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
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: Antisemitismiä on esiintynyt eri muodoissa useimmissa yhteiskunnissa vuosisatojen ajan. Viime vuosina
juutalaisvähemmistöt ovat eri puolilla maailmalla raportoineet lisääntyneistä antisemitistisistä kokemuksista etenkin sen jälkeen, kun äärijärjestö Hamas hyökkäsi Israeliin 7. lokakuuta 2023.
Tämä selvitys keskittyy itsensä juutalaiseksi identifioivien henkilöiden näkemyksiin ja kokemuksiin
antisemitismistä ja syrjinnästä. Se perustuu määrälliseen ja laadulliseen aineistoon. Tutkimus kohdennettiin 16 vuotta täyttäneille henkilöille, jotka pitävät itseään juutalaisina joko uskonnon, kulttuurin,
kasvatuksen, etnisyyden, sukulaisuussuhteen tai muun syyn perusteella, ja jotka tutkimuksen tekohetkellä asuivat Suomessa.
Selvityksen tiedonkeruu toteutettiin kahdessa vaiheessa. Ensin suoritettiin kyselytutkimus (4.10.–
4.11.2023), jossa vastaajat kertoivat mielipiteitään muun muassa antisemitismistä, kohtaamistaan
antisemitistisistä tapauksista joko internetissä tai sen ulkopuolella, huolistaan antisemitistisen hyökkäyksen uhriksi joutumisesta sekä syrjintäkokemuksistaan Suomessa. Kyselyyn vastasi 334 henkilöä, mikä
laskentatavasta riippuen vastaa noin 17–22 prosenttia Suomessa asuvista juutalaisista. Tutkimuksen
toisessa vaiheessa järjestettiin kaksi fokusryhmähaastattelua, joihin osallistui henkilöitä kuudesta eri
juutalaisjärjestöstä. Heiltä kysyttiin antisemitismin vaikutuksista järjestöjen toimintaan ja jäsenistön elämään. Molemmat fokusryhmähaastattelut toteutettiin 15. marraskuuta 2023.
Vastaajista suurin osa ilmoitti, että antisemitismi on lisääntynyt Suomessa viiden viime vuoden aikana. Vastaajat arvioivat, että suurin ongelma on internetissä ja sosiaalisessa mediassa ilmenevä antisemitismi, ja seuraavaksi suurinta ongelma on mediassa ja poliittisessa elämässä.
Kyselyn tuloksien ja fokusryhmähaastattelujen pohjalta laadittiin suosituksia antisemitismin torjumiseksi, juutalaisvähemmistön turvallisuuden edistämiseksi ja juutalaisen kulttuurin suojaamiseksi myös
moninkertaisten vähemmistöjen näkökulmasta. Suosituksia annettiin myös koulutukseen, juutalaisiin
kohdistuvan väkivallan, syrjinnän ja viharikosten ehkäisyyn, juutalaisen elämän ja kulttuurin turvaamiseen sekä juutalaisuuden tutkimukseen.
Abstract: This article draws on an ongoing research project that seeks to document ethnographically everyday Jewish life in Finland today. Based on the framework of vernacular religion, it approaches religion “as it is lived” (Primiano 1995) and analyses the many expressions and experiences of rules in day-to-day Jewish life as part of complex interactions between individuals, institutions, and religious motivations. Historical data, institutional structures and cultural context are put in dialogue with individual narratives and nuances, described as “self-motivated” ways of “doing” religion.
In this article, we seek to investigate what a vernacular Jewish approach to making, bending, and breaking rules amounts to in a community where increasing diversity and deep-reaching secularity contest and reshape traditional boundaries of belonging. What rules are accepted, adopted and appropriated as necessary or meaningful for being and doing Jewish? Our analysis traces how static values and conceptions of “Jewishness” give way to more flexible subjective positions as our interviewees struggle to find religiously and culturally significant models from the past that can be subjectively appropriated today. Both everyday quandaries and existential questions influence their ways of crafting vernacular religious positions. Focusing on formal and personal rituals related particularly to family life and foodways, the article shows how rules are revisited and refashioned as the traditional boundaries between sacred and secular, gendered practices and ethnic customs, are transgressed and subjective combinations are developed.
Abstract: This article introduces a new analytical model for researching vernacular religion, which aims to capture and describe everyday religiosity as an interplay between knowing, being, and doing religion. It suggests three processes that tie this triad together: continuity; change; and context. The model is envisaged as a tool for tracing vernacular religion in ethnographic data in a multidimensional yet structured framework that is sensitive to historical data and cultural context, but also to individual narratives and nuances. It highlights the relationship between self-motivated modes of religiosity and institutional structures, as well as influences from secular sources and various traditions and worldviews.
The article is based on an ongoing research project focusing on everyday Judaism in Finland. The ethnographic examples illustrate how differently these dynamics play out in different life narratives, depending on varying emphases, experiences, and situations. By bringing together major themes recognized as relevant in previous research and offering an analytical tool for detecting them in ethnographic materials, the model has the potential to create new openings for comparative research, because it facilitates the interlinking of datasets across contexts and cultures. The article concludes that the model can be developed into a more generally applicable analytical tool for structuring and elucidating contemporary ethnographies, mirroring a world of rapid cultural and religious change.
Abstract: With Finnish independence in 1917, long-awaited legislative reforms were put in force in the country. Jews gained the right to obtain Finnish citizenship. The same year, the Finnish Parliament implemented the Civil Marriage Act (CMA), allowing the country’s Jewish citizens to marry non-Jews without converting to Christianity. In 1922, the constitutional right to freedom of religion was affirmed in the Freedom of Religion Act (FRA), granting the right to practice religion in public and private and allowing Finnish citizens to refrain from belonging to any religious community altogether. The FRA also addressed the question of children whose parents belonged to different religious congregations or who were unaffiliated. The FRA defined the religious affiliation of children after their father; this was, however, against the Orthodox Jewish law (halakhah) that the local Finnish Jewish communities wished to follow, which traced a child’s religious affiliation matrilineally.
Due to the small size of the Jewish marriage market and to the secularizing tendencies of the Jewish congregations, the number of intermarriages started to grow in the early twentieth century, and soon, they became a characteristic phenomenon of Finnish Jewish realities. This resulted in a growing number of halakhically non-Jewish children. Thus, the communities faced several challenges in terms of their administration and everyday practices.
This article-based dissertation provides an overview of Finnish-Jewish intermarriages from 1917 until the present by analyzing archival materials together with newly collected semi-structured ethnographic interviews. The interviews were conducted with members of the communities who are partners in intermarriages, either as individuals who married out or as individuals who married in and converted to Judaism. The key theoretical underpinning of the study is vernacular religion, which is complemented by relevant international research on contemporary interreligious Jewish families.
The results of the study show that while most informants understand Jewish law flexibly and rarely consider themselves “religious,” the differences between the practices of intermarried men and women are remarkable. Whereas women employ creativity and “do Judaism” to establish practices they consider meaningful for their Jewishness and Jewish identity, men tend to draw on their cultural heritage and often refrain from creative practices. The study also indicates that the adult conversion of women is far more common than that of men, making conversion a gendered phenomenon in the Finnish Jewish communities. Most informants of this study “do Judaism” in various ways and often choose to perform certain traditions to strengthen their connection to Judaism and ensure Jewish continuity through their children. Intermarried members and converts form a large part of the Finnish Jewish communities, and thus the results shed light on patterns that can be assumed to characterize multiple Finnish Jewish households.
Abstract: Jewish communities often do not endorse the idea of intermarriage, and Orthodox Judaism opposes the idea of marrying out. Intermarriage is often perceived as a threat that may jeopardise Jewish continuity as children of such a relationship may not identify as Jews. When a Jewish woman marries out, her children will in any case become Jewish by halakhah – the Jewish law – by which Judaism is inherited from mother to child – and thus usually faces less difficulties over acceptance in Jewish communities. Even though the Torah speaks of patrilineal descent, in post-biblical times, the policy was reversed in favour of the matrilineal principle, and children of Jewish men and non-Jewish women must therefore go through the conversion process if they wish to join a Jewish congregation according to most Jewish denominational requirements. The aim of this article is to analyse what happens when Jewish men, who belong to Finland’s Orthodox communities, marry out. Do they ensure Jewish continuity, and raise their children Jewish, and how do they act as Yidishe tates – Jewish fathers? If yes, how do they do so, and what problems do they face? These questions are answered through an analysis of thirteen semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with male members of the Jewish Community of Helsinki and Turku in 2019–20.
