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Разрыв Еврейской Традиции И Его Преодоление В Постсоветской Украине

Translated Title: Jewish Tradition in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Lost and Regained

Author(s): Евсеенко, Наталья

Date: 2011

Topics: Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community, Jewish Renewal, Jewish Revival, Post-1989, Age and Generational Issues

Abstract: The paper is focused on the problem of relationship to one’s own religious tradition. Here one can find preliminary analysis of field materials gathered in small Ukrainian town Balta - former Jewish shtetl, a small town with a large Jewish population. Nowadays the Balta Jews are facing the revival of their religious life and are actively participating in this process. Our aim was to analyze how different generations of Balta Jews see their own religious experience. We found out that the elderly people tended to consider contemporary religious revival as a direct continuation of their parents’ and grandparents’ traditions as they remember it since the time they used to be children. On the contrary, the middle generation of Balta Jews believe that they are in a way victims of a «tradition gap»; they tend to blame the Soviet state for depriving them of any opportunity to live a full Jewish life. The middle generation sees the pre-Holocaust tradition as a «lost paradise» which never comes back. And, finally, the young Balta Jews express no relation to the previous stages of Jewish life in their town, but they are obviously proud of their Jewishness because they understand and use it as a resource for getting a good education in different Jewish high schools and as a possibility to emigrate from Ukraine.