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Venäjänkielisten juutalaisten kertomuksia antisemitismistä ja syrjinnästä Neuvostoliitossa ja Suomessa
Translated Title: Narratives of Russian-speaking Jews about anti-Semitism and discrimination in the Soviet Union and Finland
Author(s): Czimbalmos, Mercédesz; Pataricza, Dóra
Date: 2024
Topics: Antisemitism, Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism, Interviews, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Russian-Speaking Jews, Immigration
Abstract: Suomea pidetään usein yhtenä maailman sekularisoituneimmista maista, vaikka suurin osa sen väestöstä kuuluu edelleen evankelis-luterilaiseen kirkkoon. Tästä huolimatta Suomessa on elinvoimaisia juutalaisyhteisöjä, jotka ovat pienestä koostaan huolimatta monimuotoisia. Niihin kuuluu noin 1 500 ihmistä ja ne ovat jakautuneet kolmeen yhteisöön: kahteen ortodoksiyhteisöön sekä hiljattain perustettuun reformiyhteisöön. Jäsenet edustavat useita eri kansallisuuksia, uskonnonharjoittamisen muotoja ja juutalaisia käytäntöjä. 1990-luvun alusta lähtien juutalaisiin yhteisöihin on liittynyt myös entisen Neuvostoliiton juutalaisia. Tämä artikkeli analysoi entisen Neuvostoliiton juutalaisten kertomuksia elämästä ennen Suomeen muuttoa ja sen jälkeen ja tarkastelee erityisesti heidän kokemuksiaan antisemitismistä. Artikkelissa tutkitaan, millaisia kokemuksia juutalaisilla on vihasta tai vihamielisyydestä Neuvostoliitossa ja kysytään, ovatko he kohdanneet antisemitismiä Suomessa. Kertomukset perustuvat haastatteluihin, jotka kerättiin osana Ruumiillinen uskonto -hankkeen ja Minhag Finland -hankkeen toimintaa.
30 Лет Большой Алии: Статистический Анализ Перемен (третье Издание)
Translated Title: "30 Years of the Great Aliya: A Statistical Analysis of Changes (Third edition)
Author(s): Konstantinov, Viacheslav
Date: 2017
Topics: Demography, Aliyah, Immigration, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: Настоящая книга представляет собой продолжение двух предыдущих изданий: "20 лет Большой алии" (2013) и “Четверть века Большой алии” (2017) и посвящена дальнейшим изменениям, которые претерпела еврейская русскоязычная община в Израиле. 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, владение ивритом и англий-ским языком, компьютерную грамотность, армейскую/национальную службу, образова-ние (как взрослого населения, так и детей и молодежи). Особое внимание уделяется профессиональному трудоустройству репатриантов, и в частности, специалистов с выс-шим образованием. Рассматриваются также изменения в экономическом положении ре-патриантов, их состояние здоровья, а также общая удовлетворенность жизнью в Изра-иле, отношение к различным общественным институтам и уровень религиозности. По сравнению с предыдущим изданием, данные уточнены в соответствии с новыми источ-никами 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 проблемами интеграции репатриантов в различных сферах и всех интересующихся данной пробле-мой.
When a neighbourhood falls off the map: Jewish disappearance from Samarkand’s Post-Soviet landscape
Author(s): Cooper, Alanna E.
Date: 2023
Topics: Jewish Heritage, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Post-1989, Bukharian Jews
Abstract: Established in 1843, the Jewish residential quarter in Samarkand (located at the time in the Bukharan kingdom, and today in independent Uzbekistan) has been emptied of its Jewish residents in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise. Since then, physical markers testifying to their history in the neighbourhood have also been eroding. This process has been organic, rather than a deliberate program of erasure. Still, these shifts in the built environment fit within Uzbekistan’s larger project of state-building, as Jewish homes and communal structures belie the Russian and Soviet colonial legacy, which has been spurned since independence. Drawing on recent and historical accounts, as well as my own observations in the 1990s and in 2013, this article documents the built environment in the very moment of transition, as physical structures transform and are separated from the history and memories that enlivened them. With this disappearance, a tourist opportunity for encountering global Jewish diversity is lost, and Uzbekistan’s project of nation-building – absent its historical minority populations – is further solidified.
Израильтяне в постсоветских странах: «профессионалы», «маргиналы» и другие
Translated Title: Israelis in Post-Soviet Countries: “Professionals,” “Marginals,” and Others
Author(s): Ханин, ВладиМир (Зеэв)
Date: 2022
Topics: Demography, Russian Emigration, Russian-Speaking Jews, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Aliyah, Work
Abstract: В последние 20–25 лет список стран, которые стали адресом эмиграции израильтян, пополнили и страны бывшего СССР, где по разным оценкам проживает от 45 до 70 тысяч таких лиц. Причем более 90 % из них составляют уроженцы постсоветского пространства, включающие, в свою очередь, как тех, кто переселился в Россию и другие страны бывшего СССР (либо живут на две или более стран), имея достаточно значимый опыт жизни в Израиле, так и так называемых «дарконников» — тех, которые взяли израильский заграничный паспорт (даркон), никогда реально в Израиле не живя. Анализируя данные официальной статистики и результаты опросов этих групп, проведенных с участием автора в 2009–2019/20 годах, представляется возможным констатировать, что ядром первой группы являются лица, мотивированные надеждами полнее реализовать свои профессиональные и деловые возможности в столичных и иных крупных индустриальных и культурных центрах бывшего СССР. К тому же профессионально-поведенческому типу принадлежит и основная масса «дарконников», главная причина чьей «отложенной» реальной репатриации связана с опасением потери наработанного профессионального статуса и привычного уровня жизни. Представители групп, которые перебрались или вернулись в регион первого исхода, мотивированные иными причинами, занимают в структуре разнородного сообщества «израильтян в бывшем СССР» в целом маргинальное положение. Как следствие, существенное ухудшение экономической ситуации и деловой конъюнктуры могут заставить израильтян, живущих в СНГ, вновь перебраться в Израиль — что сегодня частично и происходит.
Between Authenticity and Ethnicity: Heritage Tourism and Re-ethnification Among Diaspora Jewish Youth
Author(s): Lev Ari, Lilach; Mittelberg, David
Date: 2008
Topics: Birthright (Taglit), Educational Tours, Israel Attachment, Israel-Diaspora Relations, Israel Tours, Israel Experience, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity
Abstract: Heritage tourism takes on a new meaning when conceived and implemented in the framework of a diaspora – homeland context. Trip organisers utilise heritage tourism that identifies the signifiers of national collective identity or Peoplehood and construct an experience of authenticity that supports a newly reconstructed narrative of personal and collective identity that bridges the diaspora and homeland identities. This paper examines into the differential consequences of heritage tourism on the ethnic identity of diaspora travellers from North America and the former Soviet Union to their homeland, specifically contrasting Jewish tourists from different diaspora localities making an otherwise almost identical birthright Israel trip. For both groups, Jewish ethnic identity was strengthened, particularly their emotional attachment to Israel. However, the difference between the two groups was found in the actual factors that explain this post trip attachment to Israel. The experiential component was more prominent among participants from the former Soviet Union, while among North American student participants, Jewish background as well as their higher pre-trip motivations provide an explanation for their high post-trip scores of attachment to Israel. Israel thus serves as the liminal domain of diaspora tourists, where existential authenticity and pre-trip ethnicity as latent as the latter may be, intertwine experientially to generate an expansion of the frame of individual identity of diaspora tourists in their homeland.
Столкновение закона и обычая в традиционной культуре евреев Восточной Европы: народный иудаизм
Translated Title: Clashes between the law and the customs of traditional culture of Jews in Eastern Europe: The people’s Judaism
Author(s): Каспина, Мария
Date: 2010
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Folklore, Interviews, Oral History and Biography, Religious Observance and Practice, Ritual
Abstract: The article deals with the ways of treating a series of direct religious interdictions which were developed in traditional Jewish culture. For the founders of Jewish religious teaching it was obvious that in real life the law often came into conflict with the people’s customs and traditions which were accepted in those areas where Jews
live to this day. The author examines cases of clashes between customs and the law in material from the traditional culture of Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe in the 20th century. The article includes field material from expeditions carried out in 2000–2010 on the territory of former Jewish towns in Eastern Europe: in West Ukraine and Moldavia. The main systems of rules about the breaking of rules which have formed in traditional Jewish culture are more or less identical to universal ways of circumventing interdictions and prescripts: constructing a symbolic perfect tense, changing the status of an object and ritual exchange. Clear parallels to universal ways of
circumventing interdictions and prescripts can be found in the people’s everyday practices connected to the arrangement of one’s home, the funeral rites cycle, and protection from unclean powers
Folk Judaism: Variations of Religious Practices among the Jews of Ukraine and Moldova (Research Findings, 2004–11)
Author(s): Kaspina, Maria
Date: 2016
Topics: Folklore, Main Topic: Other, Communism, Interviews, Oral History and Biography, Religious Observance and Practice, Ritual
Abstract: This article draws on analysis of interviews with Jews of Ukraine and Moldova who lived the first part of their lives following traditional Jewish ways, while the latter part occurred during the period of strong anti-religious pressure in the Soviet Union. As a result, several variations of what we can call “folk Judaism” emerged. One form consists of a coerced nonobservance of the laws of Judaism and entails the elaboration of various ways to observe Jewish traditions in the absence of the ability to follow the letter of the law. The second option involves conscious rejection of ancestral religious traditions, partial observance as “camouflage,” and minimal interaction with modern Orthodox Judaism. The third option is creating one’s own individual rules for observing selected religious commandments. Several key mechanisms of the formation of new Jewish “folk” religious practices can be identified. They are the transformation of the existing halakhic regulations with the help of a) ritual deception; b) changes in the status of the ritual object; and c) application of the laws of ritual purity to an object known to be unclean.
Debating, obfuscating and disciplining the Holocaust: post-Soviet historical discourses on the OUN–UPA and other nationalist movements
Author(s): Rossoliński-Liebe, Grzegorz
Date: 2012
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Communism, History, Nationalism
Abstract: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the archives of the former republics and satellite states of this multiethnic empire were opened. This allowed historians to investigate the history of nationalist and radical right organisations and armies that, during the Second World War, had been involved in the Holocaust and other atrocities. Among them was the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists. For a long time the history of these movements was unknown or distorted by Soviet propaganda and propagandist publications written during the Cold War by veterans of these movements living in the West and cooperating with Western intelligence services. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was simultaneously accompanied by the “rebirth” of nationalism that was not free from antisemitism and racism, and which triggered different types of nationalist distortions of history and obfuscations of the Holocaust. Post-Soviet historical discourses were shaped not only by journalists or political activists, but also by radical right historians. These discourses impacted as well on historians who in general were critical of the post-Soviet rehabilitation of nationalism, war criminality or East Central European fascism. Concentrating on Ukrainian and Polish history, this article explores how the radical right historical discourses appeared in the post-Soviet space, what types of historians were involved in them and what kinds of distortions and obfuscations have predominated.
Jewish memory and family heirlooms (based on materials from field studies in St Petersburg, 2010–11)
Author(s): Sokolova, Alla
Date: 2013
Topics: Age and Generational Issues, Family and Household, Artefacts and Material Culture, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity, Oral History and Biography
Abstract: The article presents the results of a field study carried out within the framework of the project “Family Heirlooms and Jewish Memory,” which resulted in the organisation of an exhibition at the State Museum of the History of Religion in St Petersburg. On the basis of interviews collected from the owners of the heirlooms, the article examines relations between owner and object, as well as the practices of storage and the presentation of such things. These practices are defined as a particular channel of existence for family memory, which plays an important role in the construction of Jewish identity on the basis of ancestry.
Using New Technological Tools to Teach Hebrew as a Second Language in the FSU
Author(s): Agranovsky, Vera; Zaslavsky, Rina; Maryanchik, Evgueny
Date: 2014
Topics: Jewish Education, Main Topic: Education, Hebrew, Teaching and Pedagogy, Teachers, Jewish Schools, Jewish Teachers, Internet
Abstract: The rapid development of technology in the last decade fosters renewed thinking about how it can be harnessed for educational projects in general and for teaching the Hebrew language in particular. The use of technological tools for teaching Hebrew abroad is especially significant. In the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries Hebrew is studied in various frameworks, among them universities, Ulpans (intensive Hebrew language programs) and other adult education courses, Jewish day schools and Sunday schools. This paper will present several projects which use technological tools that contribute to their effectiveness and without which some projects would not be possible.
Antisemitism in Russia: evaluating its decline and potential resurgence
Author(s): Sherlock, Thomas
Date: 2022
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Post-1989
Abstract: The treatment of Jews by the state and society in Russia is an important measure of Russia’s civic and political character. The evidence presented in this paper indicates that Russian Jews now enjoy the greatest freedom from antisemitism in modern Russian history. The explanation for the decline of antisemitism is found in two categories: the political and the societal. At the level of “high politics,” the post-Soviet Russian state has abandoned Soviet policies that promoted or condoned the persecution and discrimination of Jews. This development was preceded and reinforced by the bottom-up growth in Russian society of a more tolerant attitude toward Jews. The first two sections of the paper explain the decline in antisemitism at elite and mass levels in Russia, underscoring mutually supportive institutional, political, and socio-cultural changes. The final part of the paper suggests that public expressions of antisemitism may re-emerge due to the weakening of the factors that have thus far restrained this prejudice.
Евреи Башкортостана: эволюция этнодисперсной группы в многонациональном российском регионе (конец XIX — начало XXI века)
Translated Title: Jews of Bashkortostan: the evolution of an ethno-dispersed group in a multinational Russian region (late 19th - early 21st century)
Author(s): Сабирова, Екатерина Николаевна
Date: 2020
Topics: Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Ethnicity, Main Topic: Identity and Community
«Свой среди чужих»: варианты интеграции неевреев в еврейскую религиозную и общинную жизнь
Translated Title: "Friend among strangers": options for integrating non-Jews into Jewish religious and communal life
Author(s): Амосова, Светлана; Пахомова, Светлана
Editor(s): Белова, Ольга
Date: 2012
Topics: Ethnography, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community, Intermarriage, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations
«Мне приятен этот обычай…», или Как мы выбираем традицию
Translated Title: “I like this custom…”, or How we choose a tradition
Author(s): Белова, Ольга
Editor(s): Белова, Ольга
Date: 2012
Topics: Ethnography, Main Topic: Other, Ritual, Religious Observance and Practice
«Старое» и «новое» в еврейской похоронной обрядовости (по материалам экспедиций в Бессарабию и на Буковину)
Translated Title: "Old" and "new" in Jewish funeral rituals (according to the materials of the expeditions to Bessarabia and Bukovina)
Author(s): Иоффе, Элина
Editor(s): Белова, Ольга
Date: 2012
Topics: Death and Mourning, Cemeteries, Ethnography, Main Topic: Other, Ritual, Religious Observance and Practice
Tradition as a Homeland to Return to: Transnational Religious Identity of the Post-Soviet Orthodox Jewry
Author(s): Ostrovskaya, Elena
Date: 2021
Topics: Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Orthodox Judaism, Religious Observance and Practice
Abstract: This article highlights the outcome of a long-term field research into the transnational identity of the post-Soviet Orthodox Jewry. It analyzes biographical interviews taken between 2015 and 2018 in St. Petersburg and Minsk to define the religious identity and day-to-day practices of post-Soviet Orthodox Jews. In this article, I argue that the modern post-Soviet Jewry is a new socio-cultural phenomenon with no historical prototypes. As to the research methodology, it was a combination of the transnational approach, random choice case-study targeting post-Soviet Orthodox communities of Orthodox Jewry in large cities, and the biographical method. The backbone of the post-Soviet Orthodox communities of different strains of Judaism was formed in 1990–2008. It is made up of three generations of men and women born in the late 1940s–1960s, mid-1960s–early 1970s, and the 1980s. Each of these generations is characterized by its own unique pattern of observance, the formation of which is directly conditioned by the circumstances of involvement in religious Jewry. The transnational pattern of observance of the Post-Soviet Orthodox Jews involves the model they confronted at the very beginning of their journey, the model they learned in overseas educational institutions or through incoming envoys and rabbis in the country of residence, and the model of balance between the required and possible in the modern post-Christian and post-atheist environment.
From Russia to Israel – And Back? Contemporary Transnational Russian Israeli Diaspora
Author(s): Khanin, Vladimir Zeev
Date: 2021
Topics: Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Aliyah, Diaspora, Israeli Expatriates, Russian Emigration, Russian-Speaking Jews
Abstract: Of about a million Jews that arrived to Israel from the (former) USSR after 1989 some 12% left the country by the end of 2017. It is estimated that about a half of them left "back" for the FSU, and the rest for the USA, Canada and the Western Europe. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of this specific Jewish Israeli Diaspora group through cutting-edge approaches in the social sciences, and examines the settlement patterns of Israeli Russian-speaking emigrants, their identity, social demographic profile, reasons of emigration, their economic achievements, identification, and status vis-à-vis host Jewish and non-Jewish environment, vision of Israel, migration interests and behavior, as well as their social and community networks, elites and institutions. Vladimir Ze’ev Khanin makes a significant contribution to migration theory, academic understanding of transnational Diasporas, and sheds a new light on the identity and structure of contemporary Israeli society. The book is based on the unique statistics from Israeli and other Government sources and sociological information obtained from the author’s first of this kind on-going study of Israeli Russian-speaking emigrant communities in different regions of the world.
Soviet Jews and the Future of the Global Jewish Diaspora
Author(s): Shneer, David
Editor(s): Diner, Hasia R.
Date: 2021
Topics: Diaspora, Soviet Jewry, Russian-Speaking Jews, Aliyah, Immigration, Main Topic: Other
Smell and memory as Jewish archives: the case of Russian Jewish writers
Author(s): Mondry, Henrietta
Date: 2014
Topics: Jewish Identity, Age and Generational Issues, Artefacts and Material Culture, Memory, Main Topic: Other, Attitudes to Jews, Stereotypes, Libraries and Archives, Literature
Abstract: The paper analyses the complex dynamics of the rejection of ‘Jewish smells’ as markers of Jewish corporeality in the context of stereotypes constructed by Russian culture. It addresses the conflicting desire to cherish and yet reject the smells of childhood as an important repository of memory in autobiographical prose by Russian Jewish writers. It theorizes the notion of smell as a Jewish archive in the context of inter-generational knowledge, displacement, space and time. How can the most ethereal of all sensations serve as an archive? How do we pass on this type of knowledge-inducing mechanism to future generations? And how do writers negotiate their national/ethnic identities on the basis of this form of remembering?
Denial and Repression of Anti-Semitism: Post-Communist Rehabilitation of the Serbian Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic
Author(s): Byford, Jovan
Date: 2008
Topics: Christianity, Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Christian, Main Topic: Antisemitism
Abstract: Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović (1881–1956) is arguably one the most controversial figures in contemporary Serbian national culture. Having been vilified by the former Yugoslav Communist authorities as a fascist and an antisemite, this Orthodox Christian thinker has over the past two decades come to be regarded in Serbian society as the most important religious person since medieval times and an embodiment of the authentic Serbian national spirit. Velimirović was formally canonised by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2003. In this book, Jovan Byford charts the posthumous transformation of Velimirović from 'traitor' to 'saint' and examines the dynamics of repression and denial that were used to divert public attention from the controversies surrounding the bishop's life, the most important of which is his antisemitism. Byford offers the first detailed examination of the way in which an Eastern Orthodox Church manages controversy surrounding the presence of antisemitism within its ranks and he considers the implications of the continuing reverence of Nikolaj Velimirović for the persistence of antisemitism in Serbian Orthodox culture and in Serbian society as a whole. This book is based on a detailed examination of the changing representation of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović in the Serbian media and in commemorative discourse devoted to him. The book also makes extensive use of exclusive interviews with a number of Serbian public figures who have been actively involved in the bishop’s rehabilitation over the past two decades.
From Soviet National Policy to Contemporary Russian Federalism: The Past and Future of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast
Author(s): Fabrykant, Marharyta
Editor(s): Salat, Levente; Constantin, Sergiu; Osipov, Alexander; Székely, István Gergő
Date: 2014
Topics: Jewish History, Soviet Jewry, Post-1989, Nationality, Main Topic: Other
„Zoo” i „makieta”. O dominujących sposobach pisania o Birobidżanie
Translated Title: A “zoo” and “mock-up”: On the most frequent ways of portraying Birobidzhan
Author(s): Maksimowska, Agata
Date: 2018
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Attitudes to Jews, Communism, Jewish History, Media, Soviet Jewry
Abstract: W artykule przeanalizowane zostały najczęstsze sposoby opisywania Birobidżanu przez dziennikarzy, blogerów, filmowców i pisarzy. Utworzony w 1934 r. Żydowski Obwód Autonomiczny wciąż istnieje jako jednostka administracyjna w ramach Federacji Rosyjskiej. Zazwyczaj traktowany jest przez odwiedzających z innych części Rosji lub z zagranicy jako „egzotyczny”, „śmieszny”, „absurdalny”, „groteskowy” czy „sztuczny”. Jego historia postrzegana jest jako „porażka”, zwłaszcza w porównaniu z historią Izraela. Autorzy rozmaitych przedstawień Birobidżanu posługują się także koncepcją „utopii” w jej zawężonym, negatywnym rozumieniu, jako „nierealnej mrzonki”. Orientalizacja Żydowskiego Obwodu Autonomicznego przyczynia się do uprzedmiotowienia jego mieszkańców i delegitymizowania ich praktyk nadawania sensu historii regionu.
The Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan in Siberia
Author(s): Vitale, Alessandro
Date: 2021
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Post-1989, Communism, Soviet Jewry
Abstract: The Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) of Birobidzhan in Siberia is still alive. The once famous “Siberian Zion”, at the confluence of the Bira and Bidzhan rivers, a stone’s throw away from China and a day from the Pacific Ocean, 9,000 km and six days by train from Moscow, is still a geographical reality. The political class of the Soviet Union decided to create a territory the size of Belgium for a settlement for Jews, choosing a region on the border between China and the Soviet Union. It believed that Soviet Jews needed, like other national minorities, a homeland with a territory. The Soviet regime thus opted to establish an enclave that would become the JAR in 1934. We should note that the creation of the JAR was the first historically fulfilled case of building an officially recognised Jewish national territory since antiquity and well before Israel. Nevertheless, many historians declared this experiment a failure and the history of the Region only tragic. It is interesting to note, however, that the survival of the JAR in post-Soviet Russia has been not only a historical curiosity, a legacy of Soviet national policy, but today – after the collapse of the Soviet Union – it represents a very interesting case study. It is also a topic useful for the analysis and understanding of inter-ethnic relations, cooperation, and coexistence and it is a unique case of geographic resettlement that produced a special case of “local patriotism”, as an example also for different ethnic groups living in the JAR, based on Jewish and Yiddish roots.
Jewish emigration from the USSR in the 1990s
Author(s): Benifand, Alexander
Date: 1991
Topics: Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Russian Emigration, Soviet Jewry, Emigration
Soviet‐jewish emigration and resettlement in the 1990s an overview
Author(s): Basok, Tanya; Brym, Robert J.
Date: 1991
Topics: Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Russian Emigration, Soviet Jewry, Emigration
Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia since the End of Communism
Author(s): Polonsky, Antony
Date: 2013
Topics: Jewish Revival, Main Topic: Other, Post-1989
Abstract: This chapter highlights how the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union initiated a new period in the history of the Jews in the area. Poland was now a fully sovereign country, and Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Moldova also became independent states. Post-imperial Russia faced the task of creating a new form of national identity. This was to prove more difficult than in other post-imperial states since, unlike Britain and France, the tsarist empire and its successor, the Soviet Union, had not so much been the ruler of a colonial empire as an empire itself. All of these countries now embarked, with differing degrees of enthusiasm, on the difficult task of creating liberal democratic states with market economies. For the Jews of the area, the new political situation allowed both the creation and development of Jewish institutions and the fostering of Jewish cultural life in much freer conditions, but also facilitated emigration to Israel, North America, and western Europe on a much larger scale.
Recent Demographic and Migratory Trends Among Soviet Jews: Implications for Policy
Author(s): Gitelman, Zvi
Date: 1992
Topics: Demography, Emigration, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Russian Emigration
Abstract: A prominent authority on the Jewish population of the former USSR focuses on demographic trends and migration behavior (both within the former USSR and abroad), while also addressing the effect of Soviet state policy toward the Jewish population. Among the factors whose effects on population dynamics are examined, emphasis is placed on the Jewish population's concentration in large urban areas, the effects of emigration on age structure of the remaining population, self-identification as a method in census enumeration, ethnic intermarriage and family characteristics, and the outlook and prospects for emigres in Israel and the United States.
Current Developments in the Jewish Community in the USSR
Author(s): Altschuler, Mordechai
Date: 1993
Topics: Soviet Jewry, Main Topic: Other, Russian Emigration, Jewish Community
Abstract: Professor Altschuler launched his discussion of the volatile status of Jews living in the USSR by challenging the popular understanding of ‘Soviet Jewry.’ Fundamental questions arise: how many Soviet Jews are there? What are the various types of Jewish communities within the Soviet Union, and how do they differ one from another? What are the distinguishing cultural activities of Soviet Jews? and what is the status of their emigration from the USSR?
Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Soviet and Post-Soviet Ukraine and Belarus: Public Debates and Historiography
Author(s): Baranova, Olga
Date: 2019
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Post-1989, Communism
Abstract: This article investigates how the Holocaust was recollected, presented, and interpreted in Ukraine and Belarus during the Soviet era. It further examines the changes that have taken place in the representation of the Holocaust in Ukraine and Belarus in the post-communist period. First, the article aims to explain the ideological reasons why the Jewish origin of many Nazi victims was largely played down or ignored in the Soviet historiography. Second, it investigates the new political dynamics in independent post-communist Ukraine and Belarus that have influenced public discourse and historiographical reflections on various issues of the Second World War, including the persecution of the Jews. As well as historiography, the article investigates the developments that have taken place in contemporary Ukraine and Belarus regarding commemorative practices, monuments, museum exhibitions, and education initiatives to honor the victims of the Holocaust and to promote knowledge about this event
Authenticity, Autonomy, and Authority: Feminist Jewish Learning among Post-Soviet Women
Author(s): Grant, Lisa
Date: 2008
Topics: Education: Adult Education, Jewish Education, Jewish Women, Main Topic: Education, Jewish Identity
Abstract: This articles explores how a group of women in the Former Soviet Union grapple with questions of Jewish identity and Jewish “authenticity” as they participate in adult Jewish learning program that employs methods of feminist pedagogy and transformative learning. The study reflects on areas of dissonance between the transformational learning process and the tenacity of the women's world assumptions that are shaped by background, history, and worldview. While the learning process seems to be prompting these women to seriously and critically reflect on and reframe their self-understanding as learners and as Jews, their limited content-knowledge combined with a tentative sense of personal authority about Jewish life seems to impede their ability to harmonize their learning with a clear sense of what constitutes authentic practice of Judaism.
"там, на снегах севера, капли моей крови". Исторические и идеологические корни израильской диаспоры в россии и ссср
Translated Title: Historical and ideological roots of the Israeli diaspora in Russia and the USSR
Author(s): Чернин, Велвл (Владимир)
Date: 2013
Topics: Russian-Speaking Jews, Israeli Expatriates, Immigration, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Jewish History
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.
«Из-за куска импортной колбасы, поношенных вещей и жевательной резинки»: материальный мир в полемике о еврейской эмиграции
Translated Title: “For the Piece of Foreign-Made Sausage, Second-Hand Clothes and Chewing Gum”: the Material World in the Polemics on Jewish Emigration
Author(s): Зеленина, Галина
Editor(s): Белова, O. B.
Date: 2019
Topics: Oral History and Biography, Main Topic: Other, Soviet Jewry, Memory, Russian Emigration, Artefacts and Material Culture
Abstract: Отталкиваясь от распространенных в антисионистской кампании обвинений евреев-эмигрантов и отказников в меркантильности и потребительстве, статья рассматривает вещественный мир и его осмысление в советском и еврейском нарративах эмиграции, сосредотачиваясь на трех ситуациях: иммиграция вещей, эмиграция вещей и вещь как альтернатива эмиграции. Отмечая предубеждение против материального как традиционную установку мемуаристов, причисляющих себя к интеллигенции, автор тем не менее обнаруживает несколько категорий вещей, регулярно упоминаемых в разнообразных рассказах о своей и чужой эмиграции, и исследует то, как эти вещи проблематизируются и социализируются, превращаясь из
машинально используемых предметов в «социальные объекты», наделенные в антагонистичных нарративах различным, иногда противоположным, значением.
Fifty Years After the Refusenik Movement: How Post-Soviet Jews Have Proven Triumphant
Author(s): Drinkwater, Gregg; Shneer, David
Date: 2020
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Soviet Jewry, Post-1989, Jewish Revival
The Use of Hebrew and Yiddish in the Rituals of Contemporary Jewry of Bukovina and Bessarabia
Author(s): Polyan, Alexandra
Editor(s): Veidlinger, Jeffrey
Date: 2016
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Ethnography, Hebrew, Yiddish, Liturgy, Language, Religious Observance and Practice, Ritual
Разрыв Еврейской Традиции И Его Преодоление В Постсоветской Украине
Translated Title: Jewish Tradition in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Lost and Regained
Author(s): Евсеенко, Наталья
Date: 2011
Topics: Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community, Jewish Renewal, Jewish Revival, Post-1989, Age and Generational Issues
Abstract: The paper is focused on the problem of relationship to one’s own religious tradition. Here one can find preliminary analysis of field materials gathered in small Ukrainian town Balta - former Jewish shtetl, a small town with a large Jewish population. Nowadays the Balta Jews are facing the revival of their religious life and are actively participating in this process. Our aim was to analyze how different generations of Balta Jews see their own religious experience. We found out that the elderly people tended to consider contemporary religious revival as a direct continuation of their parents’ and grandparents’ traditions as they remember it since the time they used to be children. On the contrary, the middle generation of Balta Jews believe that they are in a way victims of a «tradition gap»; they tend to blame the Soviet state for depriving them of any opportunity to live a full Jewish life. The middle generation sees the pre-Holocaust tradition as a «lost paradise» which never comes back. And, finally, the young Balta Jews express no relation to the previous stages of Jewish life in their town, but they are obviously proud of their Jewishness because they understand and use it as a resource for getting a good education in different Jewish high schools and as a possibility to emigrate from Ukraine.
В Поисках Общины. Модели Возрождения Организованной Еврейской Жизни В Позднем Ссср И Постсоветских Странах
Translated Title: In Search of a Community: Jewish National-Cultural Renaissance in the USSR and the Post-Soviet States
Author(s): Ханин, Зеев
Date: 2011
Topics: Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community, Jewish Renewal, Jewish Revival, Post-1989, Jewish Organisations
Abstract: After the decades of discrimination against organized Jewish life in the Soviet Union, the present period shows creation and rapid development of Jewish national organizations and institutional infrastructure of Jewish communities in most of the post-Soviet states, especially in Russia and Ukraine. Not a few of these organizations were rooted in history of Jewish life in the USSR after World War II, including the experience of the creation and existence of legal (state-sponsored), illegal (underground national and human rights organizations), and quasi-legal (religious communities) Jewish social institutions in a hostile social and political environment. The Jewish organizations, including local/sectarian institutions, municipal/regional federations, as well as nationwide «umbrella» structures, that were established in the USSR successor states, had to meet the challenge of new conditions of Jewish life in post-communist countries which included a demand for services normally provided by a Jewish community (education, welfare, synagogues, cultural activities, etc.) and a need for an adequate institutional framework which reflected local Jewish identity (whether ethnic nationalism or cultural/religious affiliation)...
Глобальная Демография Постсоветской Еврейской Диаспоры
Translated Title: The Global Demography of the Post-Soviet Jewish Diaspora
Author(s): Тольц, Марк
Date: 2011
Topics: Demography, Immigration, Aliyah, Diaspora, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Russian Emigration, Russian-Speaking Jews
Abstract: This article is a study of the population dynamics of the post-Soviet Jewish diaspora based on the various statistical sources collected from the many countries where these Jews live. It examines (post-) Soviet Jewish resettlement, and analyzes the annual volume of migration streams to the three main destinations - Israel, the USA and Germany. The findings clearly show the decisive role of the push factor in this migration movement. A very large differentiation in age structure of the migrants to their three main destinations was found which points to many sizable discrepancies in adaptation processes in these receiving countries, and different prospects for future development of these segments of the contemporary post-Soviet Jewish diaspora. Out-migration from Israel of FSU immigrants was studied based on official Israeli data and statistics of FSU countries. According to our findings based on recent data, emigration from Israel is largely dependent on the dynamics of the country's business cycle. Finally, an update for 2010 of the number of «core» Jews (by self-identification) originating from the FSU was presented by country, and the total number of people belonging to the post-Soviet Jewish diaspora worldwide and their distribution was estimated.
«Мы никого не притесняли»: особенности кросс-культурных контактов в смешанных семьях (по материалам экспедиций в Приднестровье)
Translated Title: “We Didn’t Oppress Anyone”: Peculiarities of Cross-Cultural Contacts in Mixed Families (Based on the Field Material from the Expeditions to Transnistria)
Author(s): Киреева, Наталья Михайловна; Чиркина, Любовь Вячеславовна
Date: 2020
Topics: Marriage, Ritual, Main Topic: Other, Family and Household, Intermarriage, Religious Observance and Practice, Interviews
Abstract: Статья посвящена проблеме межэтнических брачных союзов, в основу исследования легли экспедиционные материалы, собранные в Приднестровье в 2017-2019 гг. В еврейской среде в советский период традиция смешанных браков получает широкое распространение, такие союзы приводят к трансформации классического определения еврейства, что в свою очередь оказывает влияние на представления партнеров о собственной идентичности. Авторами было собрано и проанализировано 29 интервью с информантами (евреями и неевреями), состоявшими в смешанных браках, и их детьми; были выделены три основных зоны напряжения в межэтнических семьях (восприятие данного союза окружающими, имянаречение ребенка и похороны) и три стратегии преодоления напряжения: выбор нейтральной и светской традиции; компромисс (сочетание двух традиций) и интеграция одного из партнеров в культуру другого. В качестве зоны кросс-культурного взаимодействия информанты выделяли праздники; связанные с ними традиции, как правило, были смешанными (например, Песах и Пасха). Авторы приходят к выводу, что описываемый синтез культур приводит к дрейфу идентичности информантов и трансформации представлений о «настоящем еврее», согласно которым знания о традиции или практические навыки становятся важнее принципов галахи.
Наше наследство: синагоги снг в прошлом и настоящем
Translated Title: Our legacy: synagogues of the cis in the past and present
Author(s): Бейзер, Михаэль
Date: 2002
Topics: Jewish Heritage, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Synagogues, Restitution and Reparations, Post-1989
Abstract: Книга посвящена судьбе синагогальных зданий на территории СНГ на протяжении прошедшего столетия. Первая ее часть охватывает период от начала ХХ века до распада СССР; вторая - рассказ о том, как в постсоветское время часть конфискованных государством синагог возвращается еврейским общинам и обретает вторую жизнь. Автор вводит читателя в круг проблем, связанных с этим процессом, и останавливается на роли Джойнта в деле реституции и ремонта синагог. Книга богато иллюстрирована фотографиями, в основном из коллекции Джойнта; большая часть из них публикуется впервые. В приложении приведен список действующих сегодня синагог СНГ. Одна из предыдущих книг Бейзера - "Евреи Ленинграда, 1917 - 1939: национальная жизнь и советизация" (1999) - удостоилась Анциферовской премии 2000 г. за лучшую зарубежную книгу о Санкт-Петербурге.
Hardship And Needs Of Elderly Hesed Clients: An Analysis Of Clients Served By Hesed Service Centers In Russia & Ukraine
Author(s): Tighe, Elizabeth; Magidin de Kramer, Raquel; Bleckman, Dina; Begli, Nursahedov; Saxe, Leonard
Date: 2012
Topics: Ageing and the Elderly, Care and Welfare, Health, Evaluation, Main Topic: Other, Social Services, Social Work, NGOs
Abstract:

The countries of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) are the home today for a substantial number of Jews, many of whom live in poor, economically disadvantaged communities. Throughout the FSU, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) has supported the development of Hesed welfare and Jewish community centers to assist in the provision of services to Jews in need and to support the renewal of Jewish life after years of suppression. The present report is designed to review the current economic, health, and social conditions of these elderly Jews in need in the FSU and to compare their circumstances, as best possible, to their counterparts who live in western countries such as the United States.

Data from a large number of sources are reviewed and analyzed, including national statistics, national and local surveys, and client-level data. The data indicate clearly that, in view of demographic composition, as well as economic and social conditions, elderly Jews in the FSU have tremendous needs for supportive services funded by philanthropy compared to their peers in the United States. The comparisons also highlight the disparities in available care among those most in need.

There is a clear need for external support for basic health and social services for elderly Jews in the FSU. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is not an adequate safety net for the elderly. The situation is in flux and there are unique challenges associated with understanding service delivery in societies that are in transition. The available data on pensions and living circumstances make clear that the economic situation for elderly in the FSU who seek Hesed services is dire. Faced with increasing costs for basic needs such as utilities and food, along with health services including essential medicines, quality care and homecare, the pension amounts that Hesed clients rely on are inadequate to meet their needs.
Project Kesher – Making Jewish Women’s Voices Heard in the Former Soviet Union
Author(s): Yakimenko, Svetlana
Date: 2014
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish Women
Der Ort des Judentums in der Gegenwart
Translated Title: The place of Judaism in the present
Editor(s): Wallenborn, Hiltrud; Kümper, Michal; Lipphardt, Anna; Neumann, Jens; Schwartz, Johannes; Vassilikou, Maria
Date: 2004
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish Space, Jewish Community, Jewish Identity, Holocaust, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Commemoration, Immigration, Jewish Revival, Post-1989
Abstract: Eine Sammlung von Beiträgen zur Konferenz „Der Ort des Judentums in der Gegenwart, 1989–2002“. Die Autoren begeben sich in ein Feld, das Diana Pinto erstmals 1996 als „Jewish Space“ bezeichnet hat. Sie beschäftigen sich mit der Existenz des Staates Israel, der neuen Einwanderung aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion in die westlichen Länder, dem wieder erwachten Interesse europäischer Öffentlichkeiten an jüdischer Kultur, den Formen von Erinnerungspolitik in Gedenkstätten und Mahnmalen und mit der öffentlichen Debatten über die Instrumentalisierung des Gedenkens. Auch die Intifada in Israel und Palästina und bereits überwunden geglaubte antisemitische Denkstrukturen in Europa werden betrachtet. Blick auf das jüdische Leben in Europa nach der Shoah und nach den politischen Umwälzungen am Ende der achtziger Jahre.
A Review of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Program
Author(s): Ukeles, Jacob B.; Baker, Sally; Cohen, Steven
Date: 1997
Topics: Surveys, Summer/Youth Camps, Young Adults / Emerging Adulthood, Evaluation, Main Topic: Education
Abstract: The purpose of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship is to stimulate and train a new generation of young leadership for Jewish communities in Europe (East and West), and in Latin America. The purpose of this review is to collect information that will help the Memorial Foundation assess and improve this program. This report covers findings, interpretation of results, and implications for the future directions of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Program. The report is based on the analysis of survey results.
Jews in Europe at the turn of the Millennium: Population trends and estimates
Author(s): DellaPergola, Sergio; Staetsky, L. Daniel
Date: 2020
Topics: Demography, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, European Union, Aliyah, Emigration, Immigration, Israeli Expatriates, Intermarriage
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.
Утраченное соседство: евреи в культурной памяти жителей Латгалии. Часть II
Translated Title: Neighborhood Lost: Jews in the Cultural Memory of Contemporary Latgale. Part II
Editor(s): Амосова, Светлана
Date: 2016
Topics: Antisemitism, Attitudes to Jews, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Main Topic: Other, Ethnography, Memory
Abstract: Данный сборник является продолжением большого проекта по изучению памяти о евреях, еврейской истории, культуре, этнографии и эпиграфике, а также исследованию стереотипов и различных представлений, связанных с евреями Восточной Европы, у представителей других этнических групп. Сборник является вторым выпуском в латгальской серии изданий Центра «Сэфер». Предлагаемые вниманию читателя материалы по еврейской этнографии, истории и эпиграфике собраны во время экспедиций 2011–2015 гг., проходивших как в самой
Латгалии, так и в Израиле.
"ТАМ, НА СНЕГАХ СЕВЕРА, КАПЛИ МОЕЙ КРОВИ". ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЕ И ИДЕОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ КОРНИ ИЗРАИЛЬСКОЙ ДИАСПОРЫ В РОССИИ И СССР
Translated Title: Historical and Ideological Roots of the Israeli Diaspora in Russia and the USSR
Author(s): Чернин, Велвл (Владимир)
Date: 2013
Topics: Diaspora, Israeli Expatriates, Immigration, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Russian Emigration, Russian-Speaking Jews
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.
Holocaust Memorials in Central and Eastern Europe: Communist Legacies, Transnational Influences and National Developments
Author(s): Kucia, Marek
Date: 2016
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Post-1989, Communism, Memorial
Abstract: The article analyses selected Holocaust memorials in several Central and East
European countries. Using the approaches of historical and visual sociology, it
identifies processes and agents that shaped the present-day memorials during
communism and after. These were: commemoration by Jews; memorialization,
marginalization, suppression and the obliteration of Jewish victimhood by the
communist authorities; making minor or substantial changes to the existing
monuments after communism and developing them; and creating new Holocaust
memorials both public and private, and by domestic and foreign agents. The article
concludes that the Holocaust memorials in the region are primarily a result of
legacies of communist times. They were also shaped by transnational influences.
By and large they are national developments.
Jewish Studies in the FSU: From Scholarship to Social, Cultural and Educational Construction, Regeneration and Growth
Author(s): Parizhsky, Simon
Editor(s): Wygoda, Shmuel; Sorek, Israel
Date: 2009
Topics: Education, Education: Adult Education, Jewish Education, Jewish Studies, Jewish Schools, Jewish Revival, Main Topic: Education, Universities / Higher Education, Jewish Organisations
Suffering the Difference: Reflections on Russian Anti-Semitism
Author(s): Leighton, Christopher M.
Date: 1991
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism
The Holocaust in the Occupied USSR and its Memorialization in Contemporary Russia
Author(s): Al'tman, Il'ya
Editor(s): Kay, Alex J.; Stahel, David
Date: 2018
Topics: Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Post-1989, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial