Abstract: The text examines the formation of new Jewish identity in Bulgaria during the period of transition after 1989. It explores the dynamic concept of collective identity, studying on the one hand the institutional environment that is a set for development of new identity. On the other hand, apart from the sociological aspects, the analysis includes hermeneutical facets in the form of retrospective reevaluation of individual lives, collective memory difficulties, narrative constructions of the biographic discourse and its relations to the identity as well as the communication between the generations. The article produces generational rhetoric, which occurs in a public Jewish life as a key for the understanding of phenomena of the new Jewish identity as an ideological construct. In this respect, the concept of new Jewish identity is presented as a complex structure that demands understanding both the social milieu and the typology of the experience of the Jewish belonging (taking into account different individuals, different social groups and ages). That is how the research is aimed at displaying the dialectics between people’s own life, the community life, their historical zigzags and institutional manifestations. Thus the new Jewish identity is presented both as a official religious and historical narrative, transmitted trough ideological channels by the new Jewish organizations and a function in a specific Bulgarian-Jewish context, in which generation groups with a different life perspective come acros
Abstract: The saving of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews from the death camps during the Second World War is one of Bulgarian modern history events, which became a source of national pride and which generated moral capital. It has been used to present the country before the world ever since the end of the war. At the same time, it has proved to be one of the most manipulated facts, which seems to be a hostage to different ideological and political interpretations. By completely ignoring or, conversely, strongly emphasizing one aspect of the historical truth at the expense of another, both during the communist times and the transitional period to democracy since 1989, it blurred the concept of the real significance of this event and turned it into a myth and a cliché. The author of this paper follows the chronicle of the debate on this issue during the period of democratization after 1989 and tries to answer the question how the changes towards democracy influenced the attempts to rewriting Bulgarian history. Also taken into account is the fact that The Rescue had a fundamental impact on the identity of the Bulgarian Jews. This conclusion is important for two reasons. First, because turning a deaf ear to the voices of the rescued in the discussions about their own experiences during the war turned out to be an essential part of the problem about the absence of a real public debate, in which the key questions dealt with tolerance and recognition of other ethic groups.. Second, the political and ideological confrontation concerning The Rescue issue found place within the Jewish community itself. This conclusion is important in order to understand how the collective memory of the Bulgarian Jews at present is being formed in terms of its own Jewish community context as well as in a specific Bulgarian-Jewish setting.
