis carefully considered the roles of various stakeholders in the preservation and representation of medieval Anglo-Jewish history and memory. Within this thesis, each stakeholder had a valid voice in the assessment of how the history and memory of England’s medieval Jews had been treated and represented. Decolonialist research methodologies were herein utilised in order to fully address the complexities of the various voices of stakeholders; from the perspectives of individuals, communities, and organisations, through a sensitive approach towards respectful interviewing and data collection. This thesis, therefore, provides a uniquely rounded interpretation of stakeholder involvement and investment in how medieval Anglo-Jewish communities are remembered today.
The history and memory of medieval Anglo-Jews has been subject to periods of omission and marginalisation, with the study of medieval Jewish history often hindered by a lack of sources on everyday life. This thesis contributes to the increasingly multi- and inter-disciplinary study of England’s medieval Jews through the application of Death Studies, offers new hypotheses based on traditional Jewish approaches to death ritual and burial practice, and provides fresh insights into aspects of medieval Jewish life with a focus on the dead.
Abstract: Modern Greek historiography has rendered Salonican Jews invisible in the national historical narrative, while those occasional works appearing in the past decades have treated them as a coherent and isolated community. In the 1970s and 1980s, a leftist historiography challenged the nationalist narrative but replaced it with a methodological ethnocentrism. The “new Greek history” was almost exclusively preoccupied with state formation, failed modernization, class structure, and the impact of the West, neglecting various religious, gender, and ethnic internal “others.” Only in the 1990s did the politics of identity and memory provide a space for the emergence of an interest in Greek-Jewish history. However, reliance on the homogenizing and static concept of community (borrowed from Greek historiography) and the absence of bottom-up, sociohistorical works still result in the exclusion of Salonican Jewry from the historiographical mainstream. The Greek-Jewish historiography of Salonica shares many of the negative features of Greek historiography, and both should turn to a systematic and multidimensional study of crossings and interrelations between axes of difference.
Abstract: Artykuł ten przedstawia najważniejsze wątki krytycznej debaty wokół treści wystawy stałej Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Polin. Analizując różnice między dwoma polami badawczymi – studiami żydowskimi i studiami nad relacjami polsko-żydowskimi – autor broni tezy, że wiele krytycznych głosów w debacie wynika z niezrozumienia różnic między przedmiotem badań tych dwóch pól, po części wynikającego z obecnej sytuacji – panującego nacjonalizmu i etnocentryzmu, wywierających wpływ również na polskie debaty historyczne. Domaganie się od wystawy opowiadającej tysiącletnią historię Żydów na ziemiach polskich, aby koncentrowała się głównie na stosunku społeczeństwa większościowego do Żydów, grozi popełnieniem błędu teleologii, to jest interpretowaniem wcześniejszych wydarzeń i procesów jako nieuchronnie prowadzących do Zagłady, a także pomijaniem wszystkich tych elementów dziejów żydowskich, które z perspektywy Holokaustu i badań nad antysemityzmem nie mają znaczenia. Tego rodzaju postulaty i stojące za nimi metahistoryczne założenia grożą pozbawieniem Żydów roli podmiotów w ich własnej historii. Z drugiej strony autor tekstu wskazuje na elementy narracji wystawy stałej Muzeum Polin, w których rzeczywiście w niedostateczny sposób uwzględniona została problematyka antysemityzmu jako ważnego elementu żydowskiego doświadczenia i kluczowego czynnika dziejów Żydów w Polsce. Przywrócenie rzeczywistego dialogu i komunikacji pomiędzy przedstawicielami studiów żydowskich i badaczami relacji polsko-żydowskich, przy zachowaniu autonomii tych dwóch pól i zrozumieniu różnic pomiędzy nimi, jest też istotne z punktu widzenia niewątpliwych zagrożeń w postaci prób wykorzystania Muzeum Polin w budowie upolitycznionych, bezkrytycznych wizji historii Polski i stosunku Polaków do Żydów.
Abstract: This article analyses how Europe’s ‘Yiddish past’ is presented, commemorated and engaged with in contemporary Europe from a Public History perspective. It investigates the ways in which Yiddish, its culture and its speakers, are inscribed in representations of Jewish history in museums, websites, and other settings. In doing so a distinction is made between Western Europe, where Yiddish-speaking immigrants and their culture formed but a part of local Jewish populations, and Central/Eastern Europe, where Jewish life was to a large extent Yiddish life. The article shows how a growing attention for migration in Western Europe, and the demand for Jewish heritage from abroad in Central and Eastern Europe, drive new and revised versions of Jewish, as well as national, historical narratives. It also contrasts such larger developments and contexts with local, ‘bottom-up’, activities. At the same it moves beyond national contexts and considers the role that European institutions play in preserving Yiddish heritage. The article argues that definitions of Public History, which predominantly focus on how professional historians take history to a broader non-academic public, are insufficient. The case of Yiddish in Europe also highlights the important role of the state in driving public history activities. Key words: Jewish history; Yiddish; Europe; Public History; Representation; Museums.
