Abstract: This paper is devoted to the preservation and transformation of historical memory about the Jewish population of Galicia among Ukrainians and explores how memory about Jews functions in the town of Burshtyn, although Jews have not lived there for over seventy years. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews that were conducted in 2009-2010. The subjects, ethnic Ukrainians born before World War II, were eyewitnesses of the Jewish life that once flourished in the town. The interviews targeted three major themes: (1) life stories of Jewish families, (2) religious life, (3) Jewish calendar rites and rites of passage.
Today, Burshtyn is one of two towns in Galicia, where memories about the Jewish population are still preserved albeit in a fragmented form. Pierre Nora coined the term «un lieu de mémoire», a place of memory. The “Jewish local text” in Burshtyn is a case in point. The source of memories is symbolic spaces in the townscape – the cemetery and the synagogues. The “text about Jews” has survived only among those people, who lived in the town before the war and among their descendents and, what is particularly significant, only in the old part of the town, where Jews had lived. The case of Burshtyn enables us to observe a transformation of a polyethnic town into a monoethnic one at the level of “local memory.” Notably, the transmission “vehicle” of information about Jewish life is town toponymics: the informants describe some places as “Jewish”.
Abstract: A profound transformation of the cultural memory in the former Soviet Union has resulted in deep changes in the cultural identities of all Soviet—and ex-Soviet—ethnic and religious groups. This transformation led to a change of perceptions about sacred and profane spaces and the connections of these spaces to the urban landscape. As a result of complex historical and cultural processes, contemporary Russian Jewry is a highly heterogeneous community and its perception of traditional Jewish sacred places— synagogues, cemeteries, saints’ tombs—is that they have lost their function. During the Soviet era these places had often not been considered by Jews as sacred. Moreover, non-Jewish sacred places, like Christian churches, had, paradoxically,in some cases, become Jewish sacred places. The so-called Jewish renaissance in post-Soviet Russia has led to a revived interest in Judaism and Jewish traditions. Therefore, Jewish communal centers, philanthropic and youth organizations, centers for economic support, leisure time activities and places for Jewish sentiments and memories function as Jewish sacred places. This inversion of sacred and profane spaces, typical of post-modern culture, is visible, especially in small urban centers, where there are no synagogues and where the role of secular or semi-secular Jewish organizations is growing. In this article I will try to demonstrate the specifics of Jewish sacred and profane spaces in modern Russian urban centers.
