Abstract: This detailed and thorough report is rapidly becoming the ‘must-read’ study on European Jews, taking the reader on an extraordinary journey through one thousand years of European Jewish history before arriving at the most comprehensive analysis of European Jewish demography today.
Written by leading Jewish demographers Professor Sergio DellaPergola and Dr Daniel Staetsky, the Chair and Director of JPR’s European Jewish Demography Unit respectively, it explores how the European Jewish population has ebbed and flowed over time. It begins as far back as the twelfth century, travelling through many years of population stability, until the tremendous growth of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed by the dramatic decline prompted by a combination of mass migration and the horrors of the Shoah. Extraordinarily, after all this time, the proportion of world Jewry living in Europe today is almost identical to the proportion living in Europe 900 years ago.
Using multiple definitions of Jewishness and a vast array of sources to determine the size of the contemporary population, the study proceeds to measure it in multiple ways, looking at the major blocs of the European Union and the European countries of the Former Soviet Union, as well as providing country-by-country analyses, ranging from major centres such as France, the UK, Germany and Hungary, to tiny territories such as Gibraltar, Monaco and even the Holy See.
The report also contains the most up-to-date analysis we have on the key mechanisms of demographic change in Europe, touching variously on patterns of migration in and out of Europe, fertility, intermarriage, conversion and age compositions. While the report itself is a fascinating and important read, the underlying data are essential tools for the JPR team to utilise as it supports Jewish organisations across the continent to plan for the future.
Abstract: Jewish emigration from Israel of the recent decades brought the creation of the communities of Israeli passport holders in the various countries of the world, including Russia and other post-Soviet states. Although this fact is commonly accepted as a totally new phenomenon, the returned migration of Russian and other Jews, who first immigrated to their historical Homeland - the Land of Israel/Palestine, and in a period of time came back to Russia has centuries-long history. In the 17th - 19th centuries this trend included Jerusalem and other Palestine Jewish communities' envoys, educators and fundraisers, who visited Russian and East European Jewish communities and sometimes stayed there for years, as well as Russian Jewish pilgrims to the Holy Land, who on returning were often respected as «representatives» of the Land of Israel and its Jewry. Some members of First, Second and Third Zionist Aliyot (waves of Jewish ideological repatriation) to the Land of Israel/Palestine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries created another substantial group of «Israeli Returnees» to Russia and the USSR. The article shows that typical patterns of immigrants from the Palestine to Russia and the early USSR are very close to, or even similar with «ideological re-immigrants», envoys, labor migrants, «economic refugees», and other relevant subgroups among current Israeli diaspora in Russia and the CIS.
Abstract: Papers delivered at a conference in Jerusalem, October 1990.
Contents:
Kulka, Otto Dov: History and Historical Prognoses (9-11);
Bauer, Yehuda: The Danger of Antisemitism in Today's Central Europe (13-24);
Benz, Wolfgang: Antisemitism in East and West Germany: Will It Increase after Reunification? (25-33);
Stern, Frank: The "Jewish Question" in the "German Question" 1945-1990: Reflections in the Light of November 9th (35- 51);
Deak, Istvan: The Danger of Antisemitism in Hungary (53-61);
Vago, Raphael: Antisemitism in the New Romania (63-74);
Gutman, Yisrael: Polish Antisemitism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Will Things Ever Change? (75-81);
Nosenko, Vladimir: The Upsurge of Antisemitism in the Soviet Union in the Years of Perestroika: Background and Causes (83-93);
Avineri, Shlomo: The Return to History and Its Consequences for the Jewish Communities in Eastern Europe (95-101);
Bauer, Yehuda: In Conclusion (103-106)
Abstract: Очередной том фундаментальной серии «Народы и культуры» посвящен истории и культуре евреев на территории Российской империи, СССР и стран СНГ. В монографии рассматриваются общие вопросы происхождения и истории еврейского народа, особенности историкоантропологического облика и языков, а также проблемы изучения еврейского фольклора и этнографии. Основное внимание уделено этнополитической истории и своеобразию традиционной культуры российских евреев: их занятиям, костюму, обрядам жизненного цикла, религиозным праздникам, пище, народным знаниям, фольклору, декоративно-прикладному искусству, образованию. Специальные разделы освещают многообразные процессы, протекающие среди евреев в современном мире, взаимоотношения евреев с другими народами. В отдельных разделах даны историко-этнографические материалы по неашкеназским группам: грузинским и бухарским евреям и иудействующим. В создании тома приняли участие историки, филологи, этнографы, антропологи, социологи, фольклористы из России, Украины, Израиля и Франции.
Для историков, этнологов, культурологов, специалистов в разных областях иудаики, студентов профильных вузов и кафедр, широкого круга читателей
Abstract: Концепция «двойной лояльности» в еврейском случае подразумевает, что еврей стоит на стороне Израиля вне зависимости от страны своего проживания, а принцип Талмуда, известный как «Закон государства обязателен для исполнения евреями» (Дина де-мальхута дина) часто рассматривается как требование к еврею придерживаться лояльности тому государству, где он живет. Попытка многих советских евреев, на разных этапах послевоенной истории этой страны, совмещать патриотизм в отношении страны проживания и преданность Израилю, воспринимался властями СССР как вызов и повод для репрессивных кампаний. Нынешняя ситуация в постсоветских странах в целом иная, и ближе к подходу современных демократических государств, признающих феномен «поли-лояльности» и двойного гражданства, закрепленного межправительственными соглашениями и программами о развитии культурных, научных, деловых и других связей.
Abstract: After the demise of state socialism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, over 1.6 million Jews and their non-Jewish family members from Russia, Ukraine, and other parts of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Germany, and other Western countries. Large communities of former Soviets found themselves in the diverse national contexts of the receiving countries as either refugees or independent migrants.1 Soon after establishing an initial economic and social foothold, former Soviet immigrants started rebuilding their social networks, both within each new homeland and across national borders. These networks, spanning four continents, based on common language, culture, and historic legacies, mainly come to the fore as informal social spaces, although there are also some examples of successful civic associations representing common interests of Russian immigrants or Russian Jewry at large. This introduction examines the roots of Russian Jewish identity in the Former Soviet Union and presents an overview of some major trends in late twentieth century Russian Jewish migration to the West.
Abstract: Technically, Israel is not the only official Jewish homeland in the world. In the Far East of Russian Siberia there still exists the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) of Birobidzhan. Beginning in 1928 the Soviet Union set aside a territory larger than Belgium and Holland combined and considerably bigger than Israel, for Jewish settlement, located some five thousands miles east of Moscow along the Soviet-Chinese border, between the 48th and 49th parallels north latitude, where the climate and conditions are similar to Ontario and Michigan. Believing that Soviet Jewish people, like other national minorities, deserved a territorial homeland, the Soviet regime decided to settle a territorythat in 1934 would become the Jewish Autonomous Region. The idea was to create a new Zion–in a move to counterweight to Palestine – where a “proletarian Jewish culture” based on Yiddish language could be developed. In fact, the establishment of the JAR was the first instance of an officially acknowledged Jewish national territory since ancient times: the “First Israel”. But the history of the Region was tragic and the ex-periment failed. Nevertheless, Birobidzhan’s renewed existence of today and the revival of Jewish life in the post-Soviet JAR are not only a curious legacy of Soviet national policy, but after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the worldwide religious rebirth represent an interesting case-study in order to studysome challenging geographic pro-blems, and interethnic relations.
Abstract: It would be a mistake to assume that ethnopolitics is only a matter of confrontation between different ethnic groups. On the contrary, there is a range of examples where it is pursued in a spirit of compromise and co-operation. One of them is the case of the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan, in Post-Soviet Russia. Often ethnic groups realize that co-operation and cultural coexistence are more profitable than conflict. Beginning in 1928 the Soviet Union set aside a territory the size of Belgium for Jewish settlement, located some five thousands miles east of Moscow along the Soviet-Chinese border. Believing that Soviet Jewish people, like other national minorities, deserved a territorial homeland, the regime decided to settle an enclave that would become the Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934. In fact, the establishment of the JAR was the first instance of an officially acknowledged Jewish national territory since ancient times. But the history of the Region was tragic and the experiment failed dismally. Nevertheless, Birobidzhan’s renewed existence of today is not only a curious legacy of Soviet national policy, but after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the definite religious rebirth, represents an interesting case-study in respect to interethnic relations.
Abstract: The thesis is based on three starting points. The first is on the
acknowledgement of the lamentable condition of buildings of Jewish-related
heritage in cities with a multicultural past across the present-day former Soviet
Union. The second is on the acknowledgement of a slow process of gradual
recognition of these traces as examples of tangible heritage and a provisional
resource for heritage commodification. The third is the on the
acknowledgement of ‘heritage’, ‘memory’ and ‘space’ as phenomena that are
subject to manipulation on various levels.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the understanding of what
constitutes national heritage in the newly-appeared independent states has
conformed to correspond with the interpretations and values of national histories.
In managerial terms some immovable heritage of ethnic minorities has been
returned to the symbolic successors of previous owners. This defined provisional
sources of funding for partial renovation of this heritage, as well as its use. The
remaining sites, the majority of which are monuments protected by the state, most
frequently stay unattended. In order to design policy recommendations to improve
the situation, a complex understanding of factors that influence heritage protection,
interpretation, and promotion in the post-Soviet space is needed.
Within this state of affairs, the thesis aims to analyze agency behind
'top-down' policies and 'down-up' grass-roots initiatives towards
(non)interpretation of Jewish-related heritage sites in Chişinǎu (Moldova),
Odessa and L’viv (Ukraine) and Minsk (Belarus). This selection of cities is
chosen to reveal the multiplicity of factors that determine apparent similarity in
heritage condition and management in the post-Soviet space, but instead reveal
diverse dynamics of interaction between heritage and politics; heritage and
nationalism; heritage and civil society, etc.
The methodology utilized here includes archival search, participant
observation, media and expert opinion analysis, as well as examination of
museum exhibitions. The fieldwork included data collection on the actual
condition of Jewish heritage in the cities under discussion and interviews with
various agents. Elite interviews were analyzed as basis for authoritative
heritage discourse before discussing actual heritage projects in these cities.
Based on interdisciplinary analysis, the thesis provides an embracing
overview of the broad spectrum of agency behind Jewish heritage-related
initiatives (or their absence). It then offers recommendations for the
advancement of managerial strategies.
Abstract: Seven decades of severe Soviet cultural-religious suppression and two world wars had isolated and demolished the once flourishing Jewish communities behind the Iron Curtain. When the era of Glasnost and Perestroika presented an opportunity for world Jewry to reestablish its lost ties with the three of four million Jews still living throughout the former Soviet Republics, it was unknown whether there was any hope for some kind of Jewish community renewal. The story of how the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a voluntary, humanitarian organization supported by American Jewry, made its entry into the isolated, poverty-stricken world, is a dramatic one. Beginning with only a few highly motivated and experienced workers, contact was made through music, literature, food packages, and religious holiday celebrations. Local Jewish leadership emerged and was encouraged. Plans for community development through social, religious, educational and welfare services were made and implemented. With the guidance of AJJDC and its dedicated community workers came rehabilitation and renewal.
Abstract: Over the course of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the identity of the global Russian-speaking Jewish community was put to the test. The conflict in Ukraine marked the first time in the history of Russian-speaking Jews that every expression, blog or Twitter post, and opinion article were recorded on the World Wide Web. This readily available data enables us to reconstruct the information climate that surrounded Russian-speaking Jews. The present article explores the sway of this climate on the political discourse of Jewish elites in Ukraine, Russia, and Jewish Russian-speaking diasporas between 2014 and 2015. Our findings suggest that identities of these groups are multilayered, but not hierarchical. Moreover, the elites’ common ethno-cultural Jewish identity coexists with distinct political affiliations. The allegiance of minorities to host societies is a well-known phenomenon. However, its mechanisms have yet to command sufficient research interest. Is it fear, prudence, genuine attachment to the country of residence, or other factors that stand behind the minorities’ commitment? This paper fuses thematic maps with content analysis to show that the “infosphere” is a key to understanding the position of Jews toward host regimes and their co-ethnics in other nation-states.
Abstract: At the core of the debate in Ukraine about Babi Yar lies the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1943 1.5 million Jews perished in Ukraine, yet a full understanding of that tragedy has been suppressed consistently by ideologies and interpretations of history that minimize or ignore this tragedy. For Soviet ideologues, admitting to the existence of the Holocaust would have been against the tenet of a “Soviet people” and the aggressive strategy of eliminating national and religious identities. A similar logic of oneness is being applied now in the ideological formation of an independent Ukraine. However, rather than one Soviet people, now there is one Ukrainian people under which numerous historical tragedies are being subsumed, and the unique national tragedies of other peoples on the territory of Ukraine, such as the massive destruction of Jews, is again being suppressed. According to this political idea assiduously advocated most recently during the Yushchenko presidency, the twentieth century in Ukraine was a battle for liberation. Within this new, exclusive history, the Holocaust, again, has found no real place. The author reviews the complicated history regarding the memorialization of the Jewish tragedy in Babi Yar through three broad chronological periods: 1943–1960, 1961–1991, and 1992–2009.
Abstract: Настоящая книга представляет собой второе издание (исправленное и дополненное) книги автора "20 лет Большой алии: статистический анализ перемен", вышедшей в 2013 году, которая, в свою очередь, явилась логическим продолжением предыдущей книги автора “Еврейское население бывшего СССР в ХХ веке (социально- демографический анализ)”. Если первая книга автора была посвящена развитию со- ветского еврейства в стране исхода, то нынешняя – тем изменениям, которые претер- пела еврейская русскоязычная община в Израиле, где сейчас проживает ее бóльшая часть. Наш анализ охватывает период с начала 1990-х годов до настоящего времени, и включает динамику общей численности репатриантов по республикам исхода, их расселение по городам и регионам Израиля, демографические аспекты, образование (как взрослого населения, так и детей и молодежи), владение ивритом и английским языком, компьютерную грамотность, армейскую/национальную службу. Особое внима- ние уделяется профессиональному трудоустройству репатриантов, и в частности, специалистов с высшим образованием. Рассматриваются также изменения в эконо- мическом положении репатриантов, их состояние здоровья, а также общая удовлетво- ренность жизнью в Израиле, национальное самосознание, традиции и ценности. По сравнению с предыдущим изданием, данные уточнены в соответствии с новыми ис- точниками и с учетом тенденций последних лет. Данные по репатриантам сопоставляются со всем еврейским населением Израиля, а по возможности – с еврейскими иммигрантами из бывшего СССР в США и Германии. Книга предназначена для демографов, социологов, специалистов, занятых проблема- ми интеграции репатриантов в различных сферах и всех интересующихся данной про- блемой.
