Abstract: In der polnischen Kleinstadt Pruchnik schleiften Menschen an Karfreitag 2019 eine Strohpuppe durch die Straßen, hängten sie an einen Mast, schlugen, köpften und zündeten sie an. Die Puppe war mit Hakennase und orthodox-jüdischer Kopfbedeckung und Haartracht entsprechend stereotyper antisemitischer Vorstellungen gestaltet. Sie trug die Bezeichnung „Judas 2019“. Der Brauch dient der symbolisch-rituellen „Bestrafung“ der biblischen Figur Judas Iskariot für seinen Verrat an Jesus Christus und reicht mindestens bis in das 18.Jahrhundert zurück. Der Vorfall in Pruchnik sorgte für internationales Aufsehen. Der World Jewish Congress (WJC) übte Kritik und auch die katholische Kirche distanzierte sich.1 Allerdings finden sich vergleichbare Rituale nicht allein in Pruchnik, sondern auch in vielen anderen Gegenden der Welt: in Griechenland, in Spanien, in Lateinamerika – und auch in Deutschland, mit besonderem Schwerpunkt in Bayern. Auch hier wird an den Kartagen, meistens zu Karsamstag, ein Osterfeuer angezündet, das oft „Judasfeuer“ oder „Jaudus“ genannt wird. Häufig werden auch hier Puppen, wenn auch ohne stereotype „jüdische“ Merkmale, angezündet. Weshalb dieser Brauch in Bayern dennoch antisemitisch ist, welchen historischen Hintergrund er hat und wo genau in Bayern er besonders häufig auftritt, ist Gegenstand dieses Berichts.
Abstract: In this contribution, Topolski argues that the erasure and denial of Europe’s race–religion constellation can help us understand how it has been possible to resurrect the divisive, exclusionary and problematic myth of a ‘Judaeo-Christian’ tradition in Europe. While this term can be, and has been, used in diverse and contradictory ways in the past few decades, Topolski is most interested in how it masks Islamophobia. To do this, she turns to Europe’s denied race–religion constellation. She contends that we cannot understand European racism, past or present, without making the race–religion constellation visible, and that its invisibility today is not accidental. Next, Topolski wants to show how the current resurrection of the term ‘Judaeo-Christian’ serves to mask and conceal the race–religion constellation. The focus is thus on the exclusion of religions that have not assimilated to the accepted secularized norms of white Christianity, particularly its Aryan/Protestant form, and how this exclusion is connected to the race–religion constellation. In the final part, Topolski explains how the latter might serve the collapsing European project, as well as struggling nation-states, as a scapegoat mechanism to blame Europe’s Others for problems Europe has itself created. This leads to their further exclusion and a lack of tolerance in terms of practice and rituals (which might be connected). For these reasons, Topolski argues we need to reject the use of the term ‘Judaeo-Christian’ and make visible the hidden race–religion constellation.
Abstract: Since 1995, Surveys on antisemitism using national representative samples have been regularly carried out in Hungary. In this article, we used data from the 2011 and 2017 surveys to explore the relationship between three types of antisemitism, namely religious, secular, and emotional. Moreover, we scrutinized how different religiosity indicators can be used as explanatory variables for the different types of antisemitism. We found a slight increase in religious and secular antisemitism between 2011 and 2017, while emotional antisemitism remained almost the same. Religious anti-Judaism significantly correlated with both secular and emotional antisemitism, however, its relationship was much stronger with the former. When analyzing the relationship between different types of antisemitism and religiosity indicators, we found that while in 2011, all the indicators were connected to religious, and most of them to secular and emotional antisemitism, in 2017, only the variables measuring subjective self-classification remained significant. The results show that the relationship between religion and antisemitism underwent some substantial changes between 2011 and 2017. While in 2011, personal religiosity was a significant predictor of the strength of antisemitism, in 2017, religion serving as a cultural identity marker took over this function. The hypothetical explanatory factor for the change is the rebirth of the “Christian-national” idea appearing as the foundational element of the new Hungarian constitution, according to which Christian culture is the ultimate unifying force of the nation, giving the inner essence and meaning of the state. In this discourse, being Christian is equated with being Hungarian. Self-declared and self-defined Christian religiosity plays the role of a symbolic marker for accepting the national-conservative identity discourse and belonging to the “Christian-national” cultural-political camp where antisemitic prejudices occur more frequently than in other segments of the society
Abstract: Examines antisemitism in various aspects of Greek society in the 1980s and early 1990s. Regarding religious antisemitism, the official position of the Orthodox Church recognizes Judaism's contribution to Christianity and condemns antisemitism, but some in the Church exhibit anti-Jewish sentiments, hiding behind opposition to Zionists and Chiliasts (Jehovah's Witnesses). Greeks often confuse the terms Israelis, Zionists, and Jews. Discusses issues such as antisemitic texts in government schoolbooks, legislation against racial discrimination (which has rarely been enforced), political antisemitism expressed on occasion by the socialist PASOK party and by the Communist party, extreme right and terrorist organizations [e.g. ENEK (United Nationalist Movement), Ethniko Metopo (National Front), Chrysi Avghi (Golden Dawn)], antisemitic press and literature, and antisemitic incidents. The most common way of dealing with antisemitism in Greece is denial of its existence.
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: Under democracy in Hungary, Jews developed new identity strategies, but their choices of strategy were clearly dependent on earlier identities and the extent to which they had moved away from traditional Jewishness.
Today in Hungary, one end of the spectrum is filled by groups that continue to observe strictly Jewish religious traditions. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those for whom Jewish background is at most a fact of origin stored in the backroom of family memory and possessing no
public significance and little personal relevance. The majority Of Jews living in the country are to be found somewhere between the two extremes. The content of their identity may be the preservation of tradition at some level or other, or it may be a secular or ethnic-national consciousness of identity, or it may even be the preserving of the memory of forebears, ties With Jewish culture, or the feeling of being at home and of protection in a Jewish environment within Hungarian
society.
Jews who preserve traditions are clearly following the strategy of acceptance, while those at the other end of the spectrum have chosen the strategy of rejection, Between the two extremes, both strategies are present, and positions are dynamic: in this group it is possible to observe strategies providing a release from the stigma of the Jews as well as strategies providing a rescue from the stigma. Often these strategies are employed alternately by successive generations.
