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Pedagogies and Practice: How Religious Diversification Impacts Seminaries and Clergy
Author(s): Tiffany, Austin
Date: 2018
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Rabbis, Interfaith Relations, Interfaith Dialogue, Diversity
Abstract: This thesis considers how religious diversification has shaped the roles of clergy and seminaries. The focus of this qualitative, interview-based study is seminaries and clergy affiliated with various denominations of Judaism and Protestant Christianity in greater London and New York City. Religiously diversifying societies in the US and England have brought forth new challenges for clergy and seminaries, prompting new questions about how or why a faith community should or should not engage with diversity in the public square. This study investigates how seminaries and individual members of the clergy, as sources of religious authority, are responding to religious diversification in different ways – the former sluggish to recognise the impact of religious diversification in curriculum and pedagogical structures and the latter seeing it as a resource for social action initiatives, local networks, and political activism. This has created a gap between training and practice whereby clergy have assumed greater religious authority in religious life. Beyond contributing to the field of sociology of religion, this thesis concludes by allowing the experience of clergy in interreligious engagement to inform appropriate pedagogies that could be employed by seminaries.
Conversions au judaïsme et institutionnalité juive : une sociologie comparée du pluralisme religieux dans le judaïsme contemporain (Israël, France, Argentine, Etats-Unis)
Translated Title: Conversions to judaism and jewish institutionality: A compared sociology of religious pluralism in contemporary judaism (Israel, France, Argentina and United States)
Author(s): Tank-Storper, Sébastien
Date: 2003
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish Organisations, Conversion, Intermarriage, Pluralism
Abstract: Environ 90% des demandes de conversion adressées aujourd'hui aux institutions juives émanent de conjoints non juifs de "couples mixtes" désirant homogénéiser religieusement leur famille. Cela pose un double problème aux institutions: tout d'abord, selon la Halakha, ne peut être accepté qu'un candidat qui ne désire pas se convertir pour obtenir un bénéfice de sa conversion. Ensuite, cela pose la question de la réponse institutionnelle à la transgression: l'exogamie étant interdite par le judaïsme, faut-il repousser les déviants en refusant de régulariser a posteriori leur situation en convertissant le conjoint ou au contraire opter pour plus de tolérance et les intégrer? Ce dossier permet ainsi d'interroger les modalités de construction de l'autorité rabbinique et des institutions dans un contexte où ces derniers peinent de plus en plus à imposer leurs normes à des fidèles revendiquant leur autonomie.
Faire communauté et consolider la filiation par le patrimoine musical. Un regard transnational sur le monde judéo-espagnol
Translated Title: Making Community and Consolidating Descent through Musical Heritage. A Transnational View on the Judaeo-Spanish World
Author(s): Roda, Jessica
Date: 2016
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Sephardi Jews, Jewish Music, Globalisation, Jewish Heritage, Migration
Abstract: À Paris, Tel-Aviv, Istanbul ou Los Angeles, on entend et chante les fameux standards judéo-espagnols. Ce partage de connaissances est le résultat d’une patrimonialisation qui a commencé dès les années 1950 dans un espace transnational à la suite de l’éclatement géographique des Judéo-Espagnols de l’Empire ottoman. Cet article expose les différentes étapes de ce processus, tant dans la diachronie que dans la synchronie, à partir d’un terrain multisite mené en France, aux États-Unis et sur le cyberespace. On découvrira que la construction du patrimoine à travers l’expérience de la migration peut être envisagée comme un mouvement de reterritorialisation permettant aux Judéo-Espagnols de faire communauté, de reconsolider la filiation judéo-espagnole dans l’espace familial et ainsi, de constituer un territoire historique fédérateur incarné par le patrimoine. Au-delà de ce cas spécifique, l’article montre comment le patrimoine musical, en raison de son statut d’objet immatériel facilement transportable, peut nous conduire à repenser la patrimonialisation au-delà du territoire et à l’envisager comme un processus de consolidation et de création de liens entre des individus et des groupes d’individus partageant un sentiment d’appartenance.
Former Soviet Jews in Israel and in the West: Integration, Exclusion and Transnationalism
Translated Title: Бывшие советские иммигранты в Израиле и на Западе: интеграция, изоляция и транснационализм / יהודי ברה''מ לשעבר בישראל ובמערב: השתלבות, דחייה וטרנס-לאומיות
Author(s): Remennick, Larissa
Date: 2007
Topics: Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Immigration, Russian Emigration, Russian-Speaking Jews, Diaspora, Globalisation, Integration
Abstract: Theoretical focus of the paper is the relationship between transnationalism and immigrant incorporation in the host country’s labor market and social system. It is shown that due to its timing and composition, Russian immigration of the 1990s was readily transnational at the outset, but the expression of diasporic interests and activities depends both on geographic location and modes of integration in the new homelands. Russian Jews in Israel and Germany display stronger diasporic tendencies than those who resettled in the USA and Canada. Across the New Diaspora, transnational activities among Russian Jews grow ‘from below’ (i.e. from individual initiative rather than institutional action) and are largely limited to the socio-cultural domain. The reliance on co-ethnic networks within and outside of the host country may be a mixed blessing, both empowering the weaker segments of the immigrants and thwarting their integration by creating an alternative social space.
The Limmud Impact Study: Exploring volunteers’ Jewish journeys
Author(s): Kahn-Harris, Keith
Date: 2018
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Surveys, Focus Groups, Limmud, Jewish Organisations, Evaluation, Volunteering, Jewish Education
Abstract: The Limmud Impact Study looks at how successful Limmud has been in taking people ‘one step further on their Jewish journeys’, what these journeys consist of and their wider impact on Jewish communities.

The study focuses on Limmud volunteers and draws on a survey of ten Limmud volunteer communities in eight countries - UK, USA, South Africa, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, Israel and Argentina - together with focus groups conducted with Limmud volunteers from around the world.

The findings provide clear evidence that Limmud advances the majority of its volunteers on their Jewish journeys, and for a significant proportion it takes them ‘further’ towards greater interest in and commitment to Jewish life.

Limmud’s principle impact on its volunteers lies in making new friends and contacts, encountering different kinds of Jews and enhancing a sense of connection to the Jewish people. For many Limmud volunteers, their experience has increased their Jewish
knowledge, their leadership skills and their involvement in the wider Jewish community. Involvement in Limmud therefore enhances both the desire to take further steps on their Jewish journeys, and the tools for doing so.

Limmud impacts equally on Jews regardless of denominationand religious practice. The younger the volunteers and the less committed they are when they begin their Limmud journeys, the further Limmud takes them. Those with more senior levels of involvement in Limmud report higher levels of impact on their Jewish journeys than other volunteers, as do those who had received a subsidy or training from Limmud.

Limmud volunteers often have difficult experiences and risk burnout and
exhaustion. While volunteers generally view the gains as worth the cost, Limmud
needs to pay attention to this issue and provide further support.
The Holocaust is a Foreign Country: Comparing Representations of Place in Lithuanian Jewish Testimony
Author(s): Pollin-Galay, Hannah
Date: 2013
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust, Oral History and Biography, Interviews, Geography, Diaspora, Yiddish
Abstract: This article explores discourse on the Holocaust as a ‘placeless’ event. Analyzing survivor testimony delivered in different cultural contexts, I ask whether or not the idea of strange or vanished places is culturally specific or universal to memories of Holocaust victimhood. As a case study, I analyze the testimony of Lithuanian Jewish Holocaust survivors. I compare the more commonly heard testimonies of survivors living in North America and Israel to the lesser known voices of survivors who have remained in Lithuania—witnesses who live and testify ‘on the scene of the crime.’ I demonstrate how important the idea of estranged geography figures in the testimony of émigré witnesses. By contrast, the survivors who have remained in Lithuania draw a different narrative map of the country, one in which past and present interact on the same sites. Their home landscape, however, also has black holes, dark places that they consider untouchable in everyday life. The article thus points to a tension between contextual particularities and universal challenges in depicting Holocaust places.
“Not Us, but You Have Changed!” Discourses of Difference and Belonging among Haredi Women
Author(s): Longman, Chia
Date: 2007
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Gender, Jewish Women, Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Baal Teshuvah
Abstract: Feminist research into the position and participation of women in contemporary fundamentalist and traditionalist identity movements shows how essentialist ideologies of sexual difference are often deployed in critique of western secular liberal feminism. In this article the author draws a comparison between discourses of belonging according to studies of ba'alot teshuvahin the USA (female “returnees” to an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle), and her own interviews with “frumfrom birth” women (raised as haredi) in the strictly Orthodox Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium. Whereas for the former, a rhetoric of choice, essentialism, and religious ideologies of female superiority appeared important, for the frum-born women, gender is more a question of orthopraxis and religious role equivalence. Nevertheless, the author argues that for the strictly Orthodox Jewish diasporic community in question, an increase in gender conservatism, with particular notions of female sexuality and modesty, goes hand in hand with isolationism vis-à-vis the surrounding secular society.
Demography of the Contemporary Russian-Speaking Jewish Diaspora
Author(s): Tolts, Mark
Date: 2011
Topics: Aliyah, Demography, Russian Jews, Russian Emigration, Diaspora, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract:

This paper is a study of the demography of the contemporary post-Soviet Jewish Diaspora based on various statistical sources collected from many countries where these Jews live. It examines (post-) Soviet Jewish resettlement, and the demographic transformation of FSU Jews in the wake of the recent mass migration, especially in Israel. Based on this analysis, an update for 2010 of the number of the 'core' Jews (by self-identity) originating from the FSU by country was presented, and the total number of people belonging to the post-Soviet Jewish Diaspora worldwide and their distribution was estimated.
Hybride jüdische Identitäten: Gemischte Familien und patrilineare Juden
Translated Title: Hybrid Jewish identities: Mixed families and patrilineal Jews
Editor(s): Wohl von Haselberg, Lea
Date: 2015
Topics: Intermarriage, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Family, Children of mixed marriages
Abstract: Viele Jüdinnen und Juden lieben nichtjüdische Partner_innen, leben und haben Kinder mit ihnen. Die Vorstellung von ‚Juden‘ und ‚Nichtjuden‘ als klar unterscheidbaren Gruppen ist überholt. ‚Gemischte‘ Familien und Partnerschaften sind stattdessen Teil der zeitgenössischen Lebensrealität im deutschsprachigen Raum und darüber hinaus.

Der nicht unumstrittene Begriff des Hybriden, ursprünglich aus Botanik und Biologie entlehnt und im 19. Jahrhundert in die Rassenlehre übernommen, wo er negativ besetzt wurde, findet seit einigen Jahren in diversen Bereichen der Geistes-, Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften wieder Verwendung. Dort richtet sich das Interesse auf Begegnungen, Vermischungen, Übergänge, Übersetzungen und Neuschöpfungen. Daraus entstehen Fragen nach Inklusion und Exklusion, welche Formen ‚Vermischungen‘ oder ‚Hybridisierungen‘ in konkreten Kontexten annehmen und in welchen kulturellen Praktiken und Identitätskonstruktionen sich diese äußern. Solche Fragen stellen sich auch für zeitgenössische jüdische Lebensentwürfe: Versteht man Identitäten als reflexive Prozesse des Selbstverstehens, des Entwickelns von sich immer in Veränderung befindlichen Selbstbildern und als eine Beziehung, zeigt sich, wie bedeutsam der Kontakt mit anderen und das Erfahren von Fremdwahrnehmung durch andere ist. Widersprüchliche Definitionen von Jüdischsein führen hier zu Herausforderungen für gemischte Familien. Die Komplexität resultiert u.a. aus den verschiedenen Ebenen zeitgenössischer jüdischer Identität, wie der kulturellen, der religiösen und nach der Shoah der historischen Ebene der Familien- und Verfolgungsgeschichte.

Der Band Hybride jüdische Identitäten versammelt die Vorträge der gleichnamigen internationalen Tagung, die im November 2012 am Erziehungswissenschaftlichen Institut der Universität Zürich stattgefunden hat. Die Autor_innen bringen nicht nur Perspektiven unterschiedlicher wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen, wie der Psychologie, der Soziologie, der Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft sowie der Psychoanalyse zusammen, sondern untersuchen auch unterschiedliche nationale Zusammenhänge und Spezifika. Der Sammelband bündelt damit erstmalig Forschungen zu gemischt jüdisch-nichtjüdischen Familien und deren Selbstverständnissen und Erfahrungen.

Inhalt:

Lea Wohl von Haselberg: Einleitung 7
Micha Brumlik: Matrilinearität im Judentum. Ein religionshistorischer Essay19
Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Juden, Nichtjuden und die dazwischen. Im Dschungel der Orientierungsversuche 35
Christina von Braun: Virtuelle Genealogien 49
Christa Wohl: Patrilineare in Deutschland: Jüdisch oder nicht? Eine psychologische Untersuchung 65
Birgitta Scherhans: Jüdisch-christliche ‚Mischehen‘ in Deutschland nach 1945 83
Madeleine Dreyfus: ‚Mischehe‘ und Übertritt. Elemente jüdischer Identitätskonstruktionen am Beispiel der deutschen Schweiz 103
Catherine Grandsard: Approximate Answers to Baffling Problems. Issues of Identity in Mixed Jewish-Christian Families in France 121
Adrian Wójcik/Michał Bilewicz: Beyond Ethnicity. The Role of the Mixed-Origin Family for Jewish Identity: A Polish Case Study 133
Pearl Beck: The Relationship between Intermarriage and Jewish Identity in the United States. An Examination of Overall Trends and Specific Research Findings 147
Joela Jacobs: Die Frage nach dem Bindestrich. Deutsch-jüdische Identitäten und Literatur 169
Symbolic Spaces of Difference: Contesting the Eruv in Barnet, London and Tenafly, New Jersey
Author(s): Watson, Sophie
Date: 2005
Topics: Jewish neighbourhoods, North African Jewry, Cities and Suburbs, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: In this paper I explore discourses and resistances mobilized around the construction of an Orthodox Jewish symbolic and material concrete space, the ‘eruv’, in two localities (one in the United Kingdom, one in the USA) where it has been at the center of heated debate and contestation. Conflicts around the reordering and redefining of this public space expose some of the limits of living with difference and normative versions of multiculturalism in the city. Through a detailed examination of two case studies in the United Kingdom and the United States I conclude that the multicultural city necessitates a recognition of symbolic as well as material spaces—and the interconnections between these—and that the notion of public space warrants interrogation as to how it is imagined, read, and experienced in multiple ways.
Between the Red and Yellow Stars: Ethnic and Religious Identity of Soviet Jewish World War II Veterans in New York, Toronto, and Berlin
Author(s): Shternshis, Anna
Date: 2011
Topics: Aging, Russian-Speaking Jews, Communism, Military Service, Interviews, Newspapers, Magazines and Periodicals, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
A few days after arriving in New York during the spring of 1990, Anatolii S. (born in 1920, Ukraine), put on his jacket, decorated with the numerous military medals that he had earned during his service in the Soviet Army during World War II, and went into a nearby synagogue, hoping to find out about the benefits available to him as a Jewish veteran of the war that "helped to save America from fascism." He showed his documents to the local clerk, who only gestured for him to put his hat back on and to pray with the prayer book. Unable to open the book correctly, and most importantly, unwilling to pray, Anatolii realized that neither his participation in the war, nor his knowledge of Yiddish, made him a true member of this community. Being accustomed to displays of public respect and economic benefits from his status as a war veteran, Anatolii now had to embrace his new status in a society that did not regard him any differently from any other non-English speaking, elderly Jewish immigrant from Russia.

Anatolii, like the other approximately 26,000 Soviet Jewish veterans who migrated to Germany, Israel, Canada, and the United States in the 1990s, was certainly welcome to attend synagogues and Jewish community centers in his new country, but his understanding of what it meant to be a Jew differed profoundly from the majority of members in these communities. Anatolii and his peers (Soviet veterans) regarded their participation in the war as the most important part of their Jewish identity, and they were often shocked to find out how little the war meant to the Jewish identity of the local populations they encountered. Unsatisfied with the status quo, many Soviet veterans launched their own organizations, where being Jewish and proud of Soviet accomplishments did not seem contradictory. Moreover, the definitions of "Soviet" and "Jewish" shifted, merged, and eventually formed the foundation of a specific culture, with its own leaders, traditions, rituals, and language.

In this article, I look into the modes of survival of Soviet language and ideology among veterans, and analyze what these modes tell us about the patterns of immigrant adaptation. I concentrate on three centers of veterans' activities: New York, Toronto, and Berlin, and discuss similarities and differences in the adaptations of veterans in these communities. I will discuss how the culture of each city and country influenced what the veterans select from Soviet rhetoric to describe their present lives.

The second goal of this study is to challenge existing scholarship, which treats elderly migrants as passive and apathetic. Nursing Studies and Gerontology dominate research in this area (rather than the field of immigrant studies) and as a result we know much more about cases of extreme isolation, deprivation, and depression among elderly immigrants in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe than about the contribution elderly migrants make to the social and cultural systems in their new societies. While the vulnerability of this group is undeniable, I perceive studying foreign retirees solely as victims or disadvantaged entities as an "ageism" bias which denies proper recognition and acceptance of the achievements and life experiences of the elderly, as it sees them solely through the prism of their ailing bodies. Soviet Jewish veterans, as a group, serve as an ideal case study of how elderly immigrants fight such perceptions, both consciously and subconsciously, not only by creating their own organizations, but also by establishing an awareness of their legacies in their new home countries.

Data and Methodology
This study is based on 233 in-depth interviews with Soviet veterans of World War II conducted between 1999 and 2007 in Toronto, Berlin, and New York. I used a snowball sample, where the initial respondents—located through veterans' organizations and ads placed in Russian-language media—suggested other potential interviewees. The interviews consisted of open-ended questions about respondents' experiences throughout their lives. Russian-language newspaper articles published in immigrant papers also served as useful sources for public expressions of veterans' opinions about political, cultural, and social issues in their new countries.
Retrospective and Afterological Considerations of the Contemporary Russian-Speaking Jewish Diaspora: Whence and Whither?
Author(s): Markowitz, Fran
Date: 2009
Topics: Russian Jews, Russian Emigration, Diaspora, Globalisation, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: This article reviews the transformations undergone by Russian speaking Jews over the past half century, and how these have been portrayed in key scholarly texts. It analyzes the representation of Soviet Jews first as a people of silence, then as new immigrants in Israel and North America, and, most recently, as a globalized community or worldwide diaspora. But rather than accepting these identity transformations as a fait accompli, the article problematizes their present meanings and ponders future trends.
Ритуалы в состоянии перемен: сватовство и брак у бухарских евреев
Translated Title: Rituals in Flux: Courtship and Marriage among Bukharan Jews
Author(s): Купер, Аланна Э.
Date: 2015
Topics: Bukharian Jews, Ethnography, Ritual, Marriage, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Свадебные ритуалы бухарских евреев описываются в статье по материалам полевых исследований автора, проведенных в Узбекистане, Израиле и СȀА в период с 1991 года. Автор предлагает не столько законченный и самодостаточный монтаж, сколько многоплановые кадры из частной жизни, указывая на пересечения между социальной структурой и человеческой деятельностью, между унаследованными традициями и новаторскими изменениями. Рассматриваются шесть празд- неств из серии бухарско-еврейских свадебных практик: ши-ринхори - поедание сладостей, олицетворяющее помолвку; утвержденная советской властью гражданская свадебная цере-мония в ЗАГСе; кош-чинон - празднество, когда родственники невесты принимают участие в отдалении, пока происходит приведение в порядок волосков на ее лице; праздники кудо- бини и домот-дророн, которые проводятся во внутреннем дворе родительского дома невесты и означают приветствие жениха и его семьи в доме невесты; кидуш - религиозная свадебная церемония. Автор приходит к выводу, что не существует статичной базовой формы бухарско-еврейской культуры, отклонения от которой или изменения внутри которой могут быть опознаны.
Rituals in Flux: Courtship and Marriage among Bukharan Jews
Author(s): Cooper, Alanna E.
Editor(s): Baldauf, Ingeborg; Gammer, Moshe; Loy, Thomas
Date: 2008
Topics: Bukharian Jews, Ritual, Marriage, Diaspora, Ethnography, Main Topic: Other
The Bukharan Jewish Diaspora at the Beginning of the 21st Century
Author(s): Kaganovitch, Albert
Editor(s): Baldauf, Ingeborg; Gammer, Moshe; Loy, Thomas
Date: 2008
Topics: Diaspora, Bukharian Jews, Main Topic: Other
Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict
Author(s): Remennick, Larissa
Date: 2012
Topics: Diaspora, Russian Emigration, Aliyah, Immigration, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: In the early 1990s, more than 1.6 million Jews from the former Soviet Union emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Germany, and other Western countries. Larissa Remennick relates the saga of their encounter with the economic marketplaces, lifestyles, and everyday cultures of their new homelands, drawing on comparative sociological research among Russian-Jewish immigrants. Although citizens of Jewish origin ostensibly left the former Soviet Union to flee persecution and join their co-religionists, Israeli, North American, and German Jews were universally disappointed by the new arrivals' tenuous Jewish identity. In turn, Russian Jews, whose identity had been shaped by seventy years of secular education and assimilation into the Soviet mainstream, hoped to be accepted as ambitious and hard working individuals seeking better lives. These divergent expectations shaped lines of conflict between Russian-speaking Jews and the Jewish communities of the receiving countries. Since her own immigration to Israel from Moscow in 1991, Remennick has been both a participant and an observer of this saga. This is the first attempt to compare resettlement and integration experiences of a single ethnic community (former Soviet Jews) in various global destinations. It also analyzes their emerging transnational lifestyles.
Foreigners or Jews? The Soviet Jewish refugee populations in Germany and the United States
Author(s): Tress, Madelaine
Date: 1997
Topics: Soviet Jewry, Russian Jews, Immigration, Refugees, Main Topic: Other
Gelebte Selbstbilder. Gemeinden russisch-jüdischer Migranten in Chicago und Berlin
Author(s): Hegner, Victoria
Date: 2008
Topics: Diaspora, Jewish Community, Immigration, Russian Jews, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: Seit 1987 haben rund zwei Millionen russische Juden die frühere Sowjetunion verlassen. Außer nach Israel wanderten sie vor allem in die USA und nach Deutschland aus – hier besonders in Großstädte. Victoria Hegner vergleicht diese beiden Migrationsströme am Beispiel der Städte Berlin und Chicago. Was bedeutet es, sich als Jude in diesen Ländern und Städten niederzulassen? Welche Formen jüdischen Selbstverständnisses wurden den Zuwanderern in Deutschland und den USA geboten? Der Vergleich lässt nicht nur nationale Besonderheiten hervortreten. Er zeigt auch, wie sehr die jeweilige Stadt das Lebensgefühl russischer Juden prägt.
Building a Diaspora: Russian Jews in Israel, Germany and the USA
Author(s): Ben-Rafael , Eliezer; Lyubansky, Mikhail; Glöckner, Olaf; Harris, Paul; Israel, Yael; Jasper, Willi; Schoeps, Julius H.
Date: 2006
Topics: Russian Jews, Russian Emigration, Aliyah, Jewish Revival, Diaspora, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: The crumbling of the USSR has set Russian-speaking Jews free to emigrate. From the threat of antisemitism to economic disaster, their “good reasons” to do so were numerous and within one and a half decade most of them moved out and scattered throughout the world. This book is about the million that settled in Israel, the half million now in the US and the 200.000 who settled in Germany.
This book presents the comparative work of an international team of researchers which delves into the building of communities, the formulation of collective identities and the articulation of public discourse by people who, after eighty years of Marxism-Leninism and compulsory removal from Jewish culture, are now reconstructing their ethnicity.

In every place, they face contrasting challenges and as a whole, constitute an ideal case for the study of the making of contemporary transnational diasporas.
Jews United and Divided by Music: Contemporary Jewish Music in the UK and America
Author(s): Kahn-Harris, Keith
Editor(s): Bossius, Thomas; Hager, Andreas; Kahn-Harris, Keith
Date: 2011
Topics: Jewish music, Liturgy, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
The Israeli Diaspora
Author(s): Gold, Steven J.
Date: 2002
Topics: Israeli Expatriates, Immigration, Diaspora, Globalisation, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Israelis form a unique case in the field of diaspora studies. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948 it was seen as the longed-for end to the wandering and oppression which had characterized the Jewish diaspora over the centuries. For various reasons, however, one percent of the Israeli population chooses to live abroad despite the condemnation of those who see emigration as a threat to the ideological, demographic, and moral viability of Israel itself.

In this fascinating study, based on extensive field work in the major Israeli communities of New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Sydney, Steven J. Gold looks at emigrants' reasons for leaving - existing links abroad, political and economic dissatisfaction at home, the lure of world-class career opportunities and cultural environments in global cities, and in the case of the Sephardim (or Israelis of non-European origin) often a feeling of being treated as second-class citizens. He also examines the tensions, compromises, and satisfactions involved in their relations with Israelis who have not left and with the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in the countries in which they settle. In the final chapter, Gold talks to Israeli men and women who after years as emigrants have made the decision to return. The end result is a major contribution not just to the study of the Israeli diaspora but also to our wider understanding of migration and transnational identity.
Israel, America, The Jews and the European Union
Author(s): Pollard, Stephen
Date: 2005
Topics: European Union, Main Topic: Other
The Romaniote Jewish Community of New York
Author(s): Ikonomopoulos, Marcia Haddad
Date: 2007
Topics: Diaspora, Romaniote Jews, Globalisation, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Death of a language: the history of Judeo-Spanish
Author(s): Harris, Tracy K.
Date: 1994
Topics: Globalisation, Ladino, Language, Sephardi Jews, Diaspora, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
Abstract: After expulsion from Spain in 1492, a large number of Spanish Jews (Sephardim) found refuge in lands of the Ottoman Empire. These Jews continued speaking a Spanish that, due to their isolation from Spain, developed independently in the empire from the various peninsular dialects. This language, called Judeo-Spanish (among other names), is the focus of Death of a Language, a sociolinguistic study describing the development of Judeo-Spanish from 1492 to the present, its characteristics, survival, and decline. To determine the current status of the language, Tracy K. Harris interviewed native Judeo-Spanish speakers from the sephardic communities of New York, Israel, and Los Angeles. This study analyzes the informants' use of the language, the characteristics of their speech, and the role of the language in Sephardic ethnicity.
Part I defines Judeo-Spanish, discusses the various names used to refer to the language, and presents a brief history of the Eastern Sephardim. The next part describes the language and its survival, first by examining the Spanish spoken by the Jews in pre-Expulsion Spain, and followed by a description of Judeo-Spanish as spoken in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the phonology, archaic features, new creations, euphemisms, proverbs, and foreign (non-Spanish) influences on the language. Finally, Harris discusses sociological or nonlinguistic reasons why Judeo-Spanish survived for four and one-half centuries in the Ottoman empire.
The third section of Death of a Language analyzes the present status and characteristics of Judeo-Spanish. This includes a description of the informants and the three Sephardic communities studied, as well as the present domains or uses of Judeo-Spanish in these communities. Current Judeo-Spanish shows extensive influences from English and Standard Spanish in the Judeo-Spanish spoken in the United States, and from Hebrew and French in Israel. No one under the age of fifty can speak it well enough (if at all) to pass it on to the next generation, and none of the informants' grandchildren can speak the language at all. Nothing is being done to ensure its perpetuation: the language is clearly dying.
Part IV examines the sociohistorical causes for the decline of Judeo-Spanish in the Levant and the United States, and presents the various attitudes of current speakers: 86 percent of the informants feel that the language is dying. A discussion of language and Sephardic identity from a sociolinguistic perspective comprises part V , which also examines Judeo-Spanish in the framework of dying languages in general and outlines the factors that contribute to language death. In the final chapter the author examines how a dying language affects a culture, specifically the role of Judeo-Spanish in Sephardic identity.
Welfare state type, labour markets and refugees: a comparison of Jews from the former Soviet Union in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany
Author(s): Tress, Madelaine
Date: 1998
Topics: Finance, Poverty, Jewish Organisations, Jewish-Non-Jewish Relations, Care and Welfare, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: The massive exodus of Jews from the former Soviet Union [FSU] has been accompanied by welfare state retrenchment and labour market restructuration in the two preferred destination countries of refugee resettlement: the United States and Germany. This study compares the resettlement policies and outcomes of FSU Jews and shows how the context of resettlement, viz. differences in welfare state type, labour market formation and host ethnic community, yield marked differences in formal job market adaptation. FSU Jews in Germany are almost twice as likely as their American counterparts to rely on some form of refugee cash assistance for their primary means of support, whereas the American cohort is twice as likely to be employed in the formal labour market. However, informal labour market adaptation is quite similar. Findings suggest unwitting system convergence, each exercising a different form of social exclusion - welfare stigma and under employment for refugees in the United States, and high labour market regulation in Germany.
Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism
Author(s): Cooper, Alanna E.
Date: 2012
Topics: Bukharian Jews, Ethnography, Globalisation, Diaspora, Immigration, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: Part ethnography, part history, and part memoir, this volume chronicles the complex past and dynamic present of this ancient Mizrahi community. While intimately tied to the Central Asian landscape, the Jews of Bukhara have also maintained deep connections to the wider Jewish world. As the community began to disperse after the fall of the Soviet Union, Alanna E. Cooper travelled to Uzbekistan to document Jewish life there before it disappeared. Built around a series of dramatic encounters between Bukharan Jews and Jews from other Jewish centres from the 18th century to the present and drawing from Cooper's work among immigrants to the US, the book tells an intimate and personal story of what it means to be Bukharan Jewish. Cooper's lively narrative illuminates the tensions inherent in maintaining Judaism as a single global religion over the course of its long and varied diaspora history.
Еврейская эмиграция из бывшего СССР в США: Обзор изменений за 70 —90-е годы
Translated Title: Jewish Emigration from the Former USSR to the USA: Overview of Changes 1970s-1990s
Author(s): Kagan, M
Date: 1996
Topics: Emigration, Immigration, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present History, Representation, and Memory
Editor(s): Michlic, Joanna Beata
Date: 2017
Topics: Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors: Children of, Memory, Family and Household, Post-War Reconstruction, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This book offers an extensive introduction and 13 diverse essays on how World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath affected Jewish families and Jewish communities, with an especially close look at the roles played by women, youth, and children. Focusing on Eastern and Central Europe, themes explored include: how Jewish parents handled the Nazi threat; rescue and resistance within the Jewish family unit; the transformation of gender roles under duress; youth’s wartime and early postwar experiences; postwar reconstruction of the Jewish family; rehabilitation of Jewish children and youth; and the role of Zionism in shaping the present and future of young survivors.

Contents
• Foreword—Sylvia Barack Fishman
• Preface—Joanna Beata Michlic
• Jewish Families in Europe, 1939–Present: History, Representation, and Memory—An Introduction—Joanna Beata Michlic
• PART I: PARENTHOOD AND CHILDHOOD UNDER SIEGE, 1939–1945
• Parenthood in the Shadow of the Holocaust—Dalia Ofer
• Clandestine Activities and Concealed Presence: A Case Study of Children in the Kraków Ghetto—Joanna Sliwa
• Resistance in Everyday Life: Family Strategies, Role Reversals, and Role Sharing in the Holocaust—Lenore J. Weitzman
• The National Institute for the Israelite Deaf-Mute in Budapest, 1938–1948: A Case Study for the Rescue Strategy of Continuously Operating Jewish Communal Institutions—Kinga Frojimovics
• Moving Together, Moving Alone: The Story of Boys on a Transport from Auschwitz to Buchenwald—Kenneth Waltzer
• Life in Hiding and Beyond—Jennifer Marlow
• PART II: AFTER THE WAR: REBUILDING SHATTERED LIVES, RECOLLECTING WARTIME EXPERIENCES
• A Zionist Home: Jewish Youths and the Kibbutz Family after the Holocaust—Avinoam Patt
• What Does a Child Remember? Recollections of the War and the Early Postwar Period among Child Survivors from Poland—Joanna Beata Michlic
• Memory Imprints: Testimonies as Historical Sources—Rita Horváth
• “I Will Not Be Believed”: Benjamin Tenenbaum and the Representation of the Child Survivor—Boaz Cohen and Gabriel N. Finder
• Transcending Memory in Holocaust Survivors’ Families—Uta Larkey
• Holocaust Child Survivors, Sixty-Five Years after Liberation: From Mourning to Creativity—Eva Fogelman
• Afterword: In Defense of Eyewitness Testimonies: Reflections of a Writer and Child Survivor of the Holocaust—Henryk Grynberg
• List of Contributors
• Index
Post-Soviet Aliyah and Jewish Demographic Transformation
Author(s): Tolts, Mark
Date: 2009
Topics: Aliyah, Russian Emigration, Demography, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract:

In the 1990s most of the second largest Jewish Diaspora population, which resided in the former Soviet Union (FSU), changed their places of residence. Whereas the majority emigrated to Israel, the rest were divided mostly between the USA and Germany. The aims of this paper are to present (post-) Soviet Jewish resettlement, and to study the demographic transformation in the course of this mass migration.
Understanding the Jewish Identity and Experiences of Russian-Speaking Young Adults: A Study of the Taglit-Birthright Israel Generation
Author(s): Shain, Michelle; Phillips, Benjamin; Saxe, Leonard
Date: 2011
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity, Young Adults / Emerging Adulthood, Russian-Speaking Jews, Birthright (Taglit), Surveys, Israel Tours, Interviews
Abstract:

Hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and their children currently live in North America. The Jewish identity of the young adults in this group is a source of broad concern in the Jewish community. Taglit-Birthright Israel (Taglit), which provides 10-day educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26, is one program that has successfully engaged Jewish young adults with roots in the FSU. Drawing on draws on data collected in a set of surveys conducted approximately three months before and after the Taglit trips in summer ’07, winter ’07-’08, and summer ’08, as well as focus groups and in-depth interviews, this report paints a comprehensive portrait of Russian-speaking Taglit participants.

This report examines the sociodemographic characteristics, backgrounds and current Jewish and Russian identities and engagement of Taglit participants with roots in the FSU. It then examines their Taglit experience and the impact of the trip. Finally, the report explores potential avenues to engage this group’s unique Russian-Jewish cultural and linguistic heritage and draw them into American Jewish life.
Immigrant Jews of the Caucasus in New York and Moscow: Ethno-Cultural Identity and Community Organization
Translated Title: יהודי קווקאז כמהגרים בניו-יורק ובמוסקווה: זהות אתנו-תרבותית והתארגנות קהילתית
Author(s): Bram, Chen
Date: 2008
Topics: Diaspora, Mountain Jews, Jewish Identity, Jewish Culture, Jewish Community, Emigration, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: This article brings together two case studies from a larger research project on collective identity, ethnic categorization and community life among Jews of the Caucasus who migrated from their homelands to Israel, USA and Central Russia. It shows how this distinctive group of Jews strives to preserve its culture, language and social ties by building community organizations and forging new relationships with the surrounding majority and other Jewish groups. Specifically, the author focuses on the encounter between Jews of the Caucasus with Russian Jews that challenges the accepted binary oppositions between Mizrahi/Sephardic and Ashkenazi identities used in the Israeli and American Jewish discourse.
The economic downturn & the future of Jewish communities
Author(s): Sarna, Jonathan D.
Date: 2009
Topics: Economy, Finance, Aliyah, Demography, Jewish Organisations, Fundraising and Philanthropy, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Future
Abstract: In the aftermath of the economic crisis that swept across the world in 2008, Professor Jonathan Sarna, Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and Chief Historian of the new National Museum of American Jewish History, gave JPR’s 2009 Morris and Manja Leigh Memorial lecture exploring how similar economic crises have affected Jewish life in the past.

Based on historical precedent, he argued that we should expect to see five trends: (1) Jewish organisations being merged into non-Jewish organisations; (2) new found efforts to re-engage small donors; (3) calls for higher standards of ethics and greater transparency in Jewish philanthropy; (4) a new focus on sweat equity; and (5) demographic decline and greater aliyah to Israel as unemployment rises.

Sarna further argued that “Once the economic downturn is behind us, the goal of formulating a new and compelling mission for our Jewish community needs to be high on our collective agenda.”
Hasidic Pilgrimages in Poland
Author(s): Epstein, Shifra
Date: 2002
Topics: Hassidism, Haredim, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: Discusses the phenomenon of contemporary Hassidic pilgrimages to visit tombs of tzadikim. Details popular sites and the infrastructure that supports the tours. Details rituals associated with pilgrimages.
Soviet Jews, Orthodox Judaism, and the Lubavitcher Hasidim
Author(s): Freedman, Jenny A.
Date: 1993
Topics: Hassidism, Haredim, Chabad-Lubavitch, Main Topic: Identity and Community
New Jewish Identities : Contemporary Europe and Beyond
Editor(s): Gitelman, Zvi; Kosmin, Barry; Kovács, András
Date: 2003
Topics: comparative studies, Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community
Abstract: This volume analyzes and compares how Jews conceive of their Jewishness. Identity as a Jew is in most places a matter of choice, making for a wide variety of self-understandings and definitions. Even where tradition is attractive to many Jews, they increasingly sense that it is they who choose the tradition or whatever aspects of the tradition they choose to celebrate; the tradition is not imperative and cannot impose attitudes and forms of behavior. Contents:  1 Social Identity in British and South African Jewry
Jacqueline Goldberg
2 Religious Identity in the Social and Political Arena: An Examination of the
Attitudes of Orthodox and Progressive Jews in the UK
Barry Kosmin
3 Changing Patterns of Jewish Identity among British Jews
Stephen Miller
4 A Typological Approach to French Jewry
Regine Azria
5 "Jewishness" in Postmodernity: The Case of Sweden
Lars Dencik
6 Becoming Jewish in Russia and Ukraine
Zvi Gitelman
7 The Jewish Press and Jewish Identity: Leningrad/St. Petersburg, 1989-1992
John D. Klier
8 Patterns of Jewish Identity in the Jewish Community of Moldova: The Behavioral Dimension
Malka Korazim and Esther Katz
9 Jewish Identity and the Orthodox Church in Late Soviet Russia
Judith Deutsch Kornblatt
10 Looking Out for One's Own Identity: Central Asian Jews in the Wake of
Communism
Alanna E. Cooper
11 Jewish Groups and Identity Strategies in Post-Communist Hungary
Andrs̀ Kovc ̀s
12 Particularizing the Universal: New Polish Jewish Identities and a New Framework
of Analysis
Marius Gudonis
13 Polish Jewish Institutions in Transition: Personalities Over Process
Claire A. Rosenson
14 Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel
Charles S. Liebman
15 Notes Towards the Definition of Jewish Culture in the New Europe
Jonathan Webber
16 Conclusion: Jewish Identity in Transition: Transformation or Attenuation?
Jewish Centers and Peripheries: Europe Between America and Israel 50 Years after WWII
Editor(s): Troen, S. Ilan
Date: 1998
Topics: Diaspora, Diaspora Relations, Israel-Diaspora Relations, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: After World War II, the center of gravity for world Jewry moved outside Europe. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, large-scale emigration and postwar assimilation resulted in a disheartening contraction of European Jewry, with the notable exception of France. Today, Europe's Jews number only 17 percent of the world Jewish population. At the beginning of this century, they comprised 83 percent and were the center of the modern Jewish experience. In a radical reversal, former peripheries became the centers, notably American Jewry, the largest and most dynamic of the Diaspora communities, and the State of Israel. An examination of the altered place of Europe and its future role in Jewish history is long overdue.

In Jewish Centers and Peripheries, S. Han Troen presents evidence of cultural renewal and community reorganization—both internally driven and supported by Israeli-and American-based Jewish organizations—which promise to assure the continuity and vitality of Jewish life in Europe. This volume presents the contributions of scholars, senior community professionals, lay leaders, and former diplomats from Europe, Israel, and America, including Yosef Gorny, Gabriel Sheffer, Rashid Kaplanov, Barry Kosmin, Ralph Goldman, Jean-Jacques Wahl, Israel Finestein, David Patterson, and Daniel Elazar.
1945-2000: Conditions for a Renaissance
Author(s): Gutwirth, Jacques
Date: 2002
Topics: Hassidism, Haredim, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: An overview of the revival of Haredi Judaism since 1945
Breve storia del chassidismo
Author(s): Bauer, Julien
Date: 1997
Topics: Hassidism, Haredim, Main Topic: Other
Les Juifs Hassidiques
Translated Title: Hassidic Jews
Author(s): Bauer, Julien
Date: 1997
Topics: Hassidism, Haredim, Main Topic: Other
Russian Jews on Three Continents Migration and Resettlement
Editor(s): Lewin-Epstein, Noah; Ritterband, Paul; Ro'i, Yaakov
Date: 1997
Topics: Russian Emigration, Russian-Speaking Jews, Emigration, Aliyah, Demography, Immigration, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: In the past twenty years almost three quarters of a million Russian Jews have emigrated to the West. Their presence in Israel, Europe and North America and their absence from Russia have left an indelible imprint on these societies. The emigrants themselves as well as those who stayed behind, are in a struggle to establish their own identities and to achieve social and economic security

In this volume an international assembly of experts historians, sociologists, demographers and politicians join forces in order to assess the nature and magnitude of the impact created by this emigration and to examine the fate of those Jews who left and those who remained. Their wide-ranging perspectives contribute to creating a variegated and complex picture of the recent Russian Jewish Emigration.

Part 1 The historical setting: "from northern country" - Russian and Soviet immigration to America and Israel in historical perspective, Zvi Gitelman.
Part 2 From emigration to absorption - policy formulation and implementation: Soviet policy towards Jewish emigration - an overview, Yaacov Ro'i; ethnic and related factors in soviet emigration policy, 1968-1989, Laurie Salitan; the impact of the United States on Soviet emigration policy, Richard Schifter; Israel's immigration policy and the dropout phenomenon, Yehuda Dominitz; the quandaries of an Israeli minister of absorption, Yair Tzaban; Israel's absorption policy since the 1970s, Shmuel Adler. Part 3 The social context of emigration: the interrelationship between emigration and the socio-demographic profile of Russian Jewry, Mark Tolts; Jewish emigration from the former USSR - who? why? how many? Robert J. Brym; does the country gain or lose from the Exodus of Jews? the discussion in Russian society, Eli Weinerman; attitudes of Russians towards Jews and their emigration, 1989-94. Part 4 Social and economic absorption in Israel and the US: Soviet Jews in the United States - language and labour market adjustments revisited, Barry R. Chiswick; community formation among Jews from the former Soviet Union in the US, Steven J. Gold; immigrants from the former USSR in Israel in the 1990s: - demographic characteristics and socio-economic absorption, Ari M. Paltiel et al. Part 5 Cultural change and identity dilemmas: Jewish identity among Russian immigrants in the US, Paul Ritterband; culture change, border crossings and identity shopping - Jewish teenagers from the CIS assess their future in Israel, Fran Markowitz; identity and language - the social insertion of Soviet Jews in Israel, Eliezer Ben-Rafael et al; motivation to serve in the Israeli Army - the gap between cultural involvement and cultural performance, Abraham Carmeli, Judith Fadlon; is living in Russia worthwhile? Leonid Gozman; the view from Kiev, Leonid Finberg; twenty years after, Alexander V. Voronel. Part 6 Impact on the receiving society.