Abstract: The relationship between food and religion is a lived activity formed by the dynamics of both tradition and adaption. Religious commitments to food are influenced by various factors, ranging from personal spirituality and experiences to social patterns of belonging, ethical, political and doctrinal convictions. Challah, gefilte fish, blintzes – these are just a few of the traditional Finnish Jewish meals that are still prepared by members of the community. The originally Eastern European dishes are one of the last living links that connect assimilated Finnish Jews with their Orthodox Jewish ancestors mainly from Russia, Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania. The current paper aims to present the conceptions and reflections relating to boundaries of identity connected with the multi-ethnic culinary traditions of Jews living in Finland as well as their ways of coping with the requirements of kashrut (meaning fit, proper, correct; a set of dietary laws prescribed for Jews). The article is based on ethnographic data from interviews (2015–16) as well as personal encounters, informal conversations and home visits.
Abstract: In this article, I examine how contemporary Finnish Jewish women understand their roles and identities as women in a small Orthodox Jewish community, on the one hand, and as members of a tiny minority in largely secular and predominantly Lutheran/Christian Finland, on the other. How do Finnish Jewish women negotiate their identities in relation to their community, strongly organised along gender lines, and in relation to Finnish society and especially its equality ideals and norms? I divide my article into four sections. First, I give a short overview of the theory of intersectionality, concentrating on its possibilities and limitations for the study of religion and gender in general, and for the study of Judaism, specifically. Second, I focus on my informants’ views of the gendered practices of their Orthodox Jewish community, which, by many standards, is a very specific form of Orthodoxy, which could be called ‘Finnish Orthodoxy’. Third, I analyse my informants’ views on how they perceive being Jewish women in contemporary Finland. The intersection of the last two broad themes will highlight the realities of Finnish Jewish women in contemporary Finland. Fourth, I discuss possibilities and limitations of intersectional theorising in the light of my data.
Topics: Antisemitism, Fundraising and Philanthropy, Israel Attachment, Jewish Continuity, Religious Denominations, Security, Surveys, Jewish Leadership, Jewish Organisations, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity
Abstract: The Fourth Survey of European Jewish Community Leaders and Professionals, 2018 presents the results of an online survey offered in 10 languages and administered to 893 respondents in 29 countries. Conducted every three years using the same format, the survey seeks to identify trends and their evolution in time.
The survey asked Jewish lay leaders and community professionals questions regarding future community priorities, identifying the main threats to Jewish life, views on the safety and security situation in their cities, including emergency preparedness, and opinions on an array of internal community issues. Examples include conversions, membership criteria policies on intermarriage, and their vision of Europe and Israel.
The respondents were comprised of presidents and chairpersons of nationwide “umbrella organizations” or Federations; presidents and executive directors of private Jewish foundations, charities, and other privately funded initiatives; presidents and main representatives of Jewish communities that are organized at a city level; executive directors and programme coordinators, as well as current and former board members of Jewish organizations; among others.
The JDC International Centre for Community Development established the survey as a means to identify the priorities, sensibilities and concerns of Europe’s top Jewish leaders and professionals working in Jewish institutions, taking into account the changes that European Jewry has gone through since 1989, and the current political challenges and uncertainties in the continent. In a landscape with few mechanisms that can truly gauge these phenomena, the European Jewish Community Leaders Survey is an essential tool for analysis and applied research in the field of community development.
The Survey team was directed by Dr. Barry Kosmin (Trinity College), who has conducted several large national social surveys and opinion polls in Europe, Africa and the U.S., including the CJF 1990 US National Jewish Population Survey.
Abstract: Antisemitism can be expressed in the form of verbal and physical attacks, threats, harassment, property damage and graffiti or other forms of speech or text, including on the internet. Antisemitic incidents and hate crime violate fundamental rights, including the right to human dignity, the right to equality of treatment and the freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
This annual overview compiles the available evidence on antisemitic incidents collected by governmental and non-governmental sources, covering the period 1 January 2006– 31 December 2016, where data are available. In addition, it includes a section that presents evidence from international organisations. No official data on reported antisemitic incidents in 2016 were available for 11 Member States by the time this report was compiled in September 2017.
‘Official data’ are understood here as those collected by law enforcement agencies, other authorities that are part of criminal justice systems and relevant state ministries at the national level. ‘Unofficial data’ refers to data collected by civil society organisations.
Abstract: Antisemitism can be expressed in the form of verbal and physical attacks, threats, harassment, property damage, graffiti or other forms of text, including on the internet. This report relates to manifestations of antisemitism as they are recorded by official and unofficial sources in the 28 European Union (EU) Member States.
‘Official data’ is understood here as that collected by law enforcement agencies, criminal justice systems and relevant state ministries at the national level. ‘Unofficial data’ refers to data collected by civil society organisations.
This report compiles available data on antisemitic incidents collected by international, governmental and non-governmental sources, covering the period 1 January 2004– 31 December 2014, where data are available. No official data on reported antisemitic incidents were available for seven Member States at the time this report was compiled: Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta and Portugal.
Topics: Antisemitism, Fundraising and Philanthropy, Israel Attachment, Jewish Continuity, Religious Denominations, Security, Surveys, Jewish Leadership, Jewish Organisations, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity
Abstract: Launched by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s International Centre for Community Development (JDC-ICCD), and conducted by a research team at Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut, USA) between June and August 2015, the Third Survey of European Jewish Leaders and Opinion Formers presents the results of an online survey administered to 314 respondents in 29 countries. The survey was conducted online in five languages: English, French, Spanish, German and Hungarian. The Survey of European Jewish Leaders and Opinion Formers is conducted every three or four years using the same format, in order to identify trends and their evolution. Findings of the 2015 edition were assessed and evaluated based on the results of previous surveys (2008 and 2011). The survey posed Jewish leaders and opinion formers a range of questions about major challenges and issues that
concern European Jewish communities in 2015, and about their expectations of how communities will evolve over the next 5-10 years. The 45 questions (see Appendix) dealt
with topics that relate to internal community structures and their functions, as well as the external environment affecting communities. The questionnaire also included six open-ended questions in a choice of five languages. These answers form the basis of the qualitative analysis of the report. The questions were organized under the following headings:• Vision & Change (6 questions)
• Decision-Making & Control (1 question)
• Lay Leadership (1 question)
• Professional Leadership (2 questions)
• Status Issues & Intermarriage (5 questions)
• Organizational Frameworks (2 questions)
• Community Causes (2 questions)
• Jewish Education (1 question)
• Funding (3 questions)
• Communal Tensions (3 questions)
• Anti-Semitism/Security (5 questions)
• Europe (1 question)
• Israel (1 question)
• Future (2 questions)
• Personal Profile (9 questions)
Topics: Antisemitism, Fundraising and Philanthropy, Israel Attachment, Jewish Continuity, Religious Denominations, Security, Surveys, Jewish Leadership, Jewish Organisations, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity
Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyze how ethnic-boundary drawing has been influenced in the urban
context by the turbulent events of twentieth-century Europe. The analysis is specifically applied to the
social boundaries of the small Helsinki Jewish community from the early twentieth century until the
1970s.
In the period covered by this research, Helsinki evolved from a multilingual and heterogeneous
military town of the Russian empire into the capital of an independent nation. As one of the few
Eastern European Orthodox Jewish communities not destroyed in the Holocaust, the history of the
Helsinki Jewish community offers a different set of spatial contexts that make this history an
empirical case study of changing ethnic relations from one generation to another.
My study suggests that empirical materials can be used as clues for teasing into existence the
long-vanished practices of boundary-drawing done at various times in the past. Collecting and
organizing information in archives is always guided by decisions that reflect the contemporary ideas
of relevant and meaningful social categories. Consequently, as Jews ‘in Finland’ became Finnish
Jews, the ethnic background subsequently lost its distinction in the archival material; in short, the
sources gradually became “mute” in this respect. My research strategy is to focus on questions
concerning the economic aspects of social boundaries, for example, whether the members of the
Helsinki Jewish congregation were entrepreneurs or were self-employed.
I have operationalized occupational status to analyze changes in the social position of the
community. The occupational titles were collected from three different cross-section years and
organized by using a Historical International Classification of Occupations (HISCO) Scheme. By
combining the occupational titles with the data on the Jewish-owned companies, I have established a
set of descriptive statistics. Supported by the findings of this empirical material, my study analyzes
how the concept of Finnish Jews has taken shape over the entire period of this study.
Contemporaries writing about the Jews of Finland did not use concepts of ‘ethnic boundaries,’ but
nevertheless considered questions related to economic aspects as the key elements in modern
societies. Such questions were a constant theme in modern economic antisemitism with a major
influence on Jewish policies, such as the restriction of Jewish occupations in Finland until 1918,
which in turn influenced the (counter-)narratives of Jewish business. This is what makes the Jewish
occupations so interesting – and also makes discussing them such a sensitive issue.
The community is an important part of the history of Helsinki, but it has only been accepted as a
part of the larger Finnish society since the Second World War. During this process, Jews were clearly
less frequently categorized as Jews and more frequently categorized by the professions they
represented.
In this study I have contextualized different aspects of what has been selected and written down as
Finnish-Jewish history. This involves discovering the political positions of its various authors. All
histories on the Finnish Jews have been written during the post-Second World War period and, in
consequence, are unavoidably viewed through post-Shoah/Cold War lenses. In these writings, the
national and transnational aspects are totally severed and become, indeed, mutually exclusive.
The Jewish history of Helsinki is often told as a collective story, where each generation faces
similar challenges and options. In this way, the past has been described as a joint striving for all
Finnish Jews. In reality, wide economic differences have played an important role in what is
ultimately a business-oriented community. In this narrative, the Jewish history has been reduced to a
bare minimum in order to serve as a collective story. Consequently, in the histories of the city of
Helsinki, Jews have either been described as poor, or they have not been remembered at al
Abstract: The second half of the 20th century has been a period of increasing assimilation for the Jews at the same time as they have gained the acceptance of their environment in nearly all countries. One of the most striking expressions of this has been a rapidly rising tendency toward mixed marriages. This tendency has created a serious concern about the future of the Jewish people and a growing debate both regarding the following questions: Is it worth to reach out to the mixed-marriage families in order to try and prevent them from growing further apart from Judaism? Would it be preferable to concentrate on people who have not yet taken the step over the mixed marriage-line and try to prevent this phenomenon, or is it best to work simultaneously in both directions? Another debated question is how to effectively use the teaching of Judaism to the young generation as a prophylactic for assimilation. The growing assimilation has lead to greater investment in this area with an increasing amount of Jewish schools and other forms of Jewish instruction, and researchers have estimated the efficiency of Jewish education.
The Finnish Jews are also touched by the tendencies and problems mentioned above. As to mixed marriages, their frequency is among the highest in the world, but despite this, a very high percentage of the children in the Jewish community in Helsinki receive Jewish instruction within the framework of a primary and a secondary school of 9 classes and a preschool starting from 4 years of age. The community gives a very high priority to the school and invests important economical and human resources for this purpose. The school has about 100 pupils. Their profile has in the last years become significantly more heterogenic as several families have joined the community, especially from Israel, but also from Russia and a few other countries. This has lead to changes in the study program of the school and a more systematic evaluation of the program. The governors of the school have expressed their interest for conducting a study, which among other things would give a better understanding about the Jewish identity of the students, compared with the background of their homes’ Jewishness, as well as other questions connected to the Jewish objectives of the school.
This research intends to give an idea about The students and their parents regarding the following aspects: Jewish identity and way of life; Attitudes towards and expectations of the Jewish education in the school; Relations to the non-Jewish surroundings (friends, Jewish self-esteem, the attitudes of the surrounding world); Contacts with the non-Jewish parent’s family; Attitude towards Israel; Influence of the home in parallel with the school education; Motivation of parents in choosing the Jewish school for the children; Attitude of parents towards their children’s friends; Motivation of parents to participate in a study program of Jewish topics; Comparison of the data between Finnish-Jewish families and families which have immigrated into Finland. The population of the study will include pupils of the 5th, 6th, 8th and 9th classes and their parents, as well as the pupils of 12th class and their parents. .
Abstract: The present update relates to manifestations of antisemitism as they are recorded by official and unofficial sources in the 28 European Union (EU) Member States. ‘Official data’ is understood here as that collected by law enforcement agencies, criminal justice systems and relevant state ministries at the national level. ‘Unofficial data’ refers to data collected by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs). This update compiles available data on antisemitic incidents collected by international, governmental and non-governmental sources, covering the period 1 January 2003–31 December 2013. No data on manifestations of antisemitism were available for Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia at the time this update was compiled.
This is the 10th in a series of yearly updates about data collected on antisemitism published by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and its predecessor, the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC).
Abstract: Tavoitteet. Suomessa asuu pieni juutalainen vähemmistö, jonka olemassaoloa on jo pitkään uhannut ennen kaikkea sen jäsenten voimakas assimiloituminen. Suomen juutalaiset nuoret aikuiset, jotka melkein poikkeuksetta elävät seka-avioliitoissa, ovat seuraavan juutalaisen sukupolven kasvattajia. Siksi tässä tutkimuksessa pyritään ymmärtämään ja kuulemaan juuri näiden nuorten aikuisten käsityksiä juutalaisuudestaan ja kaksoisidentiteetistään. Toisin sanoen tutkimuksen avulla halutaan saada selville, mitä juutalaisuus merkitsee heille, jotka jatkavat juutalaisen vähemmistön perintöä. Maamme juutalaisten tapoja ja asenteita on aikaisemmin tutkinut Lundgren (2002) sekä Ruotsissa ja Tanskassa Dencik (1993, 2002). Työllä pyritään myös jatkamaan maassamme alkanutta keskustelua vähemmistöjen identiteettineuvotteluista ( Kuusisto 2011, Klingenberg 2014, Rissanen 2014).
Menetelmät. Tämä laadullinen monitapaustutkimus toteutettiin lähettämällä kysely postitse kaikille 137 vuosina 1976-1986 syntyneille Helsingin juutalaisen seurakunnan jäsenille. Kyselyyn vastasi 28 nuorta aikuista. Juutalaisuuden merkitystä Suomen juutalaisille nuorille aikuisille tutkittiin laadullisin keinoin, induktiivisella lähestymistavalla, joskin teoriaohjaavalla tutkimusotteella. Kaksoisidentiteettiä ja siten vastaajien akkulturaatioasenteita lähestyttiin Dencikin (1993) diasporajuutalaisen identiteettiä kuvaavan mallin avulla.
Tulokset ja johtopäätökset. Aineistolähtöisen sisällönanalyysin avulla selvisi, että juutalaisuus merkitsi vastaaajille ennen kaikkea Dencikin (1993) mallin Juutalaisuutta kokemuksien ja elämyksien tulkitsijana sekä yhteenkuuluvuutta kansaan. Tähän juutalaisuuden osa-alueeseen liittyi vastaajien itsensä sanoittamana juutalaisuuden kokeminen saamisena ja antamisena, elämäntapana sekä voimakkaana yhteenkuuluvuuden tunteena muihin juutalaisiin. Kaksoisidentiteetti puolestaan näyttäytyi tasapainoisena kokonaisuutena, jossa ollaan ennen kaikkea suomenjuutalaisia, toisin sanoen, vastaajat kokivat olevansa ensisijaisesti juutalaisia, joiden kotimaa on Suomi.
Abstract: Following concerns from many quarters over what seemed to be a serious
increase in acts of antisemitism in some parts of Europe, especially in
March/April 2002, the EUMC asked the 15 National Focal Points of its Racism
and Xenophobia Network (RAXEN) to direct a special focus on antisemitism in
its data collection activities. This comprehensive report is one of the outcomes
of that initiative. It represents the first time in the EU that data on antisemitism
has been collected systematically, using common guidelines for each Member
State.
The national reports delivered by the RAXEN network provide an overview of
incidents of antisemitism, the political, academic and media reactions to it,
information from public opinion polls and attitude surveys, and examples of
good practice to combat antisemitism, from information available in the years
2002 – 2003.
On receipt of these national reports, the EUMC then asked an independent
scholar, Dr Alexander Pollak, to make an evaluation of the quality and
availability of this data on antisemitism in each country, and identify problem
areas and gaps. The country-by-country information provided by the 15
National Focal Points, and the analysis by Dr Pollak, form Chapter 1 and
Chapter 2 of this report respectively.
Finally, in the light of the information and analysis provided by this exercise,
the report concludes with a number of proposals for action to the EU and its
Member States on concrete measures to combat antisemitism, including legal
and educational measures, and recommendations for improving the monitoring
and recording of antisemitic incidents.
