Aliens in an alien world: paradoxes of Jewish–Christian identity in contemporary Russia

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.

Keywords:

• ethnicity
• self‐identification
• Jewish identity
• intermarriage
• Russian Orthodoxy
• Judaism

Acknowledgement

This research has been carried out with the financial support of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York.

Notes

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2. Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question; Zipperstein, Imagining Russian Jewry; Nathans, Beyond the Pale.

3. Kochan, The Jews in the Soviet Russia since 1917; Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence; Altshuler, Soviet Jewry since the Second World War; idem, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust; Ro’i, Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union.

4. Osnovniye itogi Vserossiiskoi perepisi naseleniya 2002 goda, 13.

5. Sinelnikov, “Nekotoriye demograficheskiye posledstviya assimilyatsii evreev v SSSR,” 85; Kupovetsky, “Yehudei brit ha‐moatsot le‐sheavar: misparim ve‐hityashvut be‐olam,” 132; Gitelman et al., “Natsionalnoe samosoznanie rossiiskikh evreev,” 60–1.

6. Hummersley, The Dilemma of Qualitative Method; Bertaux, “From the Life History Approach to the Transformation of the Sociological Heritage.”

7. Gitelman et al., “Thinking about Being Jewish in Russia and Ukraine,” 49–60; idem, “Natsionalnoe samosoznanie rossiiskikh evreev”; Ryvkina, Kak zhivut evrei v Rossii.

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9. Webber, Jewish Identities in the New Europe; Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora.

10. This process in the first two decades of the Soviet era has been described by Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher; see also Shneer, Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture.

11. Frankel, Prophecy and Politics; Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence; Zipperstein, Imagining Russian Jewry Memory; Nathans, Beyond the Pale.

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14. Stanislawski, “Jewish Apostasy in Russia.” Judith Deutsch Kornblatt studied the reasons for some Soviet Jewish conversion to Christianity from the 1960s to the 1980s; see Deutsch Kornblatt, “Jewish Converts to Orthodoxy in Russia in Recent Decades.” Likewise, Anna Shternshis examineed the behaviour of old Jewish Muscovites who declared themselves to be Russian Orthodox: Shternshis, “Kaddish in a Church,” 273–94

15. Webber, “Modern Jewish Identities.”

16. Tabak, “Relations between Russian Orthodoxy and Judaism,” 141–50; Shternshis, “Kaddish in a Church.”

17. Nosenko, Byt′ili chuvstvovat′?, 52–3.

18. Chizhova, Prestupnitsa.

19. Maletsky, “Privet iz Kalifornii,” 377–8.

20. Deutsch Kornblatt, “Jewish Converts to Orthodoxy in Russia,” 212.

21. Maletsky. “Privet iz Kalifornii,” 370.

22. Ibid., 366.

23. See “Zakon o vozvraschenii” [The law of return], Elektronnaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopedia [Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia]. http://www.eleven.co.il/?mode=article&id=11585&query=.

24. Tec, In the Lion’s Den; see also Twersky, “The Strange Case of ‘Brother Daniel’.”

25. “Judaism and the State of Israel – Mock Trial: Oswald Rufeisen/Brother Daniel Case,” Department for Jewish Zionist Education, The Jewish Agency for Israel. http://www.jafi.org.il/education/50/act/achieve/act14.html.

26. Shoikhet, “Pravoslavniye evrei rossiiskoi slovesnosti”; see also http://world.lib.ru/s/shojhat_a/pravoslavnie-yevrei.shtml.

27. Rimon, “Skandal na yarmarke kak strategiya styda i strakha.”

28. Ulitskaya, Daniel Stein, 495.

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31. http://yresult.com/topic.asp?id=19393; http://www.rossija.ca/topic.aspx?tid=5552; http://forum.csdm.ru/showthread.php?t=785; http://ardrig.livejournal.com/20201.html.

32. See Amvrosi, “Sviashennoie pisanie i zhidy”; http://www.rossija.ca/topic.aspx?tid=5552; http://forum.csdm.ru/showthread.php?t=785; http://ardrig.livejournal.com/20201.html; http://www.rne.org/stat/pub041.shtml; http://www.gumer.info/bogoslov_Buks/ortodox/Article/Bor_OrtSovr.php; http://www.rusprav.org/2006/new/60.htm. See also the discussion on http://www.pravoslavie.ru/.

33. Tabak, “Relations between Russian Orthodoxy and Judaism,” 141–50; Shternshis, “Kaddish in a Church,” 291–2; Borovoy, “Pravoslavnoie khristianstvo v sovremennom mire”; Nazarov, “Puti I sposoby reshenia ‘evreiskogo voprosa’: istoria i sovremennost.”

34. Deutsch Kornblatt, “Jewish Converts to Orthodoxy in Russia,” 209.

35. Ulitskaya, Daniel Stein, 114–5.

36. Ibid., 259, 322–3.

37. Iukhneva, “Urgent Issues of Inter‐ethnic Relations in Leningrad.”

38. Tolts, “Post‐Soviet Jewish Population in Russia and the World,” 132.

39. Ryvkina, Kak zhivut evrei v Rossii, 120.

40. Gitelman et al., “Natsionalnoe samosoznanie rossiiskikh evreev,” 72.

41. Shtenshis, “Kaddish in a Church,” 275.

42. Ibid., 280–2.

43. Maletsky, “Privet iz Kalifornii,” 368.

44. Ibid., 370–1.

45. Chizhova, Prestupnitsa.

46. Deutsch Kornblatt, “Jewish Converts to Orthodoxy in Russia.”

47. Ibid., 215.

48. Maletsky, “Privet iz Kalifornii,” 377.

49. Shternshis, Kaddish in a Church, 274.

50. Deutsch Kornblatt, “Jewish Converts to Orthodoxy in Russia,” 218.

51. Endelman, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, 16–17.

52. Deutsch Kornblatt, “Jewish Converts to Orthodoxy in Russia,” 220.

53. Krutikov, “Jewish Future in Russia,” 1–16.

54. Bailey, “The Implicit Religion of Contemporary Society,” 69–83; idem, “The ‘Implicit Religion’ Concept as a Tool for Ministry,” 203–17; Cavalcanti and Chalfant, “Collective Life as the Ground of Implicit Religion,” 441–54.

55. Berman, “Jews and Intermarriage,” 245–85; Fishman, Relatively Speaking; Sinelnikov, “Nekotoriye demograficheskiye posledstviya.”

56. Gitelman, “The Reconstruction of Community and Jewish Identity in Russia,” 44–5.

57. Nosenko, Byt′ili chuvstvovat’?

58. Maletsky, “Privet iz Kalifornii,” 376.