Haunting images: stereotypes of Jewishness among Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 42; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13501674.2012.730731
ISSN1743-971X
Autores Tópico(s)German legal, social, and political studies
ResumoAbstract Glancing at the Jewish spaces in contemporary Germany, an occasional observer would probably be startled. Since the Russian Jewish migration of the 1990s, Germany's Jewish community has come to be the third-largest in Europe. Synagogues, Jewish community centres, and Jewish cultural events have burgeoned. There is even talk about a “Jewish renaissance” in Germany. However, many immigrants claim that the resurrection of Jewish life in Germany is “only a myth,” “an illusion.” This paper is part of a project exploring the processes of the reconstruction of Jewish identities and Jewish communal life by Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany. The focus of this paper is on the stereotypes of Jews and Jewishness evident in immigrants' perceptions and imaginings of their physical gathering spaces – the Jewish community centres (Gemeinden). Focusing on the images that haunt a particular place, I seek to shed light upon the difficulties of re/creating Jewish identity and life among the Russian Jewish immigrants in contemporary Germany. Keywords: Russian Jews in GermanyJewish community centresJewish stereotypesself-perception Notes Unidentified blogger on http://vorota.de, 27 December 2009 (accessed 10 January 2010). Vorota.de is a well-known Russian-language internet forum in Germany. All translations are mine. For more on the history and contexts of Russian Jewish immigration to Germany, see Becker, Ankommen in Deutschland; Becker, “Migration and Recognition;” Ben-Rafael et al., Building a Diaspora; Bodemann, The New German Jewry and the European Context; Doomernik, Going West; Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents. Barkan, The Guilt of the Nations. Becker, “Migration and Recognition;” Ostow, “From Victims of Antisemitism to Postmodern Hybrids.” Bodemann and Bagno, “In the Ethnic Twilight.” Recent developments in contemporary Jewish life in Germany include the opening of two rabbinical seminaries, new Jewish schools and kindergartens that have opened in many cities, and Chabad centres that function in many different cities. From 2006, an annual Limmud conference has gathered hundreds of participants (Russian Jews among them) from all over Germany. Exhibitions on Jewish culture and history are now an integral part of the German cultural arena. See Gilman and Remmler, Reemerging Jewish Culture in Germany; Peck, Being Jewish in the New Germany. Jewish communities in Germany limit their membership to Halachic Jews – individuals who are Jewish on their maternal side or who have converted to Judaism. Those not considered Jewish according to Halachic law are not accepted for membership in the Jewish community. In some communities, they can be granted status as “associated members.” According to statistics, the average age of community members is 57. On the post-war Jewish communities in Germany see Bodemann, “‘How Can One Stand to Live There as a Jew?’;” Bodemann, A Jewish Family in Germany Today; Brumlik, “The Situation of the Jews in the Today's Germany;” Cohn, Jews in Germany. Although many within the veteran Jewish population are of Eastern European descent, they still tend to express a rather biased view of Eastern European Jewish newcomers. The German Jews' prejudicial perception of Eastern European Jews, Ostjuden, has historical precedence; see Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers, xxvii. Aschheim argues that, in the creation of the modern “German Jew,” there also emerged “his mirror opposite, his antithesis – the ‘Eastern Jew’” (5). And echoes are discernible today of this image of Ostjuden as the opposite of modernity, progress, and enlightenment. This stereotype of the backward “Eastern Jew” currently intersects with the widespread perception that Russian Jewish immigrants are products of a totalitarian Soviet regime, lack adequate civic habits for life in liberal democratic society, and have little appreciation of its institutions. To understand the conflicts between immigrants and old-timers, I suggest we consider the situation not only in light of the opposition between “Eastern” and “Western” and “democratic” and “totalitarian” but also as a phenomenon grounded in socioeconomic gaps between settled and well-to-do locals and recent immigrants. The conflict should be analysed in the frame of struggles for recognition, status, and resources between the old-timers and newcomers. The latter, while in the majority, remain underrepresented in positions of leadership and power. Jewish Gemeinden are corporate bodies recognised by the state and regulated as quasi-governmental agencies. There is usually only one Gemeinde in a city, although there may be a number of Jewish congregations and synagogues. For more details, see Cohn, Jews in Germany. Managed by locally elected boards, the communities are united by an umbrella organisation, the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat). The council is responsible for representing Jewish community affairs to the federal authorities. Unlike self-maintained Jewish communities in countries such as the US and Great Britain, the Jewish communities in Germany are supported financially by the state (only part of the communities' budget comes from taxes paid by working members of the communities, similar to the taxes paid by members of Christian congregations). State financial support of the Jewish communities, an integral part of the state politics of restitution for the Holocaust, goes back to the first post-war years of Jewish communities' re-establishment in Germany. See Geller, Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany. To protect the anonymity of my interviewees, I leave their names unidentified or use fictional names. The interviews were conducted in Russian. All translations from Russian are mine. Rodman, “Empowering Place.” Basso, “Wisdom Sits in Places;” Kahn, “Your Place and Mine.” Berdoulay, “Place, Meaning, and Discourse in French Language Geography,” 135. Rodman, “Empowering Place,” 206. Published since 2002, Evreiskaja Gazeta is the main Russian Jewish newspaper in Germany. Among its main topics are the Jewish communities in Germany, Jewish life in the diasporas, the history and culture of Russian Jews, and Israeli culture and society. The newspaper has a circulation of 39,000 and currently publishes an online edition: http://www.e-gazeta.de/. Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence; Gitelman, “Thinking about Being Jewish in Russia and Ukraine.” Nakhimovsky, “You Are What They Ate,” 68. Leveson, “The Enemy Within;” Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred. Evreiskaja Gazeta, May 2004, 17. Ibid., 5. Evreiskaja Gazeta, July 2008, 17. Myerhoff, Number Our Days, 188. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 8. The NEP was implemented by Vladimir Lenin in order to introduce some aspects of capitalism back into the socialist economy so as to improve the economy. Launched at the beginning of 1920s, the policy was abandoned by 1928. Quoted in Slezkine, The Jewish Century, 242. On the concept of culturedness (kulturnost), see Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front; Volkov, “‘The Concept of Kul'turnost’.” Dreizin, Russian Soul and the Jew, 1–7. Ibid., 3–6. In the everyday language of Russian Jews, the word often implies business of questionable legitimacy, something underhand and devious. Evreiskaja Gazeta, April 2008, 14. See Goluboff, Jewish Russians; Katz, Neither with Them, nor without Them; Rosenshield, The Ridiculous Jew; Bergmann, “Antisemitism;” Rosenberg, From Shylock to Svengali; Tazbir, “Images of the Jew in the Polish Commonwealth.” Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 20. On the practice of “as if” as an intrinsic part of Soviet life, see Fitzpatrick, Tear Off the Masks; Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Dietz, “German and Jewish Migration from the Soviet Union to Germany;” Cohen and Kogan, “Next Year in Jerusalem or in Cologne?” Sennett, The Corrosion of Character. Kogan, “Last Hired, First Fired?” Kogan, “New Immigrants – Old Disadvantage Patterns?” On images of the emasculated, feeble Jewish body, see Gilman, The Jew's Body; Presner, Muscular Judaism. On the stereotypes of the “clever Jew,” see Gilman, Smart Jews. Paine, “What Is Gossip About?” 278.
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