Abstract: Книга содержит результаты комплексного социологического исследования российского еврейства, проведенного в 2010 году фондом "Общественная экспертиза" под руководством Игоря Яковенко. Результатом исследования стала представленная авторами гипотеза о структурно-функциональной модели еврейского мира, раскрывающая причины двух главных аномалий еврейского народа: механизма уникального трехтысяче-летнего выживания еврейской цивилизации и непропорционально большого вклада евреев в науку и культуру XX века.
В исследовании впервые дан сравнительный социологический анализ ашкеназов и горских евреев, в ходе которого доказана гипотеза о полиэтнической структуре российского еврейства.
Анализ фундаментального внутреннего противоречия между соблюдающими евреями "ядра" и ассимилированными евреями "оболочки", а также исследование "мембраны", отделяющей еврейский мир от нееврейского, позволили авторам выдвинуть гипотезу об ошибочности прогнозов об "умирании российского еврейства" и скором "конце еврейской цивилизации" и ее трансформации в неоэтнос.
Исходной точкой исследования стал семантический и социологический анализ понятия Jewish Peoplehood (принадлежность к еврейскому народу), которое, по мнению авторов, имеет шанс стать одной из несущих конструкций нового понятийного аппарата, необходимого для описания современного еврейства.
Abstract: The brutal, racist murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 sparked a reckoning about the treatment of Black people all over the world, and the undeniable reality of systemic racism and discrimination in societies on both sides of the Atlantic. We vociferously expressed our concerns about this at the time. However, we realised that we needed to go further. No community is immune from the scourge of prejudice and ours is no exception. As society as a whole sought to examine racial diversity, the Board of Deputies became aware of moving and concerning testimonies of Black members of our own community about their experiences.
As such, we launched this Commission to learn more about the experiences of Black Jews, Jews of Colour and Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews, to examine the issues and make recommendations for how our community can do better. We were delighted that the eminent journalist of Black and Jewish heritage, Stephen Bush, agreed to Chair the Commission.
The report’s release in the week that George Floyd’s murderer has been found guilty, and on this year’s Stephen Lawrence Day, feels particularly poignant, especially given the Commission’s many references to the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Our Commission has considered 17 different areas of communal life, and the ground-breaking report makes 119 recommendations, with profound implications for British Jewry. Among them are the following:
Representative bodies and organisations involved in rabbinic training should encourage members of under-represented ethnic groups to put themselves forward for communal roles
Jewish schools should ensure that their secular curriculum engages with Black history, enslavement and the legacy of colonialism, and review their curriculum through a process led by students, particularly those who define as Black or of Colour
Jewish studies departments should ensure that their teaching celebrates and engages with the racial and cultural diversity of the Jewish community worldwide, including Mizrahi, Sephardi and Yemenite tradition
Communal institutions, particularly synagogues and schools, should commemorate key dates for diverse parts of the community, like the Ethiopian Jewish festival of Sigd and the official Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from the Arab Countries and Iran (30th November)
Schools and youth movements should improve training for teachers and youth leaders on tackling racist incidents
Communal bodies and Jewish schools should establish regular listening exercises that seek the concerns of their members or students
Communal bodies should ensure that complaints processes are accessible, transparent, fair and robust, with all complaints related to racism handled according to the Macpherson principle, and specific new processes for handling complaints about security
Communal venues should ensure that their security guards or volunteers desist from racial profiling
Communal venues should institute bag searches for all visitors, including regular attendees, so as not to stigmatise people who look different, without compromising on security
A code of conduct should be developed for discourse on social media, making clear that attempts to delegitimise converts, calling people names such as ‘Kapo’, or using Yiddish terms such as ‘Shvartzer’ in a racist way, are completely unacceptable
Batei Din should improve processes for conversion, including stricter vetting of teachers and host families, and a clearer process for complaints
Abstract: Technically, Israel is not the only official Jewish homeland in the world. In the Far East of Russian Siberia there still exists the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) of Birobidzhan. Beginning in 1928 the Soviet Union set aside a territory larger than Belgium and Holland combined and considerably bigger than Israel, for Jewish settlement, located some five thousands miles east of Moscow along the Soviet-Chinese border, between the 48th and 49th parallels north latitude, where the climate and conditions are similar to Ontario and Michigan. Believing that Soviet Jewish people, like other national minorities, deserved a territorial homeland, the Soviet regime decided to settle a territorythat in 1934 would become the Jewish Autonomous Region. The idea was to create a new Zion–in a move to counterweight to Palestine – where a “proletarian Jewish culture” based on Yiddish language could be developed. In fact, the establishment of the JAR was the first instance of an officially acknowledged Jewish national territory since ancient times: the “First Israel”. But the history of the Region was tragic and the ex-periment failed. Nevertheless, Birobidzhan’s renewed existence of today and the revival of Jewish life in the post-Soviet JAR are not only a curious legacy of Soviet national policy, but after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the worldwide religious rebirth represent an interesting case-study in order to studysome challenging geographic pro-blems, and interethnic relations.
Abstract: It would be a mistake to assume that ethnopolitics is only a matter of confrontation between different ethnic groups. On the contrary, there is a range of examples where it is pursued in a spirit of compromise and co-operation. One of them is the case of the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan, in Post-Soviet Russia. Often ethnic groups realize that co-operation and cultural coexistence are more profitable than conflict. Beginning in 1928 the Soviet Union set aside a territory the size of Belgium for Jewish settlement, located some five thousands miles east of Moscow along the Soviet-Chinese border. Believing that Soviet Jewish people, like other national minorities, deserved a territorial homeland, the regime decided to settle an enclave that would become the Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934. In fact, the establishment of the JAR was the first instance of an officially acknowledged Jewish national territory since ancient times. But the history of the Region was tragic and the experiment failed dismally. Nevertheless, Birobidzhan’s renewed existence of today is not only a curious legacy of Soviet national policy, but after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the definite religious rebirth, represents an interesting case-study in respect to interethnic relations.
Abstract: Монография представляет собой попытку реконструировать модели этнического, национально-гражданского и религиозного самосознания постсоветской еврейской молодежи, с привлечением собранного авторами полевого материала. В работе рассматривается, в чем проявляется еврейская идентичность молодых людей. Внимание уделяется таким темам, как формирование этнической самоидентификации и религиозный опыт еврейской молодежи; стремление разнообразных еврейских организаций сконструировать новую еврейскую идентичность на постсоветском пространстве; стиль жизни и формы проведения досуга молодежи; система ценностей молодых людей еврейского происхождения, включая их отношение к Государству Израиль и память о Холокосте.
Впервые воедино собраны материалы восьми исследований, проведенных авторами в течение последних десяти лет, и большая часть полученных данных публикуется впервые. Это позволяет получить доступ к беспрецедентно большому массиву информации и проанализировать исследовательские вопросы более углубленно, чем это когда-либо делалось прежде.
Книга может представлять интерес для социологов, этнологов, антропологов, культурологов и специалистов по иудаике, а также для широкого круга читателей, интересующихся современными проблемами еврейства
Abstract: In many parts of the world today, ethnic identity is not merely the product of socialization, but is the result of conscious choice on the part of the individual. Nowhere is this more evident than in the countries of the former East Bloc, where sweeping political changes have removed many barriers to the expression of ethnic sentiment. The present work represents an attempt to build a generalizable model of ethnic identity construction by identifying the major influences on group conceptions of ethnic identity and describing the process by which those conceptions change over time. The primary case study focuses on the construction of ethnic identity among Polish Jews born after World War II. Conclusions are based primarily on data collected in interviews with members of that community. Traditionally, theories of ethnicity have posited a unity of beliefs, values or behaviors within an ethnic group. In contrast to traditional theories, the model proposed here focuses on major areas of conflict within groups, positing that conflict over issues deemed relevant in some degree to all members of the group is the driving force behind ethnic change. In choosing to identify, members of ethnic groups are presented with a set of issues, which are both important and controversial for the group, on which they feel obligated to take a position. The set of controversial issues relevant to a given group at a given time, the model posits, is determined by three factors: differences between cohorts arising from their formative experiences; differences between subgroups arising from conflicts between communal institutions; and differences between subgroups arising from their varied responses to input from outside groups. Whereas works on ethnicity in the field of political science have tended to focus on nationalism, or the pursuit of statehood by ethnic groups, this model treats nationalism and organized political behavior in general as a potential outgrowth of ethnicity, but not as its necessary byproduct.
Abstract: For many centuries the attitude towards baptised Jews within Jewish society was extremely negative, as baptism was perceived as apostasy. This attitude persists to this day, even though many Jews have abandoned Judaism and a secular Jewish identity has emerged. After seven decades of Soviet rule, during which a new Soviet, wholly secular Jewish identity, was constructed, Jewish identity in the former Soviet Union (FSU) is based mainly on the ethnic principle. As a result of an almost total detachment from Judaism, some Soviet and former‐Soviet Jews have converted to Russian Orthodoxy. Moreover, we can see the formation of a paradoxical Russian Orthodox Jewish self‐identification in post‐Soviet Russia. This processes, its trends and peculiar features are poorly studied, a matter this paper intends to remedy.
Abstract: Minority and immigrant Germans' embrace of the derogatory term Kanake as a self-ascription and of the low-status ethnolect Kanak Sprak has been compared to US rappers' combative use of "niggah" and Black English. This essay, however, compares the revaluation of the term Kanake, a non-assimilatory Kanak identity, and the ethnolect Kanak Sprak to some early 20th century German Jews' revaluation and embrace of Eastern European Jewish culture and Yiddish. It demonstrates also how non-minority and non-Jewish Germans have used Yiddish and Kanak Sprak in literature, theater, film, and popular culture to re-inscribe ethnic difference, especially at times when minorities and Jews were becoming indistinguishable from non-minority Germans (emancipation edicts or nationality law reform). Because Kanak Sprak is inseparable from HipHop culture, the second half of the essay examines the many parallels between the importation and naturalization of German HipHop and German Klezmer. Both were imported from the United States in the early 1980s; and following the fall of the Berlin Wall and German re-unification, both have played a role in German Vergangenheitsbewältigung [mastering the past]. While HipHop and Klezmer have become the soundtrack of German anti-racism, anti-Nazism, and multiculturalism; some observers are critical of non-minority and non-Jewish Germans' appropriation or instrumentalization of ethnic music, and have cited instances of antisemitism and racism in German Klezmer and HipHop.
Abstract: My dissertation addresses the sociocultural processes which contribute to the construction of ethnocultural identity among Zagrebian Jews. I argue, contrary to the often essentialized perception of Jewish identity imposed by e.g. the Croatian government and Jewish international organizations, that Jewish identity in Zagreb is actively chosen in ways that are both idiosyncratic and contingent upon the surrounding sociocultural environment. At the heart of my argument is an appeal to the dynamic and contextual nature of identity negotiation, and the influence this has on the maintenance and survival of the Zagrebian Jewish community. In support of this, I have employed ethnographic methods to assess (i) the ways in which Jewish identity is negotiated by community members and (ii) the ways in which the meaning of Jewish community is sustained in Zagreb. With regards to (i), I conclude that Zagrebian Jews understand their identities in terms of symbolic ethnoreligiosity, i.e. in terms of feelings and nostalgic ideas about Jewish culture and tradition. With regards to (ii), I show that the history and development of Jewish identity in Zagreb can be traced through patterns of membership participation in various Jewish organizations prevalent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These patterns reveal the predominantly secular nature of the Zagrebian Jewish community. In light of this, I argue that community for Zagrebian Jews is ultimately defined symbolically through various types of social interaction among members. It is for this reason that the recent attempts of both international Jewish organizations and the Croatian government to impose an essentialized image of Jewish identity on the community are at odds with, and ultimately destructive to, the secular and improvisatory self-images of the members themselves.
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Diaspora, Mountain Jews, Language, Networks, Jewish Identity, National Identity, Ethnicity, Ethnography, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Jewish - Muslim Relations
Abstract: In this article I investigate ritual life at the Moscow Choral Synagogue, the largest and longest running Orthodox synagogue in the Russian capital. Unlike many Eastern European synagogues, this synagogue is a thriving prayer community due to its unique congregation of Russian, Georgian, Bukharan, Mountain, and visiting Western Jews. I focus on a fistfight that took place between an Israeli and a Georgian Jew during prayer. I detail how Russian and Georgian Jews interpreted the incident to be a result of their different ethnicities, Russian and Georgian respectively. The fight elucidates how ritual in post-Soviet society provides the means for the production of ethnicity and Jewish identity. Arguing for localism within Judaism's transnational ideology, I suggest that Jewish identity, like ritual, is performative and contextual. I also show how the shifting power relations in post-Soviet society have reshaped ethnicity, making state-endorsed market reform a reference point of ethnic differentiation.
Abstract: The Jews of France have been liberated for over two centuries; they have been considered free citizens and equal to their compatriots. What purpose, then, does it serve to study their citizenship today? Until World War II, French Jews called themselves "Israelites;" they were deeply patriotic and had found a place for themselves in France’s "community of citizens." However outbursts of anti-Semitism during that period reminded them that their new status prevented neither hate nor rejection; they had to persevere in the struggle for citizenship equity.
France has not been spared from recent movements demanding recognition of particular identities in the public space. Ethnicity in French political life has become increasingly obvious, in spite of the constant assertion of "republican values." Questions about immigration, nationality, and integration are constantly in the forefront of public life. Though, in France, the existence of ethnic and religious communities is not legally recognized, certain groups are designated as separate, often creating conflicts among them
Topics: Synagogues, Ethnography, Race, Racism, Ethnicity, Diversity, Pluralism, Conflict, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: The prevalence of anti-Semitism in Russia is well known, but the issue of race within the Jewish community has rarely been discussed explicitly. Combining ethnography with archival research, Jewish Russians: Upheavals in a Moscow Synagogue documents the changing face of the historically dominant Russian Jewish community in the mid-1990s. Sascha Goluboff focuses on a Moscow synagogue, now comprising individuals from radically different cultures and backgrounds, as a nexus from which to explore issues of identity creation and negotiation. Following the rapid rise of this transnational congregation—headed by a Western rabbi and consisting of Jews from Georgia and the mountains of Azerbaijan and Dagestan, along with Bukharan Jews from Central Asia—she evaluates the process that created this diverse gathering and offers an intimate sense of individual interactions in the context of the synagogue's congregation.
Challenging earlier research claims that Russian and Jewish identities are mutually exclusive, Goluboff illustrates how post-Soviet Jews use Russian and Jewish ethnic labels and racial categories to describe themselves. Jews at the synagogue were constantly engaged in often contradictory but always culturally meaningful processes of identity formation. Ambivalent about emerging class distinctions, Georgian, Russian, Mountain, and Bukharan Jews evaluated one another based on each group's supposed success or failure in the new market economy. Goluboff argues that post-Soviet Jewry is based on perceived racial, class, and ethnic differences as they emerge within discourses of belonging to the Jewish people and the new Russian nation.
Abstract: Thus, the ethnic-national identity of the Jewish population of Eastern Ukraine, including the Dnieper region, is an extremely complicated and dynamic phenomenon. It is the result of a set of internal factors (such as historical memory, cultural heritage, traditions in education and social activities) and external circumstances (pressure on the part of the non-Jewish population and their attitude towards Jews, models and degrees of integration into local society, mutual relations with Israel and other communities in Diaspora, as well as political and socioeconomic factors).
The national identity of East Ukrainian Jewry represents a dynamic mixture of people's reactions to the historically formed circumstances and to their own existence in a specific environment. External and internal circumstances strengthen, in various periods, the role of certain specific elements of Jewish self-identity and weaken the importance of others. At the same time, the conservation of the structure of Jewish self-identity under Ukrainian conditions in general is an evident factor testifying to the great adaptive potential ofthe Jewish people.
Abstract: Представляем читателям заключительную статью из серии
публикаций, основанных на материалах этносоциологического
исследования, впервые проведенного в 1992–1993 гг. в Москве,
Санкт-Петербурге и Екатеринбурге, повторенного в тех же
городах в 1997–1998 гг. и посвященного разнообразным аспектам
формирования национальной идентичности российских евреев.
Оба раза с помощью формализованного интервью были опрошены
по 1300 респондентов в возрасте 16 лет и старше по репрезентативной для каждого из трех городов выборке. В первых двух статьях серии (см. «Диаспоры», 2000, № 3; 2001, № 1) подробно описаны концепция, методология, инструментарий проекта,
а также рассмотрены его эмпирические результаты, касающиеся
структуры этнической идентичности, роли иудаизма и традиций
в жизни современного еврейства, влияния семьи и ближайшего
социального окружения на национальную самоидентификацию,
освоения культурного наследия, участия в еврейском организованном движении, политических настрений еврейского населения.
Abstract: Представляем читателям вторую статью из серии публикаций, основанных на материалах этносоциологического исследования, впервые проведенного в 1992–1993 гг. в Москве, Санкт-Петербурге и Екатеринбурге, повторенного в тех же городах в 1997–1998 гг. и посвященного разнообразным аспектам формирования национальной идентичности российских евреев. Оба раза с помощью формализованного интервью были опрошены по 1300 респондентов в возрасте 16 лет и старше по репрезентативной для каждого из трех городов выборке. В первой статье серии (см. «Диаспоры», 2000, № 3) подробно описаны концепция, методология, инструментарий проекта, а также рассмотрены его эмпирические результаты, касающиеся, в частности, структуры идентичности, роли иудаизма и традиций в жизни современ
ного еврейс ва, влияния семьи и ближайшего социального окружения на национальную самоидентификацию.
