Abstract: This chapter focuses on the city of Odesa and its altered reality after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It discusses the different levels of fragmentation that run through the everyday life of a city and its residents and create fissures in identity and kinship, upheavals and reversals of historical memory, and challenges for conducting research during the war. Ukraine has an unusually complex ethno-linguistic and religious composition, with inherited historical divides. As a borderland, it constituted a pronounced case of political and national fragmentation even before the war. Odesa has its own forms of fragmentation, populated as it is by a rich amalgam of people and cut through with the afterlives of empires. The war has intensified all of these forms of fragmentation, bringing different histories into the present. The chapter addresses fragmentation on three different scales: the vignettes of Jewish Odesans reflecting on the war in the contexts of self, family, community, city, and nation; the historical narratives and historical truths revealed by the term “denazification,” which has served as Putin’s justification for the invasion of Ukraine.; and the reflections of a fragmented anthropologist, highlighting ethical dilemmas and practical difficulties of researching a constantly changing and deeply painful reality during the war.
Abstract: The recent Eurozone crisis and the outbreak of political and populist Euroscepticism pose an unprecedented challenge to advocates of the post-war ‘Idea of Europe’. In the United Kingdom and France, some of the most eloquent and impassioned defences of ‘Europe’ have been penned by Jewish intellectuals. The historian Walter Laqueur, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and journalists such as David Aaronovich, for example, have all rallied to the cause of ‘Europe’. This article will focus on the responses of Robert Menasse and Henryk Broder, two Jewish intellectuals from Austria and Germany, who have recently published powerful reflections on the European idea. Menasse’s polemic of 2012, Der Europäische Landbote (The European Courier), defends the idea of Europe as a ‘Friedensprojekt’, or ‘peace project’, and the European Union as an institutional antidote to the destructive power of nationalism and the self-interest of the nation-state. Broder’s bestselling book of 2013, Die letzten Tage Europas: Wie wir eine gute Idee versenken (The Last Days of Europe: How we are Scuppering a Good Idea), embraces ‘European values’ but launches a critique of a European Union which stifles pluralism and critical debate. This paper analyses how Menasse and Broder define the idea of ‘Europe’ and argues that, despite their differences, in form and content, the work of Menasse and Broder draws on a common tradition of enlightened cosmopolitanism as well as informs the renewed academic debate in the humanities and social sciences about the place of ‘cosmopolitanism’ in our global world.
Abstract: The present study investigates the prosodic realization of calling contours by bilingual speakers of Bulgarian and (Bulgarian) Judeo-Spanish and monolingual speakers of Bulgarian in a discourse completion task across three pragmatic contexts: (i) neutral (routine) context—calling a child from afar to come in for dinner; (ii) positive context—calling a child from afar to get a present; and (iii) negative (or urgent) context—calling a child from afar for a chastising. Through quantitative analyses of the F0 span between tonal landmarks, alignment of pitch peaks, intensity, and durational and prominence patterns, we systematically account for the phonetic characteristics of the contours and determine their tonal composition and meaning, thereby situating them within the intonation systems of Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish and Bulgarian. It is shown that both languages use the same inventory of contours: (1) L+H* !H-% (the so-called “vocative chant”), (2) L+H* H-L%, and (3) L+H* L-%. However, their distribution differs across contexts and varieties. Monolingual and bilingual speakers of Bulgarian, on the one hand, predominantly use (1) and (2) in neutral and positive contexts and clearly prefer (3) in negative contexts. In Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish, the bilinguals also more often recur to (3) in neutral and positive contexts and generally show more variation.
Abstract: У статті розглядається вплив масової прощі представників закордонних хасидських громад на динаміку розвитку українсько-єврейських взаємин зокрема та на етнополітичні процеси сучасної України загалом. Актуальність дослідження визначається, по-перше, недостатньою вивченістю вказаного явища у вітчизняній науці; по-друге, тією обставиною, що кількість паломників, які щороку відвідують нашу країну, суттєво перевищує чисельність парафіян місцевих юдейських громад. Специфіка хасидського віровчення вимагає, щоби віруючі регулярно відвідували місця поховання своїх провідних лідерів. Тому, оскільки згаданий релігійний рух зародився саме в Україні, зв’язок з нею багатьох закордонних юдейських релігійних громад тримається на високому рівні, незважаючи на жодні обставини. Ні пандемія, ні війна суттєво не зменшили кількість відвідувачів місць поховання вчителів хасидизму. Наведені автором факти дозволяють виявити дві суперечливі тенденції в реакції місцевих мешканців на прибуття численних послідовників юдейського релігійно-містичного руху: 1. Поширення ворожих настроїв та акцій, скерованих проти прибульців; 2. Зростання зацікавленості в розвитку прощі і збільшення толерантності.
Перша тенденція зумовлена суттєвими розбіжностями у світогляді, культурі та побутових звичках. Вона також є наслідком корупційних проблем, оскільки муніципальна влада вводить до місцевих бюджетів лише малу частину здобутих від паломників коштів. Друга тенденція визначається зацікавленістю місцевих мешканців у заробітках, пов’язаних з обслуговуванням прочан, і толерантністю, яка дедалі більше поширюється в суспільстві. У висновках відзначається, що розвиток дружніх стосунків між місцевим населенням і хасидами-паломниками сприяє позитивній динаміці іміджу українського суспільства не лише в єврейському середовищі, але також і в численних спільнотах сучасного західного світу, які безпосередньо не причетні до юдаїзму. Це, в свою чергу, допоможе Україні під час повоєнної розбудови. Задля вирішення пов’язаних з прощею проблем автор рекомендує низку просвітянських заходів для місцевого населення, регіонального чиновництва та самих паломників.
Abstract: No published research to date has investigated the mental health experiences of Orthodox Jewish adolescents in the UK, although anecdotally, the Jewish mental health community is aware of the prevalence of mental health difficulties amongst young people. This lack of research highlights a serious gap in how to best support this population in the community and in mainstream services. As a first step into this field of study, this research explored the experiences of seven London-based Orthodox Jewish female therapists offering talking therapy to strictly Orthodox Jewish (Chareidi) female adolescents in the private sector, using semi-structured interviews. An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the interview data identified several themes: The therapists navigated personal and professional overlap when working within their own community, dealt with blurred boundaries, and managed the complexities of confidentiality within a close-knit community context. Furthermore, their therapeutic practice was culturally informed, and they applied cultural sensitivity with their clients. The therapists talked about how they helped Chareidi Gen Z on their journey to adulthood and how they experienced both feeling connected to their clients, and feeling disconnected when values were at odds with each other. The implications from this study included the need to engage Orthodox Jewish adolescents in future research so that their voices can be captured, the importance of continuing to increase culturally sensitive mental health promotion, education, and provision within the Chareidi community, and for mainstream services to facilitate access for the Chareidi community by prioritising culturally informed practices and community partnership work.
Abstract: Using a ‘lived religion’ approach, this chapter analyses interviews conducted with Orthodox Jewish women to investigate how women learn about kashrut [Jewish dietary] rules, the resources they use when dealing with kashrut problems, and the kashrut practices that they develop themselves. The research shows the persistence of mimetic, family-based models in the transmission and practice of kashrut among women, thus challenging the scholar Haym Soloveitchik’s famous claim that text-based learning has superseded mimetic learning in the modern Jewish world. The chapter suggests that the two types of learning are strongly gendered, and it explores the differences between the ways men and women learn about and understand kashrut practices. The research highlights the difference, and the tense relationship, between elite text-based culture (almost exclusively male in the Orthodox Jewish world) and popular practice (largely in the hands of women in Orthodox daily kashrut observance) and raises issues of rabbinic control and authority versus family loyalty and self-confidence. The study reveals the divergence between a nominally hegemonic authority of elite, male-authored texts and their interpretation by rabbis, and an unacknowledged lived religion in which women decide everyday ritual practice. Taylor-Guthartz suggests that to gain a complete picture of any religious tradition, knowledge of its elite written aspects must be balanced with the investigation of lived, everyday religious practice, and the complex relationships between these two elements must be appreciated and understood.
Abstract: The number of Israelis in Germany is rather small, with about 20,000 total (Rebhun/Kranz/Sünker 2022: 65), and an additional 5,000 to 10,000 individuals who have a statistically inferred relationship to Israel. Most of this current volume owes to movements to Germany between the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s (ibid.); migration has plateaued since. Drawing on socio-demographic research conducted within the framework of “The Migration of Israeli Jews to Germany since 1990” (GIF 1186), and amending it by on-going, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork carried out amongst Israelis and Jews in Germany since 2002, this paper seeks to address the institutional infrastructures of migration and of social class. While ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002) Israelis migrate to and live in Berlin (Cohen/Gold 2022), they tend to be over-reported in the media, thanks to specific German and Israeli identity investments (Kranz 2022). These Israelis, or more precisely, Israeli Jews, are a smoke screen; they are interpreted as the replacements for the displaced and murdered Jews with the ‘add on’ of Israeliness. They make for a fine case study of understanding German/Jewish/Israeli relations, and unpicking the symbolic Israeli and Jewish capital in combination with the concept of ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002) in situ in Berlin and across Germany.
Abstract: This research considers an existential exploration of the experience of coming out in the Orthodox Jewish community. It is grounded in a qualitative, phenomenological and existential methodology. Eight participants were interviewed, all male between the ages of 20-30, who grew up in the Orthodox Jewish community and came out as gay, a minimum of three years ago. The interviews were semi-structured in nature; they were recorded and transcribed. The interview transcripts were analysed using SEA, a phenomenological and existential research tool. It used two specific features of SEA; the four worlds and its paradoxes, and the timeline tool. Accordingly, data was analysed against the four existential worlds, and the four periods of time identified in the timeline tool; with the moments of coming out being the present focus. Key themes, paradoxes and similarities were drawn out from across the analysis. They were then analysed alongside a consideration of relevant literature, also presented in this study. Overall, significant findings were identified, which both resonated with, supported and questioned existing literature. Findings were linked to four particular time periods: before, during and after coming out, and the ongoing state of participants. The findings relating to the time period before coming out mainly linked to matters around identity and findings linked to the actual moments of coming out mainly related to embodiment overall. The findings of the time period immediately after coming out linked to relationships and emotions, whereas the findings linking to the ongoing state of participants were to do with spirituality and meaning. This study concludes by outlining the valuable contribution these findings have made to Counselling Psychology, as well as areas that have been highlighted as ripe for further research.
Author(s): Waites, William; Pearson, Carl A. B.; Gaskell, Katherine M.; House, Thomas; Pellis, Lorenzo; Johnson, Marina; Gould, Victoria; Hunt, Adam; Stone, Neil RH; Kasstan, Ben; Chantler, Tracey; Lal, Sham; Roberts, Chrissy H.; Goldblatt, David; CMMID COVID-19 Working Group; Marks, Michael; Eggo, Rosalind M.
Author(s): Gaskell, Katherine M.; Johnson, Marina; Gould, Victoria; Hunt, Adam; Stone, Neil RH; Waites, William; Kasstan, Ben; Chantler, Tracey; Lal, Sham; Roberts, Chrissy H.; Goldblatt, David; Eggo, Rosalind M.; Marks, Michael
Abstract: Background
Ethnic and religious minorities have been disproportionately affected by SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. The UK strictly-Orthodox Jewish community has been severely affected by the pandemic. This group shares characteristics with other ethnic minorities including larger family sizes, higher rates of household crowding and relative socioeconomic deprivation. We studied a UK strictly-Orthodox Jewish population to understand transmission of COVID-19 within this community.
Methods
We performed a household-focused cross-sectional SARS-CoV-2 serosurvey between late-October and early December 2020 prior to the third national lockdown. Randomly-selected households completed a standardised questionnaire and underwent serological testing with a multiplex assay for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies. We report clinical illness and testing before the serosurvey, seroprevalence stratified by age and sex. We used random-effects models to identify factors associated with infection and antibody titres.
Findings
A total of 343 households, consisting of 1,759 individuals, were recruited. Serum was available for 1,242 participants. The overall seroprevalence for SARS-CoV-2 was 64.3% (95% CI 61.6-67.0%). The lowest seroprevalence was 27.6% in children under 5 years and rose to 73.8% in secondary school children and 74% in adults. Antibody titres were higher in symptomatic individuals and declined over time since reported COVID-19 symptoms, with the decline more marked for nucleocapsid titres.
Interpretation
In this tight-knit religious minority population in the UK, we report one of the highest SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence levels in the world to date, which was markedly higher than the reported 10% seroprevalence in London at the time of the study. In the context of this high force of infection, all age groups experienced a high burden of infection. Actions to reduce the burden of disease in this and other minority populations are urgently required.
Funding
This work was jointly funded by UKRI and NIHR [COV0335; MR/V027956/1], a donation from the LSHTM Alumni COVID-19 response fund, HDR UK, the MRC and the Wellcome Trust.
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted ethnic minorities in the global north, evidenced by higher rates of transmission, morbidity, and mortality relative to population sizes. Orthodox Jewish neighbourhoods in London had extremely high SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence rates, reflecting patterns in Israel and the US. The aim of this paper is to examine how responsibilities over health protection are conveyed, and to what extent responsibility is sought by, and shared between, state services, and ‘community’ stakeholders or representative groups, and families in public health emergencies.
The study investigates how public health and statutory services stakeholders, Orthodox Jewish communal custodians and households sought to enact health protection in London during the first year of the pandemic (March 2020–March 2021). Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted across these cohorts. Findings demonstrate that institutional relations – both their formation and at times fragmentation – were directly shaped by issues surrounding COVID-19 control measures. Exchanges around protective interventions (whether control measures, contact tracing technologies, or vaccines) reveal diverse and diverging attributions of responsibility and authority.
The paper develops a framework of public health relations to understand negotiations between statutory services and minority groups over responsiveness and accountability in health protection. Disaggregating public health relations can help social scientists to critique who and what characterises institutional relationships with minority groups, and what ideas of responsibility and responsiveness are projected by differently-positioned stakeholders in health protection.
Author(s): Zuriaga, Ana; Flannigan, Liam; Wilson, Joanne; Weiss, Sarah; Rottenberg, Gitit; Klynman, Nicole; Schwartz, Ellen Corine; Billett, Julie; Katz, Jacqueline; Weil, Leonora G.
Abstract: Background
There is a need for a specific programme of engagement around COVID-19 vaccination with the Charedi Orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill, London, UK. We co-produced a live event for women on COVID-19 safety and vaccination and wider health topics to support vaccine uptake and improve awareness of health and wellbeing issues.
Methods
For this qualitative analysis, we organised an event that was designed and delivered by a local community organisation in partnership with regional and local health partners and community groups. The event was for Charedi women aged 16 years and older, and provided information on COVID-19, childhood immunisations, oral health and dental hygiene, childhood respiratory infections, and mental health. The event included health stalls, a panel session, co-designed culturally competent physical information, and the opportunity to speak with health professionals. We evaluated the event using attendees' feedback forms, collected in person at the end of the event, and a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with organisers from community and statutory organisations. The evaluation was informed by a co-produced logic model and outcomes framework.
Findings
More than 100 women attended the event on March 28, 2022. Feedback suggested the focus on wider health issues was valued, and a greater number of more targeted events (eg on health for women older than 40) would be beneficial. Dental health, COVID-19 vaccination, and childhood immunisations were identified as the most important topics by participants. 16 (55%) of 29 respondents stated they would attend a similar event again, 12 (41%) stated they were unsure, and one (3%) said they would not attend again. Informal feedback from the community highlighted that the event was useful and acted as a basis for further engagement and collaboration with the community.
Interpretation
Our findings emphasised the need to work in partnership with a lead community organisation to identify and address principal health challenges within communities, to share community-specific insights, and to promote community events through community communication channels. Statutory institutions should engage with local community organisations to support and facilitate public health interventions to increase relevant vaccine uptake and to improve awareness around wider health and wellbeing issues and services.
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."
Abstract: Jewish and Muslim women seeking to claim certain rights in the religious realm in France today, such as access to religious study, ritual space and public religious roles, are confronted with obstacles to gender justice both in Orthodox Judaism and in mainstream Islam. In this article, I begin by taking a brief look at strategies used by women in other countries to curtail male monopolies while remaining inside Orthodox Judaism and mainstream Islam: creating all-female spaces, partnering with men and advancing from within hegemonic institutions. These have produced new religious functions for women, including women imams and female Orthodox rabbis, Jewish and Muslim female spiritual guides (maharat, murshidat), women experts and counselors in Islamic and Jewish law (alimat, yo‘atzot halakhah), Jewish legal advocates (to‘anot rabbaniyot) and female judges (qadiya) in shari‘a courts. I then survey the situation in France, where few such innovations have taken hold. I conclude by suggesting some explanations for their absence (in Orthodox Judaism) or their very slow evolution (in Islam) in the French context.
Abstract: Lorsqu’un tribunal allemand à Cologne décida que l’ablation du prépuce pour motif religieux relève de coups et blessures volontaires, il ne pensait pas faire de politique. Lorsque les porte-parole des Juifs en Allemagne s’indignèrent que cette décision revienne en somme à bannir les juifs du pays, éclata un scandale politique national aux proportions mondiales. La chancelière Angela Merkel, rapporte-t-on, réagit en disant « Je ne veux pas que l’Allemagne soit le seul pays au monde dans lequel les Juifs ne peuvent pratiquer leurs rites. Sinon on passerait pour une nation de guignols ». En réalité ce n’est pas le ridicule que l’Allemagne craignait, c’était qu’après avoir tenté d’éradiquer les Juifs d’Europe, avec un certain succès, elle affiche une inhospitalité foncière à l’égard des Juifs. Mais il n’est pas fortuit que ce soit précisément en Allemagne que les droits de l’homme, les droits les plus individuels, soient scrupuleusement approfondis jusqu’à une conclusion politiquement intenable.
Le tribunal de Cologne, en pénalisant la berit milah, ne fait pas de politique, il protège l’intégrité physique de la personne et déclenche pourtant un scandale politique et des réactions en chaîne qui poussèrent le législateur allemand à amender dans l’urgence cette embarrassante décision. Et les juifs, lorsqu’ils circoncisent, que font-ils exactement ? Les anthropologues ont échafaudés un ensemble d’hypothèses sur la fonction de la circoncision. Les réponses varient selon le groupe étudié, mais souvent se chevauchent…
Abstract: Si l’on considère à deux ans de distance le débat sur la circoncision qui a secoué l’Allemagne en 2012, et du point de vue d’un combattant juif alors focalisé uniquement sur la circoncision juive de garçons, ma conclusion est que la circoncision a perdu son innocence. Certes, il y a toujours eu des livres de Juifs et des articles de non-Juifs pour s’en prendre à la circoncision ; et certes, il y eut de nombreuses discussions sur certaines pratiques, comme la Metzitza bePeh, la succion du sang par le mohel qui exécute la circoncision, par exemple quant à savoir si l’usage d’une paille en verre devait être rendu obligatoire – et malgré tout, la circoncision était un acte qui semblait aller de soi. Et quiconque souhaitait y renoncer pour son fils y renonçait.
Or, avec le débat sur la circoncision, qui a eu lieu dans une Europe centrale qui considère la religion avec méfiance dès qu’elle poursuit des buts autres que thérapeutiques, les choses ont changé d’un coup. Au prétexte des complications qui survinrent lors de la circoncision d’un garçon musulman, circoncision qui n’avait pour ainsi dire rien à avoir avec une berit milah (considérant l’âge du garçon, le lieu, les participants et les conditions de l’acte) – la circoncision a été prise dans une spirale de légitimations, qui n’avait pour ainsi dire rien à voir avec le rapport que la majorité des juifs entretiennent à l’égard de cette tradition, ou, pour employer ici le terme religieux, de cette mitsvah.
Abstract: Partons d’un constat, qui est à l’origine de notre volonté – avec Danielle Cohen-Levinas – d’organiser ce colloque pour le penser collectivement : en juin 2012, un jugement de la cour d’appel de Cologne déclarait la circoncision d’un enfant pour des raisons religieuses constitutive d’atteinte à l’intégrité corporelle. Cette pratique très ancienne et commune au judaïsme et à l’islam était dès lors interdite dans toute l’Allemagne. Quelques semaines plus tard, l’Autriche et les hôpitaux universitaires de certains cantons suisses décidaient à leur tour d’un moratoire sur les circoncisions rituelles. Dans cette Allemagne repentante depuis des décennies, les Juifs se sont retrouvés de manière inattendue et soudaine au cœur d’une polémique puissante qui les renvoyait, aux côtés des musulmans, à une pratique décrétée mutilatrice, archaïque, voire barbare. Ce rituel, fondamental au point que son interdiction rendait impossible la présence juive en Allemagne, selon le Zentralrat der Juden, semblait contredire et bafouer des valeurs essentielles de la République fédérale. Ce débat s’est élargi, puisqu’en octobre 2013 c’est le Conseil de l’Europe qui publiait un avis préconisant de légiférer dans le sens d’une limitation, voire d’une interdiction de la circoncision rituelle à l’échelle du continent. L’affaire est sérieuse, une incompatibilité entre l’Europe et ses minorités juive et musulmane est explicitement énoncée, ce fait est sans précédent depuis la fin du nazisme.
Abstract: Cet article vise à analyser les raisons pour lesquelles des femmes françaises et juives libérales ont été ordonnées rabbines tardivement, en 1990, malgré un principe d’égalité en vigueur depuis 1846, et en si petit nombre. Cette question sera abordée dans une perspective féministe, à l’aide d’approches et de concepts issus de la sociologie des
organisations et du travail. Nous tenterons de comprendre les mécanismes de « plafond de verre » (Laufer, 2004) et de vitrail (de Gasquet, 2009), qui freinent l’accès de ces femmes aux postes de pouvoir et à la fonction de rabbin selon l’approche « Genre – Organisation – Système » (Fagenson, 1990), approche non encore employée dans les études des institutions religieuses juives. Nous verrons alors que le poids du patriarcat systémique, un rabbinat organisé selon des valeurs, des modèles et une gestion masculine, ainsi que l’autocensure des femmes et l’enfermement des hommes dans des stéréotypes genrés, ont contribué à la construction d’un plafond de vitrail qui a eu raison des principes égalitaires.
Abstract: Cette recherche envisage la tension entre une conception englobante de la religion portée par les juifs orthodoxes et une conception privatisée et plurielle en vigueur dans la société française, une société laïque et sécularisée, des années 1980 à nos jours. Cette tension est explorée depuis ces deux points de vue. D’une part, elle interroge comment les juifs orthodoxes s’organisent pour ménager l’espace jugé nécessaire à leur pratique religieuse. Pour ce faire, elle explore leurs besoins, leurs demandes, ainsi que les stratégies qu’ils mettent en œuvre pour les porter. D’autre part, elle soulève la question de la gouvernance publique du religieux. Pour ce faire, elle étudie la manière dont l’État laïc appréhende une minorité religieuse, qui semble aller à contre-courant du mouvement de fond de la sécularisation. A partir d’un protocole de recherche mixte, et en mobilisant la sociologie électorale, la sociologie de l’action collective, l’analyse des politiques publiques, et des outils de sociologie de la religion, elle teste la consistance de l’intégralisme des juifs orthodoxes dans la société française. Elle réfléchit ainsi à la gouvernance de minorités religieuses intégralistes, à partir d’un autre cas que l’islam, et distingue ce qui relève d’une religion en particulier ou de l’orthodoxie. Elle montre une érosion de l’intégralisme religieux, du fait de réponses défavorables des institutions publiques et de la sécularisation qu’il ne parvient pas à enrayer.
Abstract: Un nombre considérable de juifs a quitté la France dans la dernière décennie, sans que les paroles rassurantes émanant des plus hautes autorités de l’État aient pu arrêter l’hémorragie. Quant à ceux qui restent, ils ne peuvent éviter l’idée de devoir peut-être partir un jour, au regard des événements et d’un climat général dont chacun perçoit le poids.
La sociologie politique, curieusement, n’a que bien peu à dire sur un tel phénomène. Prolixe sur la question de l’immigration, elle est pratiquement muette sur le fait que la France ait pu ainsi devenir une terre d’émigration. Qu’est-il donc arrivé ? Pour le comprendre, l’invocation commode des tensions intercommunautaires et du radicalisme islamiste est bien loin de suffire. C’est une généalogie au long cours de notre situation qui est requise, une restitution des dynamiques complexes où sont intriqués, depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les juifs, l’Europe et l’État d’Israël.
De cette manière, et de cette manière seulement, l’un des points les plus sensibles du malaise politique actuel peut enfin être affronté.
Abstract: Love, to a significant other, can be the motivation for migration, inform a migration trajectory, or provide reasons for remaining in situ. Even so, love remains in the undercurrents of migration research. It is not explicitly addressed, even though it underpins migration within the constellation of arranged marriage, or if the pursuit of love is limited by social structures, or law. This paper links the dynamics of agentic love and self-initiated migration by way of German (non-Jewish) and Israeli (Jewish) migrants in Israel and Germany, respectively. It highlights individual trajectories of love migrants, establishing that love within the area of migration studies needs to be conceptualised as multifaceted and complex, at times contradictory, and as part of an affective trajectory of the migration process; and that the ability to follow up on falling in love, and to actualise love, cannot be unhinged from privilege.
Abstract: W niniejszym artykule prezentujemy macierzyńskie doświadczenia trzech kobiet żydowskiego pochodzenia. Dane zebrane zostały za po-mocą wywiadu swobodnego z elementami narracji, a analizowane za pomocą językowo-narracyjnej metody analizy tekstu. Głównym pyta-niem, na które staramy się znaleźć odpowiedź, jest: Jakie typy macie-rzyństwa prezentują matki Żydówki? I czym charakteryzuje się każdy z nich? Cele artykułu to: (1) Zestawienie trzech stylów macierzyństwa i charakterystyka każdego z nich, (2) Ukazanie znaczenia transfe-ru kultury pochodzenia i wychowania dla pełnienia roli rodzicielskiej przez kobiety pochodzenia żydowskiego. W artykule przedstawiamy kulturowy wzór macierzyństwa, zestawiamy figurę matki-Polki z Jidy-sze Mame. Następnie prezentujemy szczegółowe założenia metodolo-giczne. W kolejnej części charakteryzujemy trzy typy macierzyństwa: jednokulturowe, dwukulturowe i wielokulturowe. Nasze analizy prowa-dzą do wniosków końcowych, wskazujących na to, że pomimo współ-czesnych przemian społecznych nadal za religijne wychowanie dzieci odpowiadają matki. Jednocześnie wskazujemy na podobieństwa po-między matką-Polką a Jidysze Mame.WprowadzenieMacierzyństwo to z jednej strony bardzo zindywidualizowane doświadczenie wielu kobiet, z drugiej – zjawisko niezwykle złożone, wieloaspektowe, dające asumpt do naukowych dociekań w obrębie wielu dyscyplin naukowych, w tym także pedagogiki. W literaturze znaleźć można rozważania na temat biologicznych aspektów stawa-nia się matką (np. Lichtenberg-Kokoszka 2008; Nowakowska 2014), analizy dotyczące społeczno-kulturowych uwarunkowań macierzyń-stwa (np. Budrowska 2000; Grzelińska 2012; Maciarz 2004; Sikor-ska 2012) czy też zmagania z rolą matki w kontekście innych ról życiowych (np. Pryszmont-Ciesielska 2011; Sokołowska 2013). Co ważne, wiele badań z tego obszaru prowadzonych jest w oparciu o narracje samych matek, zapisy doświadczeń konkretnych kobiet, funkcjonujących w różnych warunkach społecznych, ekonomicznych
Abstract: Built from nothing on the Parisian periphery in the 1950s, the neighbourhood known as Les Flanades in Sarcelles is perhaps the single largest North African Jewish urban space in France. Though heavily policed since 2000, Les Flanades had been free from violence. However, on 20 July 2014, violence erupted close to the central synagogue (known as la grande syna’) during a banned pro-Palestinian march. The violence pitted protestors and residents against one another in a schematic Israel v. Palestine frame leading to confrontations between many descendants of North African Jews and Muslims. Using that moment as a strong indicator of a broken solidarity/affinity between people of North African descent, Everett’s article traces a process of de-racialization, amongst Jews in Les Flanades, through the use of place names. North African Jewish residents use the local names of first-, second- and third-generation residents for their neighbourhood, ranging from from Bab El-Oued (a suburb of Algiers), via un village méditerranéen (a Mediterranean village), to la petite Jérusalem (little Jerusalem). Using the lens of postcolonial and racialization theory—a lens seldomly applied to France, and even less so to Jews in France—and a hybrid methodology that combines ethnography with discursive and genealogical analyses, Everett traces the unevenness of solidarity/affinity between Muslim and Jewish French citizens of North African descent and the messy production of de-racialization. This approach involves looking at shifting landscapes and changing dynamics of demography, religiosity and security and describing some tendencies that resist these changes consciously or not. Examples include the re-appropriation of Arabic para-liturgy and an encounter with a lawyer from Sarcelles who has taken a stand in prominent racialized public legal contests.
Abstract: This article explores the relationship between marriage and conversion from a critical gender perspective, based on a comparative ethnographic study of women’s conversion to Judaism, Islam and Christianity in the Netherlands. In the study of religion and gender, a valuable conceptual framework developed that questions the limited representation of religious women (as somehow ‘oppressed’) and recognises agency within observance. However, up to now, theories and conceptualisations of female conversion have not been able to successfully deal with the tension between individual agency and relationality, more concretely: between individual choice and the impact of intimate relationships. This article suggests a framework more capable of grasping the complexities of conversion and marriage, by introducing the concept of mixedness. In this approach, relationships are understood as agential spaces of religious becoming. Conversion forms and reforms what is ‘mixed’ within a relationship, and intimate relationships indeed play an important role in religious becoming. The goal is to move beyond the binary options that women seem to have to vocalise their process: either they convert because of someone else (implying less agency) or their religious transformation is an expression of autonomous, individual choice (neglecting the impact of relationships). Mixedness highlights the dynamic and fluid aspects of intimate relationships, whilst simultaneously focusing on the interactions between the couples’ experiences of mixedness and social norms of majority and minority religio-racial groups.
Abstract: This article analyses the experiences of Dutch women who became Jewish via a giyur process. While the past decade has seen an increased interest in the ethnographic study of women’s conversion, little is known about the process of giyur from a gender and everyday perspective, which is what this article focuses on. This is based on ethnographic research and interviews with 20 (Orthodox and non-Orthodox) converts. The main focus of this article is on the negotiations of gender and power in the process of giyur. The role of gender difference seemed to be one of the most important experienced differences between Orthodox and Liberal/Progressive forms of Jewish life. Not only is there an impact in the decision to join one or another community, but notions of gender and sexuality also influence the whole process of giyur, from first attraction to continued learning, implementation, and practicing of a “Jewish life.” Women have to deal with the power of the rabbinic court, who eventually can decide whether a candidate is allowed to become Jewish. However, questions of authority and individual choice played a role in different gendered areas as well: the position of women in the synagogue, reflections on the impact of relationships and the implementation of certain commandments in their everyday lives. Analysing these dynamics offers insight into the intersections of gender, power and conversion, as well as the role of gender in contemporary Jewry.
