Topics: Main Topic: Other, Interviews, Oral History, Biography and Memoir, Family and Household, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors: Children of, Intermarriage, Jewish Community: Affiliation, Engagement and Involvement, Jewish Identity
Abstract: Immediately after the Holocaust, it seemed inconceivable that a Jewish community would rebuild in Germany. What was once unimaginable has now come to pass: Germany is home to one of Europe’s most vibrant Jewish communities, and it has the fastest growing Jewish immigrant population of any country in the world outside Israel. By sharing the life stories of members of one Jewish family—the Kalmans—Y. Michal Bodemann provides an intimate look at what it is like to live as a Jew in Germany today. Having survived concentration camps in Poland, four Kalman siblings—three brothers and a sister—were left stranded in Germany after the war. They built new lives and a major enterprise; they each married and had children. Over the past fifteen years Bodemann conducted extensive interviews with the Kalmans, mostly with the survivors’ ten children, who were born between 1948 and 1964. In these oral histories, he shares their thoughts on Judaism, work, family, and community. Staying in Germany is not a given; four of the ten cousins live in Israel and the United States. Among the Kalman cousins are an art gallery owner, a body builder, a radio personality, a former chief financial officer of a prominent U.S. bank, and a sculptor. They discuss Zionism, anti-Semitism, what it means to root for the German soccer team, Schindler’s List, money, success, marriage and intermarriage, and family history. They reveal their different levels of engagement with Judaism and involvement with local Jewish communities. Kalman is a pseudonym, and their anonymity allows the family members to talk with passion and candor about their relationships and their lives as Jews.
Abstract: This PhD thesis focuses on the creation and maintenance of the liberal Jewish community in present day Cologne, Germany. The community has the telling name Gescher LaMassoret, which translates into „Bridge to Tradition.‟ The name gives away that this specific community, its individual members and its struggles cannot be understood without the socio-historic context of Germany and the Holocaust. Although this Jewish community is not a community of Holocaust survivors, the dichotomy Jewish-German takes various shapes within the community and surfaces in the narratives of the individual members. These narratives reflect the uniqueness of each individual in the community. While this is a truism, this individual uniqueness is a key element in Gescher LaMassoret, whose membership consists of people from various countries who have various native languages. Furthermore, the community comprises members of Jewish descent as well as Jews of conversion who are of German, non- Jewish parentage. Due to the aftermaths of the Holocaust and the fact that Gescher LaMassoret houses a vast internal diversity, the creation of this community which lacks any tradition happens through mixing and meshing the life-stories and other narratives of the members, which flow into the collective narrative of the community. On the surface, the narratives of the individual members seem in conflict, they even contradict each other, which means that the narrative of the community is in constant tension. However, under the dissimilarities on the surface of the individual narratives hide similarities in terms of shared values and attitudes, which allow for enough overlaps to create a community by way of braiding a collective narrative, which offers the members to experience a 'felt ethnicity.'
Topics: Jewish Populations and Ethnicities: Anusim / Crypto-Jews / Marranos, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Ethnography, Jewish Community, Jewish Identity, Jewish Peoplehood, Diaspora and Relations Between Diaspora Countries, Globalisation, Tourism, Jewish Populations and Ethnicities: Sephardi, Jewish Community: Affiliation, Engagement and Involvement
Abstract: This dissertation explores issues of identification, relatedness, and belonging on a global scale, through an ethnographic study of Portugal’s urban Marranos (descendants of fifteenth-century forced converts to Catholicism) and foreign Jews who travel from abroad to meet them. Although not Jewish according to Jewish law, given centuries of intermarriage, Marranos are nonetheless widely considered to be part of “the Jewish family,” “lost brethren” who should be welcomed back to the Jewish people. Many Jews view them within the metanarrative of Jewish destruction and survival, the “eternal spark” that remains despite the Inquisition’s attempted elimination of Judaism from the Portuguese landscape. However, for numerous local reasons the present-day Marranos are not welcomed by Portugal’s tiny normative Jewish community. As a result, the urban Marranos, who feel strongly that they are Jews by descent, turn to foreign Jewish travelers as sources of educational, spiritual, and material assistance in their bid to join
the Jewish world and attain recognition as Jews in the present. Based on two years of fieldwork in Marrano organizations in Lisbon and Porto and traveling alongside Jewish tourists and outreach workers, the dissertation undertakes a processual analysis of the constitution of ancestral Jewish identity and of the role of transnational, cross-cultural affective ties in affording a sense of global Jewish belonging. The primary questions driving this work are, first, how and why do far-flung people come to feel that they are related to one another, and what terms do they use to characterize and think through that feeling of relatedness? Second, to what extent are their perceptions of essential connection disrupted or transformed by face-to-face contact? By interrogating the cultural logics of kinship writ large—the language and conceptual frameworks people use to articulate and make sense of their feelings of relatedness to
one another—and then examining how those logics play out “on the ground,” this study provides a fine-grained ethnographic analysis of the mechanisms through which global and ancestral imaginings become concretized in social interaction. Ultimately, I argue, physical proximity remains the productive sphere for identification and belonging, even as global interconnection provides new opportunities for encounter.
Abstract: Drs. Khanin and Chernin address basic questions regarding Jewish life in the FSU states at present and in the future. A major issue they focused on was this: under current socio-economic and political circumstances in Eastern Europe, many intermarried Jews together with their non-Jewish partners choose to maintain ties with Jewish communities and to take advantage of their educational, information, cultural and welfare services. Consequently, most local Jewish leaders regard this group as a target population for their communal activity. Accordingly, such activity is directed in fact at all those to whom the Israeli Law of Return applies, and sometimes even to those are not included in this category (4th generation members married to non-Jewish spouses, for example).
Some of the questions raised by the center’s researchers were:
1. How significant is the size of this group?
2. Can it be regarded as a human reservoir for Jewish activity?
3. Does this activity contribute to the formation of Jewish or semi-Jewish identity among offspring of mixed-married couples and among the non-Jewish members of their families, and to the evolution of behavioral models that can be interpreted as “post assimilatory” behavior?
In order to address these questions, a vast and diverse body of data was amassed. The authors did not relay only upon existing data but set out on an empirical exploration. They have conducted interviews in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Sertov, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Birobidjan, Tomsk, Petrozavodsk, Chelyabinsk, Nizhni Novgorod, Kazan, Vladimir, Riazen, Tula, Rostov, Piatigorsk, Nalchik, Kiev, Daniepropetrovsk, Odessa, Zaporozhieh, and a number of towns in Belarus and Latvia.
The compelling findings of the research indicate an interesting variety of sub-populations in the vast group called “FSU Jewry”. Specific planning based on the distinctive characteristics and the features of each group can serve as the basis for well-tuned action plans aimed at the strengthening of the Jewish future of each specific sector.
ד"ר חנין וד"ר צ'רנין מעלים במחקרם שאלות יסוד אודות הקיום היהודי בארצות חבר העמים לשעבר, כיום ובעתיד. נושא מרכזי שבו התמקדו היה זה: בתנאים החברתיים-כלכליים והפוליטיים הקיימים במזרח אירופה בימינו, מעדיפים רבים מבני נישואי תערובת, הן בן הזוג היהודי הן בן הזוג הלא-יהודי, ועמם בני המשפחה המעורבים, להיות קשורים לקהילות יהודיות ולהסתייע בשירותיהן בתחומי החינוך, המידע, התרבות והרווחה. עקב כך, רוב המנהיגים היהודיים המקומיים רואים בקבוצה זו "קבוצות יעד" לפעילות הקהילתית. בהתאם לכך, פעילות זו מופנית בפועל לכל זכאי חוק השבות הישראלי, ולעתים אף לאוכלוסיה החורגת מגבולות המוגדר בחוק זה (כגון בני הדור הרביעי לנישואי תערובת).
במחקרם, שאלו החוקרים את השאלות הבאות:
א. עד כמה משמעותי הוא היקפה של קבוצה זו?
ב. האמנם ניתן לראות בה עתודה לפעילות יהודית?
ג. האם פעילות זו תורמת לעיצוב זהות יהודית או כעין-יהודית אצל צאצאי נישואי תערובת ובני משפחה לא-יהודיים של בתי אב מעורבים, ולבניית דגמי התנהגות חברתית שניתן לפרשם כ"בתר-התבוללות"?
כדי להשיב על שאלות אלו, נאספו נתונים מרובים ומגוונים. החוקרים לא הסתפקו בנתונים קיימים, אלא יצאו לשטח כדי לבדוק את הנתונים באופן ישיר. הם ערכו ראיונות במקומות אלו: מוסקבה, סנט פטרבורג, יקטרינבורג, סמרה, סרטוב, נובוסיבירסק, אירקוטסק, חברובסק, בירוביג'אן, טומסק, פטרוזבודסק, צ'ליאבינסק, ניז'ני נובגורוד, קאזן, ולדימיר, ריאזן, טולא, רוסטוב, פיאטיגורסק, נלצ'יק, קייב, דנייפרופטרובסק, אודסה, זאפורוז'יה, וכן כמה ערים בביילורוסיה ובלטביה.
ממצאי המחקר מצביעים על מגוון מעניין של אוכלוסיות-מִשנה בתוך הקבוצה הגדולה המכונה 'יהדות חבר העמים'. תכנון ממוקד, המתבסס על מאפיינים ייחודיים של כל קבוצה, עשוי להוות בסיס לתכניות פעולה ממוקדות, שתכליתן חיזוק עתידו היהודי של כל מגזר ספציפי.
