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Jewish Cultural Heritage, Minority Agency, and the State: Introduction

Author(s): Crowdus, Miranda; Egorova, Yulia; Everett, Sami

Date: 2025

Topics: Jewish Heritage, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Culture, Jewish Community, Representation, Jewish Space, Ethnography, Anthropology

Abstract: Using an interdisciplinary perspective at the intersections of anthropology, Jewish Studies, and critical academic scholarship of heritage, this special issue presents ethnographic examples to explore the relationship between minority groups and the state through the prism of representations of Jewish cultural heritage in the European public sphere. On an empirical level, the articles focus on personal, community-led, and wider public discussions of the way Jewish experience and histories of migration have been (or should be) represented in museums and historical sites, in musical productions and open-air displays, at sites of restitution and in virtual spaces. In this introductory article we summarise the main points of each contribution and some of their connected themes. We then briefly discuss the articles we brought together and outline the main matters of theoretical concern they raise. Key are the aspirations that members of Jewish communities have in negotiating representations of Jewish heritage in Europe and the agentive capacity that diverse Jewish publics, including individual artists and professionals, demonstrate in shaping these representations to achieve, disrupt, or suspend state-sponsored consensus about the preservation of minority heritage.

Ambient Landscapes and Minority Heritage. Representing Jewish Histories in the United Kingdom

Author(s): Egorova, Yulia

Date: 2025

Topics: Jewish Community, Jewish Heritage, Jewish History, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage

Abstract: Stemming from a larger study aimed at considering emic views of heritage at the grassroots level of British Jewish communities, this article explores the topic of minority agency through a discussion of the different ways in which Jewish British citizens would like to see Jewish history and culture represented in the cities of the United Kingdom. Drawing upon anthropological literature on the agency of landscapes and material objects and on the notion of ambience understood as the background cultural/material environment, I focus on my interlocutors’ views about visual representations of this heritage and put forward two interrelated sets of arguments. First, I suggest that my conversation partners imbue spaces pertaining to Jewish heritage with agency to inform the wider community about Jewish history. Second, I propose that their sense of belonging to British society and the overall sense of well-being are in turn affected by the agentive capacities of these sites, some of which are visually prominent whilst others are hidden from sight or unmarked.

Time, Materiality, and History in UK-Based Interfaith Solidarity Work

Author(s): Egorova, Yulia

Date: 2024

Topics: Anthropology, Ethnography, Interfaith Dialogue, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Main Topic: Other, Artefacts and Material Culture, Memory, Trauma

Abstract: In this paper, building upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted among members of one initiative of Jewish-Muslim dialogue in the UK, I discuss how my interlocutors thematize the temporal dimension of anti-minority discrimination and perceive remaining historical material heritage associated with it. Using the example of problematic artifacts pertaining to mediaeval Lincoln, such as the so-called “shrine of Little Hugh,” I discuss how in engaging the memory of traumatic past events in Jewish history activists of inter-faith dialogue reflect on their current conditions of minoritization and attempt a projection of their communities’ lives in the UK in the future. I also borrow insight from the presentist theoretical framework in anthropology of time to highlight the impact my interlocutors’ life histories have had on the way they relate to and conceptualize their own and other minoritized groups’ histories and imagine their personal and collective futures based on their experiences in the present. I suggest that in these reflections, narratives of positive historical trajectories in the minority experience sit alongside an anticipation of multiple possible futures, some inflected with anxiety about a repetition of difficult pasts, others imbued with a vision connecting the past, present and future of minoritized communities into a common presence.

Ethics without borders: solidarity and difference in inter-community dialogue

Author(s): Egorova, Yulia

Date: 2023

Topics: Ethnography, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Inter-Communal Relations, Interfaith Dialogue, Main Topic: Other

Abstract: The article offers an ethnographically embedded analysis of a UK-based Jewish-Muslim inter-community network to contribute to anthropological research into the ethical efforts that groups seen as polarized invest in negotiating boundaries of difference. The article makes two sets of arguments. First, it suggests that sometimes such groups have to negotiate not one but several ‘borders across difference’ and follow diverse ethical routes to navigate them depending upon how they conceptualize these borders. Second, it shows that in negotiating different sets of boundaries, network members often use techniques that at first glance appear to be artificial or even superficial in that they build on formal rules and/or contain no promise of achieving a consensus on issues important for the participants. However, I argue that these seemingly superficial efforts could still be seen as ethical endeavours underpinned by a strong commitment to inter-group solidarity and that they could be best understood as what Ruth Sheldon has described in her recent intervention in the ethics of Jewish ethnography as the movement between surface and depth.

Common difference: Conceptualising simultaneity and racial sincerity in Jewish-Muslim relations in the United Kingdom

Author(s): Egorova, Yulia

Date: 2023

Topics: Interfaith Dialogue, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Anthropology, Ethnography, Main Topic: Other, Race

Abstract: Building upon ethnographic research conducted among participants in UK-based initiatives in Jewish-Muslim dialogue, the paper contributes to anthropological literature on the essentialising nature of state-sponsored constructions of minoritised groups. More specifically, I put forward two sets of arguments. Firstly, I suggest a concept of simultaneity that challenges colonially inflected conceptualisations of the relationship between communities and their respective traditions. Activists of Jewish-Muslim inter-community work subvert dominant conceptualisations of intergroup commonalities and divergencies by developing a theorisation of Jewish-Muslim relations that acknowledges group similarities and differences as overlapping categories. Secondly, I contribute to John Jackson's (2005) theorisation of racial sincerity, a notion offering a conceptual challenge to the notion of authenticity. I argue that the complexity of my interlocutors’ thematisations of Jewish-Muslim relations underpinned by the diversity of the sources of knowledge that they rely on could be best understood as an example of this analytic. On a broader theoretical plane, the paper proposes a framework that underscores the agentive power of minority communities and pays close attention to the way they define their positionalities vis-à-vis the majorities and each other in ways that go beyond binaries-based theorisations.

“This Is Just Where We Are in History” Jewish-Muslim Dialogue, Temporality, and Modalities of Solidarity

Author(s): Egorova, Yulia

Editor(s): Gidley, Ben; Everett, Samuel Sami

Date: 2022

Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish - Muslim Relations

Abstract: Building upon an ethnographic study of initiatives in Jewish-Muslim dialogue in the UK, I explore the way Muslim participants in such initiatives conceptualise the position of their community in the UK in relation to that of their Jewish co-citizens. I argue that while at first blush my Muslim interlocutors appear to read their community, in some historical time-frames, as being in a position of relative disadvantage in comparison to that of their Jewish counterparts, further analysis of their understanding of the positionalities of British Jews and British Muslims reveals a theorization that conveys a strong sense of solidarity with British Jewish citizens and unequivocally conceptualizes them as a political minority. I also suggest that these comparative reflections on the minority condition bear a productive potential for drawing public attention to specific challenges that different minority groups face.

The Impact of Antisemitism and Islamophobia on Jewish-Muslim Relations in the UK: Memory, Experience, Context

Author(s): Egorova, Yulia

Editor(s): Renton, James; Gidley, Ben

Date: 2017

Topics: Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Main Topic: Antisemitism

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