Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941-1964

Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941-1964 PDF Author: Mordechai Altshuler
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 161168272X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Unearths the roots of a national awakening among Soviet Jews during World War II and its aftermath

Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941-1964

Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941-1964 PDF Author: Mordechai Altshuler
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 161168272X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Unearths the roots of a national awakening among Soviet Jews during World War II and its aftermath

Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union

Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union PDF Author: Yaacov Ro'i
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780714646190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
The main focus of this book is Jewish life under the Soviet regime. The themes of the book include: the attitude of the government to Jews, the fate of the Jewish religion and life in Post-World War II Russia. The volume also contains an assessment of the prospects for future emigration.

A Century of Ambivalence, Second Expanded Edition

A Century of Ambivalence, Second Expanded Edition PDF Author: Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253214188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Now back in print in a new edition A Century of Ambivalence The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present Second, Expanded Edition Zvi Gitelman A richly illustrated survey of the Jewish historical experience in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet era. "Anyone with even a passing interest in the history of Russian Jewry will want to own this splendid... book." --Janet Hadda, Los Angeles Times "... a badly needed historical perspective on Soviet Jewry.... Gitelman] is evenhanded in his treatment of various periods and themes, as well as in his overall evaluation of the Soviet Jewish experience.... A Century of Ambivalence is illuminated by an extraordinary collection of photographs that vividly reflect the hopes, triumphs and agonies of Russian Jewish life." --David E. Fishman, Hadassah Magazine "Wonderful pictures of famous personalities, unknown villagers, small hamlets, markets and communal structures combine with the text to create an uplifting book] for a broad and general audience." --Alexander Orbach, Slavic Review "Gitelman's text provides an important commentary and careful historic explanation.... His portrayal of the promise and disillusionment, hope and despair, intellectual restlessness succeeded by swift repression enlarges the reader's understanding of the dynamic forces behind some of the most important movements in contemporary Jewish life." --Jane S. Gerber, Bergen Jewish News "... a lucid and reasonably objective popular history that expertly threads its way through the dizzying reversals of the Russian Jewish experience." --Village Voice A century ago the Russian Empire contained the largest Jewish community in the world, numbering about five million people. Today, the Jewish population of the former Soviet Union has dwindled to half a million, but remains probably the world's third largest Jewish community. In the intervening century the Jews of that area have been at the center of some of the most dramatic events of modern history--two world wars, revolutions, pogroms, political liberation, repression, and the collapse of the USSR. They have gone through tumultuous upward and downward economic and social mobility and experienced great enthusiasms and profound disappointments. In startling photographs from the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and with a lively and lucid narrative, A Century of Ambivalence traces the historical experience of Jews in Russia from a period of creativity and repression in the second half of the 19th century through the paradoxes posed by the post-Soviet era. This redesigned edition, which includes more than 200 photographs and two substantial new chapters on the fate of Jews and Judaism in the former Soviet Union, is ideal for general readers and classroom use. Zvi Gitelman is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. He is author of Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930 and editor of Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR (Indiana University Press). Published in association with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Contents Introduction Creativity versus Repression: The Jews in Russia, 1881-1917 Revolution and the Ambiguities of Liberation Reaching for Utopia: Building Socialism and a New Jewish Culture The Holocaust The Black Years and the Gray, 1948-1967 Soviet Jews, 1967-1987: To Reform, Conform, or Leave? The "Other" Jews of the Former USSR: Georgian, Central Asian, and Mountain Jews The Post-Soviet Era: Winding Down or Starting Up Again? The Paradoxes of Post-Soviet Jewry

Jewish Culture and Identity in the Soviet Union

Jewish Culture and Identity in the Soviet Union PDF Author: Yaacov Ro'i
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814774326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
Over ten years ago, Benjamin Fain, a physicist now living in Tel Aviv, attempted to hold a conference on Jewish culture in Moscow, an effort that was foiled by the KGB. Many of the participants were eventually able to flee, most emigrating to Israel. In this book, these distinguished scholars and others from around the world present their personal and professional views of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. The book explores a wide range of topics, including underground literature, religious revival, and the rise of a national Jewish consciousness. Some writers claim that the refuseniks are not the leaders of the Soviet Jews but rather an isolated minority, with most Jews being assimilated, acculturated, and uninterested in fleeing. Other essayists look at the ambivalent role traditionally played by the Soviet Union in both allowing some forms of cultural expression and suppressing any efforts at individual religious practice. Others explore the revival of Jewish culture as instanced by underground teaching of Hebrew. A major debate involves the Nature of Jewish emigration, whether the Jews will go to Israel or to America.

Jewishness Rediscovered

Jewishness Rediscovered PDF Author: Александр Воронель
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description


The Jews of the Soviet Union

The Jews of the Soviet Union PDF Author: Benjamin Pinkus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521389266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Ch. 1 (pp. 1-48) deals with the period before 1917, discussing Church-inspired anti-Jewish policies from the 15th century onwards, the ban on Jewish settlement up to the 18th century, and restrictions on the Jews under Tsarist rule, culminating in a series of pogroms. Distinguishes three stages in Soviet Jewish history, with a section on antisemitism in each period. During 1917-1939, "the years of construction, " antisemitism was officially outlawed, yet it persisted due to a deep-rooted tradition and the need for an outlet for resentment against the regime. During 1939-1953, "the years of destruction, " Soviet Jews were victims of the Nazi extermination policy and Stalin's campaign against "Jewish cosmopolitanism" and Zionism. In the post-Stalin period, 1953-1983, antisemitic propaganda appeared in the mass media and in literature, expressing traditional stereotypes as well as anti-Zionism. Mentions also discrimination in education and employment.

The Jewish Religion in the Soviet Union

The Jewish Religion in the Soviet Union PDF Author: Joshua Rothenberg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust

Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust PDF Author: Mordechai Altshuler
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9789652229168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
The sounds of music and the German language have played a significant role in the developing symbolism of the German nation. In light of the historical division of Germany into many disparate political entities and regional groups, German artists and intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries conceived of musical and linguistic dispositions as the nation's most palpable common ground. According to this view, the peculiar sounds of German music and of the German language provided a direct conduit to national identity, to the deepest recesses of the German soul. So strong is this legacy of sound is still prevalent in modern German culture that philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, in a recent essay, did not even hesitate to describe post-wall Germany as an "acoustical body." This volume gathers the work of scholars from the US, Germany, and the United Kingdom to explore the role of sound in modern and postmodern German cultural production. Working across established disciplines and methodological divides, the essays ofSound Mattersinvestigate the ways in which texts, artists, and performers in all kinds of media have utilized sonic materials in order to enforce or complicate dominant notions of German cultural and national identity.--

Doubly Chosen

Doubly Chosen PDF Author: Judith Deutsch Kornblatt
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299194833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Doubly Chosen provides the first detailed study of a unique cultural and religious phenomenon in post-Stalinist Russia—the conversion of thousands of Russian Jewish intellectuals to Orthodox Christianity, first in the 1960s and later in the 1980s. These time periods correspond to the decades before and after the great exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union. Judith Deutsch Kornblatt contends that the choice of baptism into the Church was an act of moral courage in the face of Soviet persecution, motivated by solidarity with the values espoused by Russian Christian dissidents and intellectuals. Oddly, as Kornblatt shows, these converts to Russian Orthodoxy began to experience their Jewishness in a new and positive way. Working primarily from oral interviews conducted in Russia, Israel, and the United States, Kornblatt underscores the conditions of Soviet life that spurred these conversions: the virtual elimination of Judaism as a viable, widely practiced religion; the transformation of Jews from a religious community to an ethnic one; a longing for spiritual values; the role of the Russian Orthodox Church as a symbol of Russian national culture; and the forging of a new Jewish identity within the context of the Soviet dissident movement.

Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union

Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union PDF Author: Barbara Martin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000930432
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book presents the first large overview of late Soviet religiosity across several confessions and Soviet republics, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Based on a broad range of new sources on the daily life of religious communities, including material from regional archives and oral history, it shows that religion not only survived Soviet anti-religious repression, but also adapted to new conditions. Going beyond traditional views about a mere "returned of the repressed", the book shows how new forms of religiosity and religious socialisation emerged, as new generations born into atheist families turned to religion in search of new meaning, long before perestroika facilitated this process. In addition, the book examines anew religious activism and transnational networks between Soviet believers and Western organisations during the Cold War, explores the religious dimension of Soviet female activism, and shifts the focus away from the non-religious human rights movement and from religious institutions to ordinary believers.