Abstract: In this paper I present some initial findings from my multilocal ethnographic and ethnohistorical research on the “Trikalan Jews”, i.e. Jews living in or originating from Trikala, a city in the Thessaly region of central Greece. In particular, my research focuses on two axes: the historical processes of community formation and its social transition after World War II as well as the recent sense of belonging of the potential members of that “community” and the ways they experience and negotiate their collective memory and identity. On a theoretical level, the first hypothesis grounded in the field is that the “community” tends to appropriate/be appropriated by subjects who currently live “elsewhere”. In this sense, it is reproduced as a glocal network in which Jewishness and locality are interconnected, experienced, and performed in multiple, fluid, and often fragmented ways. On a methodological level, my research is based on the fundamental techniques of ethnographic and ethnohistorical research which have been adapted to the conditions and restraints of a multilocal field.
Abstract: В статье рассматриваются некоторые понятия и термины, связанные с такими явлениями, как миграции, диаспора, постсоветские диаспоры, транснациональные сообщества. Опираясь на различные социологические исследования, автор доказывает, что современные российские евреи не являются классической диаспорой, а также так называемой «новой еврейской диаспорой». В настоящее время они представляют часть русскоязычного транснационального сообщества, базирующегося на системе различных связей. В то же время автор подчеркивает, что такое сообщество имеет временный характер, поскольку иммигранты во втором и третьем поколении все более полно интегрируются в принимающих обществах, в том числе в израильском.
Abstract: Jewish emigration from Israel of the recent decades brought the creation of the communities of Israeli passport holders in the various countries of the world, including Russia and other post-Soviet states. Although this fact is commonly accepted as a totally new phenomenon, the returned migration of Russian and other Jews, who first immigrated to their historical Homeland - the Land of Israel/Palestine, and in a period of time came back to Russia has centuries-long history. In the 17th - 19th centuries this trend included Jerusalem and other Palestine Jewish communities' envoys, educators and fundraisers, who visited Russian and East European Jewish communities and sometimes stayed there for years, as well as Russian Jewish pilgrims to the Holy Land, who on returning were often respected as «representatives» of the Land of Israel and its Jewry. Some members of First, Second and Third Zionist Aliyot (waves of Jewish ideological repatriation) to the Land of Israel/Palestine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries created another substantial group of «Israeli Returnees» to Russia and the USSR. The article shows that typical patterns of immigrants from the Palestine to Russia and the early USSR are very close to, or even similar with «ideological re-immigrants», envoys, labor migrants, «economic refugees», and other relevant subgroups among current Israeli diaspora in Russia and the CIS.
Abstract: Austria shows another interesting example of the Israeli Diaspora community -«Israeli Sephardi Russians». This group consists of three to four thousand former Soviet Jews that stayed in Austria which was a transit point for Jewish emigration from the USSR to the West in 1970s, or returned there from Israel, as well as of those FSU Jews that joined them in the 1990s. The overwhelming majority of this group is composed of representatives of «oriental» Jewish communities of the (former) Soviet Union - mostly Bukhara, as well as Georgian and, to lesser extent, Caucasian (Mounting) Jews. A significant number or even majority of the Austrian Jewish immigrants with roots in the former USSR spent a certain period of their life in Israel, and thus are Israeli passport holders. As a result «Israeli Sephardi Russians» together with a few hundred «Israeli Ashkenazi Russians» and some two thousands of Israeli passport holders that were born either in Israel or in the Diaspora beyond the FSU, now compose one third to 40% of the Austrian Jewish population (the latter is estimated between 10-12,000, or 15-20,000; according to other sources, 95% of them in the Austrian capital of Vienna, although only 7,014 of them are officially registered as Jewish community members).
Abstract: Концепция «двойной лояльности» в еврейском случае подразумевает, что еврей стоит на стороне Израиля вне зависимости от страны своего проживания, а принцип Талмуда, известный как «Закон государства обязателен для исполнения евреями» (Дина де-мальхута дина) часто рассматривается как требование к еврею придерживаться лояльности тому государству, где он живет. Попытка многих советских евреев, на разных этапах послевоенной истории этой страны, совмещать патриотизм в отношении страны проживания и преданность Израилю, воспринимался властями СССР как вызов и повод для репрессивных кампаний. Нынешняя ситуация в постсоветских странах в целом иная, и ближе к подходу современных демократических государств, признающих феномен «поли-лояльности» и двойного гражданства, закрепленного межправительственными соглашениями и программами о развитии культурных, научных, деловых и других связей.
Abstract: After the demise of state socialism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, over 1.6 million Jews and their non-Jewish family members from Russia, Ukraine, and other parts of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Germany, and other Western countries. Large communities of former Soviets found themselves in the diverse national contexts of the receiving countries as either refugees or independent migrants.1 Soon after establishing an initial economic and social foothold, former Soviet immigrants started rebuilding their social networks, both within each new homeland and across national borders. These networks, spanning four continents, based on common language, culture, and historic legacies, mainly come to the fore as informal social spaces, although there are also some examples of successful civic associations representing common interests of Russian immigrants or Russian Jewry at large. This introduction examines the roots of Russian Jewish identity in the Former Soviet Union and presents an overview of some major trends in late twentieth century Russian Jewish migration to the West.
Abstract: Krakow's Jews, scattered around the world, reminisce about their hometown. The main reasons for returning to Krakow are recurring images of the past and the urge to see their life story as a coherent whole. The returnees rediscover their hometown through their own traces of memory, although there are shared stops on the way. These are the places associated with their childhood and their family history, but also with the heritage of Krakow's Jews and the Holocaust. Such diverse stops on the trail of memories show dual identity of the city – the city of a once glorious past but also stigmatised by blood, murder and loss. The absence of the families of the murdered Jewish community is equivalent to the lack of natural environment of commemoration. Those returning are looking for a new commemorative milieu, and everyone who remembers will also become part of it (e.g. their school friends, teachers, neighbours etc.). Finally, the returnees are coming back home – to the house where they were born, but one that is not home anymore.
Abstract: How are local understandings of identity, relatedness, and belonging transformed in a global era? How does international tourism affect possibilities for who one can become?
In urban Portugal today, hundreds of individuals trace their ancestry to 15th century Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism, and many now seek to rejoin the Jewish people as a whole. For the most part, however, these self-titled Marranos ("hidden Jews") lack any direct experience of Jews or Judaism, and Portugal's tiny, tightly knit Jewish community offers no clear path of entry. According to Jewish law, to be recognized as a Jew one must be born to a Jewish mother or pursue religious conversion, an anathema to those who feel their ancestors' Judaism was cruelly stolen from them. After centuries of familial Catholicism, and having been refused inclusion locally, how will these self-declared ancestral Jews find belonging among "the Jewish family," writ large? How, that is, can people rejected as strangers face-to-face become members of a global imagined community - not only rhetorically, but experientially?
Leite addresses this question through intimate portraits of the lives and experiences of a network of urban Marranos who sought contact with foreign Jewish tourists and outreach workers as a means of gaining educational and moral support in their quest. Exploring mutual imaginings and direct encounters between Marranos, Portuguese Jews, and foreign Jewish visitors, Unorthodox Kin deftly tracks how visions of self and kin evolve over time and across social spaces, ending in an unexpected path to belonging. In the process, the analysis weaves together a diverse set of current anthropological themes, from intersubjectivity to international tourism, class structures to the construction of identity, cultural logics of relatedness to transcultural communication.
A compelling evocation of how ideas of ancestry shape the present, how feelings of kinship arise among far-flung strangers, and how some find mystical connection in a world said to be disenchanted, Unorthodox Kin will appeal to a wide audience interested in anthropology, sociology, Jewish studies, and religious studies. Its accessible, narrative-driven style makes it especially well suited for introductory and advanced courses in general cultural anthropology, ethnography, theories of identity and social categorization, and the study of globalization, kinship, tourism, and religion.
Abstract: This article is an autobiographical contribution recounting the entanglement of Turkish, Jewish and Armenian memories in contemporary Turkey. The ‘special friendship’ between Turkey and the Sephardic Jews, who were given refuge by the Ottoman Empire after escaping the Inquisition in Spain in 1492, has always been used as evidence of the generosity and toleration of Ottoman and subsequent Turkish rule. Recent historical research shows that these claims are both historically inaccurate and politically instrumental. Nevertheless, the Sephardic-Jewish sense of gratitude towards their Turkish protectors, as well as their continuing sense of vulnerability, is acute. Particularly in the year of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide (2015), the tangled memories of Jews, Turks and Armenians have been on display with official commemorations of the tragedy of the vessel Struma carrying Jewish refugees from Romania to Palestine (1942) and the battle over Gallipoli (1915). The Battle of Gallipoli is presented by the Turkish authorities as the beginning of the Turkish war of independence (1919–23) against imperial powers, thus emphasizing that the Armenian Genocide was part of a complex history, the purpose of which was to liberate Turkey from foreign domination. The article analyses the symbolic connections among these events and concludes by looking at the geopolitics of contemporary Turkish–Israeli relations and their impact on Armenian Genocide recognition attempts in the USA.
Abstract: Since the ancient times, Jews used to be in a diasporic situation. While embracing new elements,
being in and out of their borders, in and out of their communities and regarding social, political and
economical factors of the place they lived in, the Jewish people were reconsidering and reconstructing
their ethnoreligious and cultural identity. In this paper, the contemporary Jewish identity will be
explored, —both individually and collectively— in the context of the pluralistic city of Thessaloniki,
Greece. Which are the components that their identity is compromised of? On the one hand, how
does the factor of their recent Sephardic (Judeo-Spanish) origin influence their identitarian reference?
On the other hand, how does the current state of Israel remodel and form new identitarian aspects
of them? And finally, how does the Greek context affect their personal, communal and national
identity? Living in a Greek secular state, where the majority of its citizens regard themselves as
Orthodox Christian believers, what relations might be shaped between the non Jews and the Jews?
How do the Jews perceive their self identity? By using empirical data of fieldwork, the writer will
endeavor to attribute the diasporic paths of the long term indigenous, Greek, Jewish identity —both
national and religious— in the geographical place of the city of Thessaloniki.
Abstract: Global Neighborhoods analyzes the organization of everyday life and the social integration of contemporary Jewish neighborhoods in Paris, London, and Berlin. Concentrating on the post-Holocaust era, Michel S. Laguerre explains how each urban diasporic site has followed a different path of development influenced by the local milieu in which it is incorporated. He also considers how technology has enabled extraterritorial relations with Israel and other diasporic enclaves inside and outside the hostland.
Shifting the frame of reference from assimilation theory to globalization theory and the information technology revolution, Laguerre argues that Jewish neighborhoods are not simply transnational social formations, but are fundamentally transglobal entities. Connected to multiple overseas diasporic sites, their interactions reach beyond their homelands, and they develop the logic of their social interactions inside this larger network of relationships. As with all transglobal communities, there is constant movement of people, goods, communications, ideas, images, and capital that sustains and adds vibrancy to everyday life. Since all are connected through the network, Laguerre contends that the variable shape of the local is affected by and affects the global.
Table of Contents
List of Figures, Tables, and Maps
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Neighborhood Globalization
2. Paris’s Jewish Quarter: Unmade, Remade, and Transformed
3. Berlin’s Jewish Quarter: The Local History of the Global
4. London’s Jewish Neighborhoods: Nodes of Global Networks
5. Residential Districts Versus Business Districts
6. The Jewish Quarter as a Global Chronopolis
7. Paris’s City Hall and the Jewish Quarter
8. Heritage Tourism: The Jewish Quarter as a Theme Park
9. The Jewish Quarter, Other Diasporic Sites, and Israel
10. Information Technology and the Jewish Neighborhood
11. Neighborhoods of Globalization
Conclusion: Global Neighborhoods in the Global Metropolis
Notes
References
Index
Abstract: Over the course of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the identity of the global Russian-speaking Jewish community was put to the test. The conflict in Ukraine marked the first time in the history of Russian-speaking Jews that every expression, blog or Twitter post, and opinion article were recorded on the World Wide Web. This readily available data enables us to reconstruct the information climate that surrounded Russian-speaking Jews. The present article explores the sway of this climate on the political discourse of Jewish elites in Ukraine, Russia, and Jewish Russian-speaking diasporas between 2014 and 2015. Our findings suggest that identities of these groups are multilayered, but not hierarchical. Moreover, the elites’ common ethno-cultural Jewish identity coexists with distinct political affiliations. The allegiance of minorities to host societies is a well-known phenomenon. However, its mechanisms have yet to command sufficient research interest. Is it fear, prudence, genuine attachment to the country of residence, or other factors that stand behind the minorities’ commitment? This paper fuses thematic maps with content analysis to show that the “infosphere” is a key to understanding the position of Jews toward host regimes and their co-ethnics in other nation-states.
Abstract: This article seeks to trace how visions of a “Jewish return to Europe” inform contemporary cultural production. I am particularly interested in asking how the presence of Israeli émigrés in Germany, a dramatic instance of such a “return,” challenges the country’s memorial culture due to the “exportation” of dispositions relating to the Holocaust construed in Israel. I view this dislocation of memo-rial practices, a new instance of Hebrew-German exchange, as embedded in a broader discourse on migration, integration and xenophobic violence. At the core of my argument is the 2007–2011 film trilogy
And Europe Will Be Stunned,
directed by Israeli artist Yael Bartana, who is based in Berlin and Amsterdam. The trilogy presents a fictional national movement that advocates the return of 3,300,000 Jews to Poland, with the claim that Poland’s ethnic and religious homogeneity is a deficiency that could be corrected with the renewal of Jewish life in the country. Wearing the form of an enthusiastic political manifesto, the trilogy mirrors early Zionist images and motifs in articulating the vision of the return to the homeland. The trilogy’s end reveals this endeavor as a failure, to which the assassination of the movement’s leader, Slawek, attests.
