Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine

Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine
Author: Zvi Gitelman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2012-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139789627

Before the USSR collapsed, ethnic identities were imposed by the state. This book analyzes how and why Jews decided what being Jewish meant to them after the state dissolved and describes the historical evolution of Jewish identities. Surveys of more than 6,000 Jews in the early and late 1990s reveal that Russian and Ukrainian Jews have a deep sense of their Jewishness but are uncertain what it means. They see little connection between Judaism and being Jewish. Their attitudes toward Judaism, intermarriage and Jewish nationhood differ dramatically from those of Jews elsewhere. Many think Jews can believe in Christianity and do not condemn marrying non-Jews. This complicates their connections with other Jews, resettlement in Israel, the United States and Germany, and the rebuilding of public Jewish life in Russia and Ukraine. Post-Communist Jews, especially the young, are transforming religious-based practices into ethnic traditions and increasingly manifesting their Jewishness in public.

Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine

Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine
Author: Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2012-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107023289

The most comprehensive surveys ever undertaken of Jews in Russia and Ukraine show that their sense of Jewishness is powerful but detached from religion. Their understandings of Jewishness differ from those of Jews elsewhere and create tensions in their interactions with other Jews, especially in Israel. This book examines in depth post-Soviet Jews' attitudes toward religion, intermarriage, emigration, anti-Semitism, and rebuilding Jewish life.

New Jewish Identities

New Jewish Identities
Author: Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9639241628

A unique collection of essays that deal with the intriguing and complex problems connected to the question of Jewish identity in the contemporary world. Concerning the problem of identity formation, this book addresses very important issues: What is the content or meaning of Jewish identity? What has replaced religion in defining the content of Jewishness? How do people in different age groups construct their Jewish identity? In most cases, the authors have combined a variety of research methods: they drew samples or relied on the sample surveys of others; used personal interviews with respondents who are especially knowledgeable about their own Jewish communities, or based their research on participant observation of particular communities or communal institutions.

Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine

Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine
Author: Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2014-05-14
Genre: SOCIAL SCIENCE
ISBN: 9781139776745

"This book examines in depth post-Soviet Jews' attitudes toward religion, intermarriage, emigration, anti-Semitism and rebuilding Jewish life"--

The New Jewish Diaspora

The New Jewish Diaspora
Author: Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2016-07-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813576318

In 1900 over five million Jews lived in the Russian empire; today, there are four times as many Russian-speaking Jews residing outside the former Soviet Union than there are in that region. The New Jewish Diaspora is the first English-language study of the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora. This migration has made deep marks on the social, cultural, and political terrain of many countries, in particular the United States, Israel, and Germany. The contributors examine the varied ways these immigrants have adapted to new environments, while identifying the common cultural bonds that continue to unite them. Assembling an international array of experts on the Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish diaspora, the book makes room for a wide range of scholarly approaches, allowing readers to appreciate the significance of this migration from many different angles. Some chapters offer data-driven analyses that seek to quantify the impact Russian-speaking Jewish populations are making in their adoptive countries and their adaptations there. Others take a more ethnographic approach, using interviews and observations to determine how these immigrants integrate their old traditions and affiliations into their new identities. Further chapters examine how, despite the oceans separating them, members of this diaspora form imagined communities within cyberspace and through literature, enabling them to keep their shared culture alive. Above all, the scholars in The New Jewish Diaspora place the migration of Russian-speaking Jews in its historical and social contexts, showing where it fits within the larger historic saga of the Jewish diaspora, exploring its dynamic engagement with the contemporary world, and pointing to future paths these immigrants and their descendants might follow.

Where Currents Meet

Where Currents Meet
Author: Tanya Zaharchenko
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2016-03-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9633861195

This study of cultural memory in post-Soviet society shows how the inhabitants in Ukraine?s east negotiate the historical legacy they have inherited. Zaharchenko approaches contemporary Ukrainian literature at the intersection of memory studies and border studies, and her analysis adds a new voice to an ongoing exploration of cultural and historical discourses in Ukraine. The scholarly journey through storylines explores the ways in which younger writers in Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian), a diverse, dynamic, but under-studied border city in east Ukraine today, come to grips with a traumatized post-Soviet cultural landscape. Zaharchenko?s book examines the works of Serhiy Zhadan, Andre? Krasniashchikh, Yuri Tsaplin, Oleh Kotsarev and others, introducing them as a ?doubletake? generation who came of age during the Soviet Union?s collapse and as adults, revisit this experience in their novels. Filling the space between society and the state, local literary texts have turned into forms of historical memory and agents of political life. ÿ

Russian Jews on Three Continents

Russian Jews on Three Continents
Author: Larissa Remennick
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2012-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1412848881

"Originally published in 2007." With updates.

Putin's Hybrid War and the Jews

Putin's Hybrid War and the Jews
Author: Sam Sokol
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-04-21
Genre:
ISBN:

Based on journalist Sam Sokol's on-the-ground reporting during the first years of the Donbas War, Putin's Hybrid War and the Jews chronicles the collapse of Jewish life in the regions of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russian-backed separatist militias in 2014. Told through the eyes of refugees, politicians, soldiers, and aid workers, it is a rich account of both the ravages of armed conflict and the weaponization of antisemitism in modern hybrid warfare. About the Publisher: The institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) is committed to fighting antisemitism on the battlefield of ideas. ISGAP is dedicated to scholarly research into the origins, processes, and manifestations of global antisemitism and other forms of prejudice, including various forms of racism, as thy relate to policy in an age of globalization. On the basis of this examination of of antisemitism and policy, ISGAP disseminates analytical and scholarly materials to help combat hatred and promote understanding.

The Jews of Contemporary Post-Soviet States

The Jews of Contemporary Post-Soviet States
Author: Vladimir Ze’ev Khanin
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2023-10-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110791110

Since the end of the USSR, post-Soviet Jewry has evolved into an ethnically and culturally diverse Russian speaking community. This process is taking place against the gradual inflation of a collective identity among Russian-speaking Jews that survived the first post-Soviet decade. The infrastructure for this new entity is provided by new local (or ethno-civic) groups of East European Ashkenazi Jewry with specific communal, subcultural, and ethno-political identities (“Ukrainian,” “Moldavian,” or “Russian” Jews, e.g.). These communities demonstrate a changing balance of identification between their countries of residence and the “transnational Russian-Jewish community”, and they absorb a significant number of persons of non-Jewish and ethnically heterogeneous origins as well. This book discusses identity, community modes, migration dynamics, socioeconomic status, attitudes toward Israel, social and political environments, and other parameters framing these trends using the results of a comprehensive sociological study of the extended Jewish population conducted in 2019–2020 by this author in the five former-Soviet Union countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan).