Современный Израиль

Fig. 6. Natalia Zourabova, Curry soup at Eritrean café, 2015–2018, oil on canvas, 170x120cm. Courtesy of the artist.

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Fig.7. Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, They Eat Russian Lard, 2013, oil on canvas mounted on wood, 70x159 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Rosenfeld Gallery.

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Эмблема организации «Игуд ѓа-морим».

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Chapter 6 Russian Israelis and Religion: What Has Changed arter Twenty Years in Israel?

Часть 2. «Русский» Израиль сегодня и в исторической перспективе

Глава 6

Russian Israelis and Religion: What Has Changed after Twenty Years in Israel?*1

Русские израильтяне и религия:

что изменилось за двадцать лет в Израиле?**

While for most people who call themselves Jewish the ethnic and religious aspects of their identity are closely intertwined, the Russian-Soviet reality has created a separation between the two, even usingdifferentwordsforthem:Yevrei(Hebrew)asanethniclabeland Yudei (Jew) to refer to the Judaic faith. Starting from the beginning of thetwentiethcentury,andespeciallyafterthe1917RussianRevolution, the trend toward Jewish secularism and the switch to Russianand Yiddish-based secular literature, press, and culture swept through the majority of Russian Jewry, especially in larger cities (Altshuler 1998, Shternshis 2006; Gitelman 2001). The generation born between 1900 and 1930 largely left shtetl life to take an active part in ‘communist construction’, to obtain higher education,

* Larissa Remennick and Anna Prashizky

** Лариса Ременник, Анна Прашицкая

1 Предыдущая версия этой главы опубликована в журнале Israel Studies Review. 2012. Vol 27 (1): 55–77.

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andtobecomepartoftheurbanworkingclass,politicalfunctionaries, or members of the intelligentsia. Some of these ‘New Soviet Jews’ maintained remnants of Yiddish lore, Jewish holidays, and domestic habits, but these were typically kept private and never revealed to outsiders in order to avoid any anti-Semitic backlash or accusations of ‘backwardness’.

By the late 1940s, the old system of Jewish education and Jewish cultural institutions (theaters, books, and theYiddish press) had been largely destroyed. Pursuing any Jewish activities, including the study oftheJewishlanguages(especiallyHebrew),wasdefinedbythestate assubversiveandpunishable.Thus,thefirstSoviet-Jewishgeneration hadlosttheirtieswithreligionandthetraditionsoftheirancestorsand manifesteddeepignoranceinthesematters,forinstance,sayingkaddish for their dead husbands in an Orthodox Christian church rather than a synagogue, which was a foreign place for most of them (Shternshis 2007).Thechildrenandgrandchildrenoftheseelderswereevenmore removed from Judaic education, cultural interests, and practices. Many of them married non-Jews and changed their patronymics and surnames to pass as Russians or Ukrainians (Brym and Ryvkina 1994; Nosenko 2004; Nosenko-Stein 2013). After seven decades of state socialism, most Soviet Jews raised in the major cities defined themselves as atheists or agnostics. They spoke Russian as their first and only language and were socialized by the Soviet system of education and its youth movements, the Young Pioneers and Komsomol (the Communist Union ofYouth).

From the late 1960s onward, a small minority of Jewish dissidents, inspired by the political thaw in the USSR and Israel’s victory in the SixDay War, gathered together to study Hebrew and the basics of Judaism and to distribute Israeli materials.

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However, most Jews were rank-and-file Soviet citizens, largely urban, educated (despite anti-Semitic policies preventing them from entering the best schools), and employed in whitecollar occupations. Some of them had reached prominent positions in their professions – particularly in science, medicine, and the arts – butmostcouldnotadvancetheircareersduetotheirincurable‘ethnic disability’.Theirstifledprofessionalambitions,thepoorprospectsfor their children, and the stagnant political atmosphere of late socialism impelled many Jews to emigrate, while others engaged in an intense searchforspiritualoutletsonthefringesofmainstreamSovietsociety (Deutsch Kornblatt 2003; Nosenko 2010).

Startingintheearly1980s,interestinreligionemergedasapopular form of dissidence among urban intelligentsia, including some Jews. They often turned to Orthodox Christianity as a source of spiritual stimulation, following charismatic pastors such as Father Alexander Men (himself of Jewish origin). In an Orthodox country, churches, pastors, and familiar Christian cultural symbols in literature and the arts were reasonably accessible, offering an attractive escape from bleak socialist reality. Synagogues, on the other hand, were few and were closely surveyed by the KGB, the Soviet national security agency.OrthodoxJewishritualwasenigmaticandremote:italienated women, who could not pray with men, and inquiries into visitors’ Jewish ‘purity’further deterred potential believers (Shternshis 2007). As a result, Jews who were inclined toward a spiritual search would more often drift toward Christianity, in its Russian Orthodox version, ratherthanJudaism.Thiswaseventruerforthemanyhalf-andquarter- Jews,whoseethnicandreligiousidentitywassplitbydefinition;their Jewish component was typically weaker and often suppressed in the anti-Semitic milieu (Deutsch Kornblatt 2003; Nosenko-Stein 2010).

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The evidence on Jewish life and identity during state socialism comes both from personal documents, such as memoirs and diaries, and from analysis of anti-Semitic state policies and the Soviet media. Large-scale social research on Jewish topics, particularly research involving Western scholars, became possible only in the post-Soviet years. The most credible source on the subject is still the survey by Chervyakov, Gitelman, and Shapiro (2003), which was conducted in the major cities of Russia and the Ukraine in two waves, in 1992 and 1997. These surveys provide the snapshot of the attitudes typical of most Russian-speaking Jews who left the USSR / FSU during the 1990s. Later surveys conducted with similar questionnaires in the major post-soviet cities (Shapiro et al., 2006, Ryvkina, 2005, Gitelman, 2012, Nosenko-Stein 2016) pointed to certain shifts in the postsoviet Jewish identity but did not reverse these older findings. A majority of respondents understood Jewish identity as «being proud of your nationality» (23 percent and 34 percent in the two survey waves), followed by «defending Jewish honor and dignity» (17percentand27percent)–clearlythelegacyoflivinginananti-Semitic milieu.Othertangiblecomponentswere«rememberingtheHolocaust» (7 percent and 22 percent), «helping other Jews» (4 percent and 7 percent), and «feeling a tie to Israel» (3 percent and 6 percent). Only 0.8 percent and 1.8 percent felt that it was important to marry a Jew.

Ethnic identities generally are known to be malleable and shaped by changing circumstances, and Soviet-Jewish identity was a product of the Soviet environment. State anti-Semitism largely vanished after socialism, while social attitudes toward Jews became more varied and flexible, especially given their apparent success in the post-communist economy and in politics. Being Jewish became useful again, as a ticket

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for emigration for those wishing to relocate abroad or as a path to the new business world for those inclined to stay. Jewish ancestry and elements of Jewish tradition were now construed as enticing andexotic by some younger offspring of mixed couples and halfor quarter-Jews (Remennick2009;Nosenko-Stein2016;Khanin,Pisarevskaya,Epstein 2013).

Notably, in the post-Soviet era, very few Russian and Ukrainian citizens, including Jews, are willing to call themselves atheists or fullysecular.Atheismiscloselyassociatedwiththeforceddestruction of religious institutions by the Soviet authorities, with crude materialism, and with the lack of a spiritual meaning in life. Yet only a small minority joins established faiths (so-called explicit religions). ThemorerecentsurveysamongRussianandUkrainianJewsconducted over the last decade (Remennick 2009; Ryvkina 2005; Shapiro et al. 2006; Gitelman 2012; Nosenko-Stein 2013) suggest that only about 10–20 percent are interested in Judaism (not necessarily resulting in any regular observance), while about one-third are inclined towards Orthodox Christianity (again, with varying degrees of observance).

ThedrifttowardJudaism,especiallyamongtheyoungergeneration, was more pronounced in the midto late 1990s, the period of peak activityofAmericanandIsraeliJewishorganizations(Joint,theJewish Agency,Hillel,andespeciallyChabad)thatweretryingtoreviveJewish educationandcommunitylifeinthepost-Sovietspace(Gitelman2009; Khanin, Pisarevskaya and Epstein 2013). Yet the social and cultural programs offered by these organizations, as well as their leisure and sports facilities, have been much more popular among Russian Jews than the religious services, and synagogue attendance has remained very low.Among those interested in Judaism and attending Jewishorganizations(anestimated15–20percentofJewsinMoscow,

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