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Date: 2023
Date: 2011
Author(s): Özyürek, Esra
Date: 2023
Author(s): Paolo, Mendes Pinto
Date: 2020
Date: 2021
Abstract: In 2015, Spain approved a law that offered citizenship to the descendants of Sephardi Jews expelled in 1492. Drawing on archival, ethnographic, and historical sources, I show that this law belongs to a political genealogy of philosephardism in which the “return” of Sephardi Jews has been imagined as a way to usher in a deferred Spanish modernity. Borrowing from anthropological theories of “racial fusion,” philosephardic thinkers at the turn of the twentieth century saw Sephardi Jews as inheritors of a racial mixture that made them living repositories of an earlier moment of national greatness. The senator Ángel Pulido, trained as an anthropologist, channeled these intellectual currents into an international campaign advocating the repatriation of Sephardi Jews. Linking this racial logic to an affective one, Pulido asserted that Sephardi Jews did not “harbor rancor” for the Expulsion, but instead felt love and nostalgia toward Spain, and could thus be trusted as loyal subjects who would help resurrect its empire. Today, affective criteria continue to be enmeshed in debates about who qualifies for inclusion and are inextricable from the histories of racial thought that made earlier exclusions possible. Like its precursors, the 2015 Sephardic citizenship law rhetorically fashioned Sephardi Jews as fundamentally Spanish, not only making claims about Sephardi Jews, but also making claims on them. Reckoning with how rancor and other sentiments have helped buttress such claims exposes the recalcitrant hold that philosephardic thought has on Spain's present, even those “progressive” political projects that promise to “return” what has been lost.
Date: 2020
Abstract: The 2015 Spanish and Portuguese nationality laws for descendants of Sephardi Jews are unusual in their motivation to redress wrongs committed more than half a millennium ago. Both have enabled descendants of those Sephardi Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, or forced to convert to Christianity, to claim citizenship status through naturalization. The laws have elicited ancestral and contemporary stories that speak to the personal and social meanings applicants give to these citizenships. Through extensive oral histories with fifty-five applicants across four continents, we examine our narrators’ views on the laws’ deep roots in a genealogical concept of belonging, based on familial and biological heritage and the persistent criterion of the bloodline. We argue that the responses of Sephardi applicants complicate traditional notions of genealogical inclusion, unveiling instead a multiplicity of meanings attached to identity, belonging, and contemporary citizenship. While Spain and Portugal’s offer of what we call “restorative citizenship” requires the demonstration of biological and genealogical certainties, we argue that those seeking Spanish or Portuguese nationality complicate, expand, and sometimes subvert state constructions of citizenship as well as transform their own identities and belonging. More than recuperating a lost Spanish or Portuguese identity, many Sephardi descendants are discovering or deepening their ties to ancestral history and culture. Sephardi genealogy is also being mobilized in a contemporary global and European context in which citizenship and belonging are no longer defined exclusively by nation state territoriality, but rather through claims to new hybrid, multiple, and flexible identities.
Author(s): Birnbaum, Pierre
Date: 2000
Date: 1993
Date: 2013
Abstract: Este año se conmemora en España el Bicentenario de la Constitución de Cádiz de 19 de
marzo de 1812. Durante estos dos siglos muchas cosas han cambiado y muy
particularmente, en las relaciones entre el Estado y las confesiones
religiosas. Con la vigente Constitución de 1978 queda razonablemente resuelto
uno de los problemas permanentes en la historia del constitucionalismo español
como es la llamada “cuestión religiosa”. El reconocimiento de la libertad
religiosa ha traído consigo un pluralismo religioso que se refleja en una diversidad
de confesiones en la sociedad española que, progresivamente, van adquiriendo
una mayor presencia social. En nuestro país los judíos son una minoría
religiosa que no supera los 40.000 miembros. En Baleares, la población judía
está perfectamente integrada en la sociedad junto al resto de religiones y
comparte las mismas inquietudes que el resto de ciudadanos. Al coincidir en
este año 2012 otras conmemoraciones como la del XXV aniversario de la sinagoga
de Palma de Mallorca y el XX aniversario del Acuerdo suscrito entre el Estado
español y la Federación de Comunidades Judías de España, se presenta en este
libro un estudio del régimen jurídico y la evolución histórica de la Comunidad
judía de las Islas Baleares. El libro constituye, pues, una importante aportación científica que recoge trabajos de
representantes de la Comunidad Judía balear, de representantes de la Administración pública balear y de profesores expertos de diferentes Universidades españolas.

Contenido:

La libertad religiosa en España: IsidoroMartín Sánchez
La federación de comunidades judías de España y su acuerdo de cooperación con el Estado español
de 1992 (XX Aniversario): Marcos González Sánchez
Breve historia de la presencia judía en Mallorca: J. Maíz Chacón
Los chuetas como segmento escindido de la comunidad judeoconversa de Mallorca: P. de Montaner
La comunidad judía en las Islas Baleares. Un punto y seguido permanente en la historia (estudio
socio-jurídico): Abraham Barchillón Gabizón
XXV Aniversario de la inauguración de la sinagoga
de Palma de Mallorca: David Kaisin
Author(s): Kudenko, Irina
Date: 2007
Abstract: In the last few years, multicultural citizenship, once hailed as a solution to national cohesion, has faced increasing political and academic accusations of inciting segregation and group divisions. This has prompted a re-evaluation of different institutional and discursive arrangements of national citizenship and their impact on the integration of minority ethnic groups. This research into the history of Jewish integration into British society analyses the relationship between changing forms of British citizenship and the evolution of British Jewish identities. In so doing, it enhances our understanding of how citizenship policies affect minority selfrepresentation and alter trajectories of integration into mainstream society. The research draws on an historical and sociological analysis of the Jewish community in Leeds to reveal how the assimilationist and ethnically defined citizenship of Imperial Britain conditioned the successful Jewish integration into a particular formula of Jewish identity, `private Jewishness and public Englishness', which, in the second part of the 20th century, was challenged by multicultural citizenship. The policies of multiculturalism, aimed at the political recognition and even encouragement of ethnic, racial and religious diversity, prompted debates about private-public expressions of ethnic/religious and other minority identities, legitimating alternative visions of Jewish identity and supporting calls for the democratisation of community institutions. The thesis argues that the national policies of multiculturalism were crucial in validating multiple `readings' of national and minority identity that characterise the present day Leeds Jewish community. Employing a multi-method approach, the study demonstrates how the social and geographical contexts of social actors, in particular their positions within the minority group and the mainstream population, enable multiple `readings' of sameness and differences. In particular, the research explores how a wealth of interpretations of personal and collective Jewish identities manifests itself through a selective and contextualised usage of different narratives of citizenship.
Author(s): Toktaş, Şule
Date: 2006
Abstract: Contemporary liberal democracies confront governance problems elicited by the discord between the principles of equality and difference, and between the concepts of majority and minority. Citizenship came to be recognized as a vital governance tool in response to this challenge evidenced by growing academic and political interest in the concept. The basic precept that citizenship refers to is a constitutionality-based relationship between the individual and the state, implying a unique, reciprocal, and unmediated bond between the individual and the political community.

It is argued that citizenship has three main aspects. First is the legal status aspect, which enfolds citizenship in terms of civil, political, and social rights, plus duties such as obeying laws, paying taxes, and performing military service. The second aspect is the identity dimension of citizenship, which regards individuals' membership in different social and political groups in multiple categories of race, class, ethnicity, religion, gender, profession, and sexuality. The third aspect is related to citizens' capacities, responsibilities, and willingness to cooperate, in short the civic virtue that the citizens possess and perform. The sense of identity that citizens have; their maneuvers to deal with competing identities; their willingness to participate in collective decisions and access to political processes; their sense of belonging to the social, political, and economic order; and their initiative potency all refer to different features of civic virtue. All in all, modern citizenship is perceived as the combination of legal status, social roles, and moral attributes that necessitate "good citizenry."

It has been suggested that these three aspects of citizenship—legal status, identity, and civic virtue—are interrelated; as the sensitivity to identities increases, demands for legal rights increase correspondingly. It is also claimed that identity affects the way people perform their duty of civic participation and their conception of responsibility. From another point of view, it is also argued that the three components of citizenship conflict with one another under certain circumstances. For instance, claims for cultural recognition of minorities may conflict with equal citizenship status. An empirical investigation of citizenship is complementary to understanding the interaction between these three aspects. This study undertakes the crucial task of providing evidence from the field to illuminate the complex correlations and divergences within citizenship and the relational bond between the legal status, identity, and civic virtue aspects.

In this article, the results of qualitative research on a particular group of citizens—Turkish citizens with Jewish background—are discussed in the light of the parameters set above. The study provides empirical evidence to illuminate the dynamics at stake in the relationship between the legal status, identity, and civic virtue aspects in the specificity of Turkey's Jews and the conduct of Turkish citizenship. With the use of in-depth interviews conducted with the sample group of Jews, the study attempts to understand how being a non-Muslim minority group living in a Muslim-predominant society influences the perceptions and experiences regarding citizenship.

The discussion developed in the article is presented in three parts. In the first part, an overview of Turkish citizenship and the status of non-Muslim minorities per se is put forth. This part also sets forth the essentials of Turkish citizenship with its legal status, identity, and civic virtue aspects. In addition, the paradoxical consequences of the dominant paradigms inherent in citizenship in Turkey regarding non-Muslim minorities are demonstrated. The second part focuses on the field research conducted with the Jewish community in Turkey. After a brief summary of methodology and a portrayal of the general characteristics of the sample group, it discusses how members of Turkey's Jewish community experience and perceive Turkish citizenship through its aspects of legal status, identity, and civic virtue. The respondents' perceptions and experiences regarding being Turkish citizens and a non-Muslim minority are also covered. The third part offers a discussion on Turkish citizenship in the light of the research results and gives a citizen-centric account through the lenses of respondents.
Author(s): Pinto, Diana
Date: 2009
Abstract: The Res Publica (Latin for “public good”) project, funded by the Ford Foundation, was designed to bring together a diverse groups of thinkers, activists and commentators in Europe to consider some of Europe’s most pressing issues: notably, the loss of a sense of the common good in our pluralist democracies, a consequent erosion of feelings of shared belonging and the emergence of new types of tribalism.

The project involved independent voices from different religious, cultural, ethnic and secular backgrounds - each speaking in his or her personal capacity - in a series of small, closed and off the record national round tables – and each lasting for two and a half days in a rural residential setting. The national round tables were intended to open the way for a more pan-European shared reflection on the res publica.

Each round table explored the conflicts, underlying fears and defensive reflexes that exist in each country and within each minority or majority group; in other words, those factors which have led to a weakened common public space. The project intentionally sought to broach difficult questions in a context of mutual trust - questions linked to national identity, the role of the law, citizenship, the role and rights of (often silent) majorities and (often vocal) minorities, secular responses to collective religious demands, and the link between civil society and the state. The round tables were also intended to address the tensions between national cohesion and a ‘Europe without borders’, especially their impact in two areas: integration and the struggle against racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism. To facilitate the discussions, round table participants received a carefully planned set of questions and issues that they were free to address, challenge, or revise in the round table discussions.

The project comprised six national round tables in total (in the UK, Poland, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands), followed by a seventh pan-European one. In keeping with the ‘off the record’ policy of the round tables, the reports of the meetings do not identify those who spoke, and specific attributes (such as a ‘Muslim voice’, a ‘Catholic view’ or a ‘Jewish position’, a ‘judge’, or a ‘civil society activist’) were only mentioned when the person specifically chose to speak in that capacity. Prior to the pan-European one, we commissioned a set of five papers from each country which addressed the five key themes which emerged from the round tables: national identity, the status of minorities, the law, religion, and the state and civil society.
Date: 2000
Abstract: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The public lighting ceremony in Paris on the first night of Hanukah, December 23, 1997, resembled battle. Chabad raised a giant menorah on the Champs de Mars and ranged around its flanks various siege engines: portable generators, a stage, a screen, batteries of speakers. The speakers boomed Hasidic marching music that rattled windows on the buildings facing the field. Then shrill young boys on stage shouted Hebrew verses into a microphone. Napoleon's grapeshot could not have done a more effective job of subduing a mob. The previously talkative crowd fell silent and gazed at the stage for what was to come next: first, a five-minute video biography of Rabbi Schneerson projected onto a large screen, then a satellite link-up with similar ceremonies in Crown Heights and Jerusalem. On cue, bearded cameramen turned to the crowd. People waved and cheered when their image on screen joined that of crowds in America and Israel. This was mixed with video of boys' choirs and stock footage of the Rebbe waving to crowds, as if to suggest that he was alive and actually participating. Then came the climax, the victorious raising of the flag: the Grand Rabbi of France, Joseph Sitruk, accompanied by a Chabad rabbi, rose aloft in a cherry picker. He pronounced a series of blessings into a microphone and lit the menorah. Paris was his.

The spectacle that night on the Champs de Mars has, arguably, less to do with Chabad's penchant for messianism and noise than it has to do with decolonization. Since emancipation in 1791, French Judaism has defined itself according to its embrace of the Revolution's universalist principles and its disavowal of political, cultural, and doctrinal separateness. Now, however, a small but vocal minority of the North African Jewish immigrants who have settled in France during the past 30 years is challenging the 200-year-old consensus. All of the people involved in the Hanukah ceremony, including the Grand Rabbi, were Sephardic Jews of North African descent. Like the millions of other formerly colonized peoples, most of them Muslim, who have come to France and are altering its culture, their aim is to assert a more uncompromised cultural identity within an ethnic community less sympathetic to its historical concern for discretion. What is happening among Jews is thus only a subset of a larger, national process. The North African Jews have succeeded to the extent that Judaism, at least in the Paris region, is more vital than it has been since before World War II. And never in France's history have there been as many Jewish schools, yeshivas, synagogues, kosher restaurants, and ritual baths.

The revival of Jewish life in France because of the North Africans is also strengthening French Judaism in some less obvious ways. The North African Jews' activism has taken place amidst a national debate concerning cultural pluralism and the integration of African immigrant communities. The conjunction of communal and national issues has provoked responses from community leaders and Jewish intellectuals anxious to defend the Republican values of traditional French Judaism. While some go no farther than defend the historical status-quo, others endeavor to rethink French Judaism and bring it up to date. Two Jewish thinkers in particular, Shmuel Trigano and Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, are beginning to elaborate a French Judaism that reconciles the demand for a stronger Jewish identity with the values of the Republic. After first exploring recent developments in France's Jewish community and their relation to national debates, this article will examine the ideas of Trigano and Bernheim at length.

France has historically been ill at ease with its own diversity. France's monarchy, for instance, worried that religious diversity impeded political centralization and undermined the power of the crown. The Enlightenment interpreted cultural differences in terms of the persistence of atavisms such as tribalism and superstition, both of which it contrasted with the universality of civilisation. Finally, the Revolution added Jean-Jacques Rousseau's obsession with private or minority interests that might threaten the unity of a Republic one and indivisible. It follows that the emancipation offered to Jews came with precise conditions. Jews had...
Author(s): Trigano, Shmuel
Date: 2003