Through Thick and Thin: Soviet Jewish Identities and Soviet Jewish Cultures
Talk at Hebrew University, Institute for Advanced Study, June 10, 2004
In the past 120 years Jews in the lands of the former Russian Empire and Soviet
Union have been through “thick and thin.” They have experienced five or six waves of
pogroms (1881-2, 1903, 1905, 1918-21, 1939-40), two Russian revolutions, two world
wars, the “great terror” of the 1930s, the “black years" of 1948-52, and the collapse of the
Soviet Union. A century ago there were 5.2 million Jews in the Russian Empire, the
largest single Jewish concentration in the world. Today there are less than half a million
living in the former Soviet Union (FSU).
Table 11:Jewish Population of Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union
Russia
Ukraine
1897
316,500 (6%*)
2,155,800 (41%)
5,215,800
1926
525,000 (20)
1,574,000 (59)
2,672,499
1939
956,599 (32)
1,532,776 (51)
3,028,538
1959
875,307 (39)
840,311 (37)
2,267,814
1970
807,915 (38)
777,126 (36)
2,150,707
1979
700,126 (39)
634,154 (35)
1,810,876
1989
536,848 (37)
486,326 (34)
1,450,500
**2001/2
259,000
Jews in USSR
103,700
* Percentage of total Jewish population in Russian Empire/USSR
**According to the nationwide census taken in Ukraine, 2001 (?). Nationality was determined by
self-declaration. The Russian census was taken in 2002. The last Belarussian census enumerated
27,500 Jews.
Paralleling the decline in population has been a dilution of Jewish cultures, a shift
from “thick” to “thin” culture. By “thick” culture I mean one that has tangible, visible
and distinct manifestations (language, customs, foods, clothing) that clearly differentiate
one group from another. I use “thin” culture to mean a "common and distinct system of
understandings and interpretations that constitute normative order and world view and
provide strategic and stylistic guides to action."2 These ways of seeing the world are not
2
necessarily visible to those outside the culture. Soviet and post-Soviet Jews no longer
have distinctive clothing, foods, languages, or even physical appearances, nor are most of
them practitioners of the Jewish religion. In contrast to a century ago, Jews no longer live
in officially or socially defined Jewish areas, nor is their occupational structure as
different as it once was from other urban dwellers. Yet, many Jews retain common values
and weltanschauungen; they are completely urbanized; and they have extraordinarily
high levels of education, all of which they perceive as ethnic markers differentiating them
from other ethnic groups (“nationalities”). This raises the question of whether thin culture
is sufficient to sustain an ethnic group over time, even when it may be meaningful to
those who live it at any point. A second question is to what extent and in what ways do
Jews in Russia and Ukraine feel that they belong to an entity called "Jews," and how they
conceive of that entity. In other words, we are raising an issue of identification rather
than identity.
I have discussed the conceptions of Jewish identity held by post-Soviet Jews—
and the implications of these conceptions for their attitudes and behaviors—elsewhere.
These conceptions also influence the relations of FSU Jews with Jews elsewhere.3 In
brief, Russian and Ukrainian Jews today see Jewishness (being Jewish) as an ethnic
category rather than as the fused ethno-religious entity most Western Jews conceive of, or
as a nation, as most Israelis see it. For FSU Jews, Judaism, a religion, is neither a
necessary nor a sufficient component of Jewishness. They are divided on the question of
whether one can be ethnically Jewish and profess a religion other than Judaism (primarily
Christian) or some other religion. Most see religion (Judaism, for example) as irrelevant
to Jewishness. Therefore, for some, conversion to Judaism does not necessarily make one
a Jew. Jewishness, in their view, is based primarily, perhaps exclusively, on two factors:
descent and an ineffable feeling of belonging to the Jewish "natsional'nost'" or ethnic
group. For most Russian and Ukrainian Jews, sentiment and biology have largely
replaced faith, Jewish law and lore and Jewish customs as the foundations of their Jewish
self-conceptions.
In turn, "belonging" in those countries is not signaled by the two main forms it
takes on in most western countries: organizational affiliation and philanthropy, behaviors
unknown and impossible under Soviet circumstances. Ethnic and religious entrepreneurs
3
are trying, with modest success, to instill these as normal modes of Jewish behavior in the
FSU. But among FSU Jews "belonging" has been a private, internal expression, not one
publicly displayed.
However, since the fall of the Soviet state in 1991, there has been a significant shift
in the expression of Jewishness from the private spheres of individual feelings and the
home to the public spaces of Jewish institutions. Nevertheless, religion has not (yet?)
become a "facade for ethnicity" as it has been in the west. Jewishness is conceived
precisely as the Soviets defined it, an ethnic category. In the Jewish case it was nearly
stripped of "content," but the "form" remained, to use Stalin's famous categories. One
implication is that the encounter of FSU Jews with western Jewry (USA, Canada,
Germany) confronts different conceptions of Jewish belongingness with each other and
leads to social, institutional and personal tensions. On the other hand, since the Israeli
conception of belonging to the Jewish people is largely grounded (sic) in territory,
language and citizenship, when FSU Jews arrive in Israel their conceptions of Jewishness
are much more easily accommodated.4
These generalizations are based on surveys I conducted in 1992-93 and 1997-98
with Vladimir Shapiro and Valery Chervyakov of the Institute of Sociology, Russian
Academy of Sciences. We interviewed 1,300 people in the Russian cities, Moscow, St.
Petersburg and Ekaterinburg and 2,000 in the Ukrainian cities, Kiev, Kharkiv, Lviv,
Chernivtsi and Odessa. This was not a panel study but a cross-section taken in each wave.
Owing to high mortality and massive emigration, there was considerable "sample decay"
between the waves.
Rather than discuss the findings of the survey, in this paper I present my
impressions of the “thin culture” of Jewishness that I believe characterizes most, but far
from all, Jews in Russia and Ukraine, the two successor states which encompass at least
80 percent of the Jewish population of the FSU today. These impressions are based
generally on 38 years of close first hand, if intermittent, observation of Soviet Jews, and,
more specifically, on 64 in-depth interview conducted in the eight cities in which the
surveys were taken, and other sources.5
4
Culture and Boundaries
Ethnic groups are defined by their cultures and by boundaries that they and others
outside the group construct in order to differentiate themselves.6 Jews have long set rules,
such as the prohibition against intermarriage and the dietary laws, to draw lines between
them and gentiles, and the latter have done the same by constructing ghettos, forcing
distinctive dress on Jews or simply treating them socially as a group apart, often seen as
inferior and undesirable. In recent decades, not only has the specific culture of the Jews
in the FSU and elsewhere in the diaspora been diluted, but the boundaries marking them
off from others have been eroded both by Jews and others. Intermarriage rates have
soared while anti-Semitism seems to have decreased overall; Jewish neighborhoods have
dissolved somewhat in most western countries, and social acceptance of Jews has spread
so that they populate occupational and social niches from which they were formerly
excluded. Not too long ago it would have been unthinkable to have a British Foreign
Secretary named Rifkind, a Russian deputy prime minister and finance minister named
Livshits, two Jewish secretaries of state in the United States, a Jewish foreign minister
and a Jewish editor of the largest circulation daily in Poland, and two Jewish senators
from Wisconsin.
What are the consequences for Jewish maintenance over time of the erosion of
boundaries along with the thinning of culture?
The thick culture of a century ago was composed of several distinct sub-cultures,
though they shared some fundamental commonalities. Some people crossed back and
forth among these subcultures, several of which might be present in a single household.
The major subcultures were the religious-traditional, based on an all-encompassing
halacha; a Hebraist-Zionist subculture which included religious and non-religious
elements and which had its roots in the Haskalah; a Yiddishist, often socialist,
comprehensive culture whose language was the crux; and a minority, Russian-Jewish
culture limited mostly to Jews who lived outside the Pale of Settlement and some
Russianized intelligentsia within it.7 There were religious Zionists and Russianized
Zionists; writers who wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish, and a few in Russian as well;
many moved from one sub-culture to another in the course of their lives. The values and
5
styles of these cultures suffused Jews’ lives and drove the thinking and behavior of their
adherents.
They could do so because most Jews lived apart from others, ghettoized by state
policy as well as by strictures both of their own making and of the societies in which they
lived. Unlike their co-ethnics in Western Europe, most Jews did not strive to enter the
larger societies. In contrast to German, French or English Jews, the Jews of the Pale did
not gaze in admiration at the culture and mores of the gentile societies. The minority who
lived in Warsaw, St. Petersburg or Moscow could admire the achievements of Polish and
Russian art, literature, music and technology, but the Pale dweller saw mostly ignorant
and impoverished peasants around him, hardly a folk to be emulated. Even in Minsk and
Vilna and Kiev, certainly in Grodno, Shepetovka, Pinsk and Zhmerinka, there was in the
19th century hardly a large gentile intelligentsia to emulate, a culture to which to aspire.
The Russian Revolution abolished the Pale and Jewish segregation; created a new
Soviet intelligentsia of which Jews were a part; an urban Soviet way of life to be
admired; a society which was to be based on scientific-technological achievements; and a
culture that was open to all, irrespective of nationality. At the same time, all pre-Soviet
Jewish sub-cultures were defined by the state and Communist Party as alien and
subversive. The only form of Jewish culture that survived and adapted to Soviet norms
was secular Yiddish culture. Though thoroughly Sovietized in its content and even its
form (e.g.,orthography), and removed as much as possible from its origins in Jewish
traditions and classic literature, this sub-culture, which enlisted fewer and fewer Jews into
its ranks, was destroyed by Stalin, along with its producers and some of its consumers.
Thus, by 1950 there was no significant group involved in any thick Jewish sub-culture.
The Persistence of Thin Culture
Some sub-cultures, not as thick as those of the previous century but that can
nevertheless be placed toward the “thick” end of the spectrum, become visible in the
1960s and thereafter, though they involved only small numbers of people. They included:
1) a group of Yiddishists, mostly survivors of the purges of the 1950s but joined by a few
younger people who clustered around Sovetish haimland in the 1980s; 2) a religious
group, mostly very elderly but buttressed by “baalei tshuvah” in the 1970s; 3)
“refuseniks” who had been denied permission to emigrate and, because of their shared
6
difficulties and relative isolation from mainstream Soviet society, gradually formed a
subculture of their own, mostly in Moscow, Leningrad, Vilnius, Riga and a few other
republic capitals. This was not a culturally homogeneous group; some emphasized
Hebrew, others religion, and others the study of Jewish history and literature.
But the vast majority of Jews in the USSR were highly acculturated to the
dominant Russian culture, except in Georgia, though they were never assimilated. That is,
they lost their thick culture, in many cases voluntarily, but not their identities, because the
boundaries separating Jews from others, fixed by the state’s nationality policy and by
societal attitudes, remained in place.
An amorphous thin culture replaced the thick cultures. The “common and distinct
system of understandings and interpretations” of which it consists seems to me to include
the following beliefs and assumptions, certainly not shared by all, but frequently held and
expressed.
1) Soviet Jews and perhaps all European, Ashkenazic Jews, are part of the same group,
perhaps a nation, but it is doubtful whether Sephardic, Georgian and Central Asian Jews
are. A 40 year old woman in Ekaterinburg (#6) opines, “Georgian and Caucasian Jews
probably are not part of the same nation as the Russian Jews, because they look and act
like Georgians or the people of the Caucasus rather than like Jews.” An older man in
Kiev (#7) says, “I don’t know about Moroccan Jews, but we are one people with the
American Jews.” A more complicated and nuanced conclusion is drawn by another
Kievan (#3).
You see, a Moroccan Jew to me is like a Martian Jew….We probably belong to
the same people though definitely only on the basis of religion and certainly not
on ethnicity….[Jews from Central Asia or Georgia] are ethnically a different
people [from Russian and Ukrainian Jews]. Probably their ancestors were
admirers of Judaism and because of that they called themselves Jews. I don’t
really know. How can I think differently? How can I consider someone like the
famous mayor Zizov, a Georgian Jew who is also a citizen of Israel, as belonging
to the same people? Although we do speak Russian to each other. So he is a
Georgian Jew and I am a Ukrainian Jew, but I guess maybe we are part of the
same people after all. He is closer to the Jewish culture and traditions. He was
brought up that way from his childhood. So after all, I guess we do belong to the
same people if both of us feel that we are Jewish and somehow express that.
7
In our surveys of 6,600 Jews in Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s, we found only
41 per cent in Russia and 51 per cent in Ukraine agreeing with the statement, "Jews all
over the world constitute a single people." Some say Jews are one people, some say they
are a people united by religion, many say that the presence of different groups of Jews in
Israel—reference is most frequently made to Moroccan and Ethiopian Jews—“prove”
that Jews are not a single people. Anna from Kiev does not think even FSU Jews
constitute a single people. ”Georgian Jews are more Georgians, Jews from Bukhara are
more Uzbeks, it’s difficult to tell them apart.” A middle-aged Odessan woman asserts, “I
believe that the Jews from Eastern Europe, Canada and America are more or less one
people. But the African Jewish communities seem a bit odd and foreign to me. When
someone tells me that a black person is a Jew, I can’t perceive him as a Jew.”
2) Jews are highly intelligent, more so than most of the other peoples in the USSR
and its successor states. A middle-aged man from Chernovtsy (#5) sums up how Jews
differ from others: Jews are kinder and gentler; more thoughtful about others; more
humane; more intelligent and more cultured than other nationalities. Jews also never hurt
others. A 30 year old man in Russia says, “First of all, Jews are smarter than
others….Because of their great minds, Jews have been able to adapt and survive all this
time, even in unfriendly countries.”
Of course, some reject such notions completely. A young Muscovite(#6) typifies
the rejection of any invidious comparisons of ethnic groups. He insists, “There are no
differences [between the Jews and other people]! None! Inside all people are the same.
The only thing that makes a difference is the environment in which one grows up.
Nationality makes no difference….I’ve known very many intelligent Russians and not so
intelligent Jews. So I don’t think there is a difference in their mental abilities or anything
like that….” (Yet, this same informant says “I feel proud to be Jewish, because in some
ways I feel that I am better than the people with whom I socialize, and I’d like to believe
that that’s because I have Jewish blood! That’s how I feel.”)
Some maintain that higher levels of education are not the result of some genetic
advantage but of social circumstances. A counselor in Jewish youth camps (SP#2) told
the interviewer, when asked to compare Jews with others, “To tell you the truth I don’t
like conversations like this,” though she added that they took place often in the youth
8
camps. In her view, Jews’ achievements were “simply a necessity to survive, like survival
of the fittest among animals….So you can’t say it was God’s gift or anything, it was just
that the circumstances were such that it was necessary for Jews to be advanced in order to
survive.”
3) Jews are highly educated and urbanized, both indicators of cultural superiority.
A Ukrainian Jew (Odessa#7) recalls, “My mother brought us up with the idea that the
Jews are a smart nation and an educated nation. And that we must be proud to belong to
such a nation.” The same woman adds, “The culture of Jews is much higher than the
culture of Russians. These are two opposite nations. They are not compatible. And that’s
in spite of the fact that my husband is Russian” [and her daughter considers herself
Russian]. On the other hand, a Ukrainian Jewish scientist (Odessa #8), on the verge of
retirement, says “Russians are also a very smart nation…I don’t feel such great
differences between those two nations [Jews and Russians].”
4) But Jews are persecuted and therefore being Jewish is also a problem. One
interviewee believes that to be Jewish is to “carry throughout your life a heavy burden of
punishment for sins you never committed," while another expresses the same notion as
[to be Jewish is] “to be guilty of everything bad that happens in the country where you
live." Or, a respondent uses a Christian metaphor and says “to bear your cross until your
last breath.” Another person put the same idea in a quintessentially Jewish way. He said
simply, “to be a Jew? az okh un vay.”
5) Jews are better than others not only because of their intelligence and education
but due to their values. For example, many think Jews are not as prone to alcoholism. A
young woman from Odessa (#4) says she “cannot imagine a Jewish alcoholic or a Jewish
drug addict….Russians don’t care about their children at all. That’s what I’ve read some
school psychologists say. They’ll all become drug addicts here.” A young man in St.
Petersburg (#1) compares Russian and Jewish families. “When Jewish families get
together, even if there is some alcohol, we just sit and talk and talk. Whereas in Russian
families they may start off talking, but they always end up lying drunk under the table.”
Perhaps the most frequent contrast drawn between Jews and others is in the nature
of the respective families. It is widely believed, and not by Jews alone, that Jewish men
treat their wives better than non-Jews do, and that there is greater closeness and warmth
9
in Jewish families. A young Odessan (#1) explains, “Jewish families seem to always live
in harmony. They practically never fight! Even if they quarrel, they never really fight!
They may argue a lot, but at the same time they love each other very much! That love
within the family is what makes Jewish families different from non-Jewish ones.” This
supposed harmony is explained by a young woman from Ekaterinburg (#5): in Jewish
families the mother rules (“matriarchy”), while in Russian families the fathers rule
(“patriarchy”). So in Jewish families women are treated with respect, while in Russian
families women are not.
The theme of the Jewish mother is taken up again and again. The Odessa resident
cited above says, “And then there is the concept of ‘a yidishe mama.’ In the Jewish tribe
mama is mama! There is a special relationship between the mother and her son. That
worshiping of the children by the Jewish mother. I believe that is particular to the Jewish
people. Even though the father is usually the head of the family, the mother is valued
very highly. She is listened to, she is the main person involved in children upbringing.
She is considered most precious!”
A middle-aged Jewish woman from Odessa who is married to a Russian, asserts,
“There is a difference in the way they [Jews] relate to the old, to their children, to each
other. Jewish families are more tender and affectionate to their children, more caring than
the Russian families. They are also more caring and respectful to the old than the Russian
families.” A young man from Chernovtsy (#1), where we found the most traditional
Jewish values and practices among respondents, expresses this view of the Jewish family:
“The typical Jewish family is one in which the parents are well-educated and/or occupy
high positions and constantly torture their children by telling them that they must
graduate from at least one university and get a post-graduate degree, that they must marry
a Jewish man or woman, while in Russian and Ukrainian families there is no such
pressure from the parents.”
A very thoughtful 19 year old in Kiev (#1) distinguishes between pre-Soviet,
Soviet and post-Soviet conditions and their impact on Jews. He argues that in Soviet
times
Jews knew that in order to get ahead they had to try a thousand times harder than
the people of other nationalities, such as Russians or Ukrainians. And they were
able to succeed after all. For example, any Jew knew that in order to be accepted
10
to college, he had to be orders of magnitude better than everyone else. Because of
that, many Jews, that is, Jewish male heads of households were much less likely
to drink than their non-Jewish counterparts. Also, statistics were that Jewish
families were much less likely to get divorced due to arguing or fighting [sic].
That was because every Jew knew that if he were to drink or act like that, he
wouldn’t be able to achieve anything in life. And even women who were antiSemites used to say in those days that they’d love to marry a Jew precisely for
that reason.
Here is a portrayal by a woman in St. Petersburg (#3) that seems to summarize the
idealized—and stereotypical—Jewish family.
A typical Jewish family is one with a powerful/authoritarian, strong and wise
mother, an affectionate and tolerant father who takes upon himself to take care of
his family’s well-being, who can forgive his child a lot, who adores his child, who
can deny himself a lot in favor of the child, who hopes to realize himself through
his child. That’s a typical Jewish family.
The difference in relationships with children is emphasized by a Jewish woman married
to a Russian (SP#6):
I can illustrate the differences between the Jews and the Russians even with my
own family….Take, for example, our ways of bringing up children. They are so
different! I am not saying that my way is better, but we are just so different! That
is, I am ready to sacrifice my body, my blood, my whole self [for my child].
Whereas my husband may worry a lot inside, but he will never show it or do
anything. And then, he, like all Russians, has this avos’’” attitude, ‘maybe
somehow things will resolve themselves.’ They [the Russians] don’t have that
constant worry about tomorrow, about the children, about the future….I am not a
typical Jew. That is, I didn’t strive to create a materially comfortable life for my
child. Instead, I wanted to make him a person. Whereas my husband doesn’t
worry about such family issues. That ability to think about the next generation –
that’s a national [Jewish] trait. It was historically developed.
6) Jews are survivors. One of their notable characteristics is that, as a woman
from Ukraine put it, “they succeeded in preserving themselves as a people throughout the
years, while a lot of other civilizations, great and small, perished.” (Chernovtsy #2) A
teenager in Ekaterinburg (#1) claimed that what makes Jews most different from others is
that if Jews “are unable to overcome some obstacle, they’ll just go around it and keep
going on their merry way. They won’t try to destroy or break that obstacle. Another
11
characteristic that makes the Jews different is that over the centuries of Diaspora, Jews
have acquired a special ability to adapt to circumstances.”
7) Being Jewish does not preclude belonging to another culture. Soviet practice
did not permit one to be registered as of mixed nationality, say, half-Russian, half-Jewish,
though, informally, people did consider themselves as such. Some deny any specific
ethnic consciousness. “I would say I am a kosmopolit, because I think my consciousness
is primarily non-Jewish.” Others feel themselves to be Russian much of the time, but
feelings of Jewishness are not completely absent. “Despite the fact that I was raised in
Russian culture, in many things I am different from Russians raised in the same culture.”
A 36 year old man in Kiev (#3) says he can be quite comfortable feeling Russian,
Ukrainian and Jewish at the same time.
Even though I am Jewish, I feel at home in Ukraine! All attempts to convince me
that this is home only for the Ukrainians are like a joke. I am not any less a native
of the Ukraine than the most pure-bred Ukrainian!…My native language is
Russian. I write poetry and songs in Russian. I think in Russian. I know Russian
literature much better than Jewish literature. And the Russian culture is more
traditional for me, I am more used to it, even though I don’t necessarily like all of
its expressions. So to a large extent I am Russian – by culture, upbringing,
education. But it doesn’t interfere with my remembering that I am a Jew.
A few respondents observe that their ethnic consciousness has changed over the course of
their lives. “I assimilated very strongly and only recently have I felt inwardly Jewish.
Until then I tried to eliminate the Jewish part.”
8) Jews have a feeling of consanguinity, a kind of instinctive feeling of belonging
to the same group. A 19 year old college student in Ekaterinburg says “It’s difficult to say
what makes Jews different, but a Jew would always recognize another Jew by his
behavior, his way of communicating, by his eyes…. it’s like a family way of
communicating.” A young man in Lvov (#1): “What makes Jews different is some
special interconnection between them, their readiness to help each other at any time, to
support each other…. It’s probably related to history. The thing is that if the Jews weren’t
so close to each other, it would have been much more difficult for them to survive.” A 50
year old woman psychologist in Moscow (#3) says, “we almost always recognize our
own kind when we see one. There exists this unspoken brotherhood [among Jews]. There
is something which makes us close to each other.” (This is from a person who describes
12
herself as an atheist and who would like her daughter to be registered as a Russian). A
much more active Jew (Odessa#1) says with great passion,
To be a Jew means to feel the connection with the past generations, connection
with the past. To feel like you a part of a big people, to observe traditions,
holidays, to live it, that is, to realize that you are a Jew, that your family is Jewish
that your generation is Jewish…. It’s a state of one’s soul, it’s a feeling. It’s a
feeling of belonging to generations [of Jews], a feeling of traditions, of roots.
There is also the responsibility to your ancestors to continue that history and
traditions, to pass it to the next generations. And to pass it to other people….I feel
that Jewish people are one large and strongly connected family.
We interviewed a Petersburg writer (SP#8) who says being Jewish “does not play a big
role in my life” and who believes in God but feels closest to Russian Orthodoxy. He sees
nothing different in Jewish families and favors mixed marriages because “children born
in mixed marriages are more alert and smart. And that’s a fact!” He claims not to feel any
closeness to, say, Ukrainian Jews, but nevertheless observes that “I have a friend who is
only one quarter Jewish by blood. He is a Russian painter. But he remembers that quarter
of his Jewish blood. And there was that Jewish recognition between him and me. We
recognized each other as Jews and we continually recognize that mutual Jewish
awareness.”
9) Jews look different, which presumably helps them recognize each other. A
young man from Ekaterinburg explains that Jews have distinctive hair color, noses and
ears. In our surveys, nearly half of all respondents say that strangers can “usually” tell
that they are Jewish “at first glance,” whereas only a fifth say “usually not.” The
“cosmopolitan” Petersburg writer quoted above notes, “Of course, there are some
differences in appearance. A Jew will always recognize another Jew in a crowd.
Although, a Russian too would recognize a Jew in the crowd.”
10) Israel is an integral part of Jewish identity for many post-Soviet Jews. While
many Soviet Jews demonstrated their connection to Israel before, during and after1948
when it was for them a source of pride, the link to Israel today is more personal, since
most Jews in Ukraine and Russia have relatives and friends who have emigrated to Israel.
Moreover, they visit them and see Israel directly. As can be seen in the table below, in
1992/93, 90 percent of our respondents in Russia and Ukraine had not been in Israel, but
the percentage dropped to 73% in Russia and 80% in Ukraine five years later. Nearly
13
three-quarters of the respondents have distant relatives in Israel, and between 29 percent
(Russia 1997) and 32 percent (Ukraine 1998) have close relatives there.8
Table 2: Jews in Russia and Ukraine who have Close Relatives,* Distant Relatives and
Friends in Israel and the United States (in percent)
Russia 92 Russia 97 Ukraine 93 Ukraine 98
Close relatives in Israel
46.5
28.8
30.7
32.2
Distant relatives in Israel 63.0
73.8
72.2
70.0
Close friends in Israel
66.7
85.4
77.4
73.5
*parents, children, siblings, in-laws.
Russian and Ukrainian Jews are much more attached to the concrete reality of Israel than
to the abstract ideology of Zionism. When we asked what would be necessary for one to
consider oneself a “genuine Jew,” fewer than one per cent of respondents in either
country in either year of the survey picked “subscribing to the ideals of Zionism” as one
of the crucial components that define one as a “genuine Jew.” By contrast, large
majorities averred that to be such a Jew it would be either “necessary” or “desirable” to
“feel oneself close to Israel and worry about its fate.” However, the importance of Israel
dropped considerably between the first and second surveys. Thus, in 1992/93, 46-47
percent of respondents in Russia and Ukraine felt it was “necessary” to feel close to Israel
and be concerned about it, but in 1997/98, only a quarter of Russian respondents and 29
percent of those in Ukraine thought so. This is another indicator of the decline in the
salience of Israel and positive affect toward it among our respondents, though over threequarters of them still feel it is “desirable” to be close to Israel in order to qualify as a
“genuine Jew.”9
14
Table 3: “What is the Most Important Thing Required of a Person in Order to be
Considered a Genuine Jew?” (percentages)
Russia ’92
Russia ’97
Ukraine ’92 Ukraine ’97
Be proud of one’s nationality
Defend Jewish honor and dignity
Not hide one’s Jewishness
Remember the Holocaust
Know Jewish history
Marry a Jew
Know Jewish traditions
Help other Jews
Feel a tie to Israel
Believe in God
Know the basics of Judaism
Circumcise one’s son
Observe kashrut
Observe the Sabbath
Attend synagogue
Know a Jewish language
Share Zionist ideals
Give children Jewish education
Don’t know, no answer
33.3
27.1
0.5
7.3
5.0
1.8
3.2
7.1
4.2
2.7
1.0
0.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
2.2
0.2
1.2
3.1
22.9
17.3
20.8
15.1
2.8
1.1
1.4
4.3
4.3
4.2
0.7
0.1
0.0
0.3
0.1
1.2
0.2
0.8
2.4
29.4
21.4
0.7
15.5
3.0
1.1
0.2
6.6
5.7
3.9
0.2
0.2
0.0
0.3
0.2
1.6
0.3
2.0
0.7
31.4
19.7
13.6
21.5
2.1
0.8
1.4
6.4
2.8
5.4
0.3
0.1
0.1
0.4
0.1
0.4
0.2
1.3
0.4
Note that the items relating to the tenets of Judaism—belief in God, circumcision,
observing the Sabbath or dietary laws, attending synagogue—are not thought of as
essential to being a “genuine Jew.” The most essential ingredients of Jewishness are
matters of feeling and memory—being proud of one’s ethnicity and defending it and,
increasingly, remembering the Holocaust. The increase in the importance of the
Holocaust from the first to the second wave of interviews is undoubtedly due to the
efforts made by local and foreign Jews to bring greater knowledge of this catastrophic
event to the FSU where the Soviet government, while never denying the Holocaust,
suppressed knowledge of it or submerged it into the larger story of massive, prolonged
Soviet suffering at the hands of the Nazis and their allies.10
Through Thick and Thin to the Future
In light of the decline in attachment to Israel among British, American and other
Jews,11 and the failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, will family connections,
bound to weaken in successive generations, be sufficient to maintain commitment to
15
Israel by Russian and Ukrainian Jews? Will its prominence as a haven for persecuted
Jews outweigh all other considerations among populations who still live with uncertainty
about the future of their states and their place in them? Of course, attachment to Israel
may complicate their relations to their own states, at least psychologically, but this has
not been a major issue in the rest of the Jewish diaspora and it might not be such in the
future in Russia and Ukraine.
A largely unarticulated thin Jewish culture existed in the USSR long after—as
well as before—the thick cultures of Jewishness had largely disappeared. Just as the state
insisted that Jews were a “nationality,” Jews and others recognized them as a group apart
and with distinctive characteristics beyond the demographic. Now that Russia and
Ukraine no longer register people by nationality, and rates of Jewish intermarriage have
reached new heights, part of the boundary demarcating Jews has crumbled, though grass
roots anti-Semitism remains. At the same time, it is politically and socially possible to
recreate thick Jewish cultures. Ethnic and religious entrepreneurs have been trying to
“revive” post-Soviet Jewry by re-importing the cultural and religious contents the
Russian Empire’s Jews had once carried with them to Europe, the Americas and
Palestine. Will thick Jewish cultures flourish again in the FSU? Will the sense of
belonging to a distinct entity persist after ethnicity is no longer officially registered and
with such high rates of intermarriage?
It is doubtful. Jews are too well acculturated into Russian culture to withdraw to a
largely Jewish way of life and culture, just as American or French or British Jews, except
for those ultra-Orthodox who ghettoize themselves partially, would not withdraw from
the cultures they have adopted enthusiastically. Even if “multiculturalism” becomes as
fashionable as in certain circles in the West, one doubts that post-Soviet Jewry will, for
example, revive either Yiddish or Hebrew as their languages of daily discourse. In our
mass surveys, somewhat over a fifth of Russian respondents claimed to know some
spoken Yiddish and between 9 and 14 percent claimed to know some spoken Hebrew. In
Ukraine, some knowledge of spoken Yiddish was claimed by 35-37 percent and 11-12
percent claimed some familiarity with spoken Hebrew. The proportions able to read those
languages were considerably smaller. Moreover, only about 10% thought it necessary to
16
learn Yiddish—a quarter to a third thought it desirable—and between 10 and 20%
thought it necessary to learn Hebrew, with 35-44% deeming it desirable.
The motivation for learning Hebrew is not to make it into an umgangsprache in
Russia and Ukraine but rather to ease one’s way in Israel should one decide to go there,
and, for some, to gain some access to ancient and modern Hebrew literature and classic
texts.
Might religion be the nexus of a thick Jewish culture? This too is unlikely.
Though Habad-Lubavitch has spend huge sums and much energy on attempts at religious
revival in what it considers its home territory, there has been no mass return to Judaism
as an active way of life among Russian and Ukrainian Jews. Perhaps a very high
proportion of those who become observant emigrate, but that still means that the practice
of Judaism is not going to be the major marker of Jewish culture in the FSU, though
impressively large proportions seem inclined toward religious belief.
In Russia nearly half and in Ukraine slightly more than half the respondents either
believe in God are inclined to such belief, but when asked which religion they find most
attractive, a considerable proportion of the Jewish respondents gave an answer other than
Judaism.
Table 4: “Do You Believe in God?” (in percent)
Russia ‘92
Yes, I believe in God
18.3
I am inclined to such belief
23.9
I am not inclined to such belief 19.1
I do not believe in God
31.1
Don’t know, no answer
6.4
Russia ‘97
22.8
25.3
17.2
28.3
7.6
Ukraine ‘92
24.2
29.7
18.3
23.2
4.8
Ukraine ‘97
31.0
24.4
17.1
22.1
5.5
Table 5: “Which Religious Doctrine Do You Find Most Attractive?
None
Christianity
Islam
Judaism
Other
Russia ‘92
36.3
13.2
0
33.2
Russia ‘97
44.1
13.7
0
26.7
Ukraine ‘93
38.5
10.7
0.1
37.6
Ukraine ‘97
36.6
15.5
0.1
32.4
4.4
5.4
0.0
2.9
Don’t know/No answer 13.0
10.2
9.6
12.6
17
Over ten per cent see Christianity as most attractive, and the number of those who cannot
answer the question is quite high, indicating, at least, that Judaism is not a clear choice
for them. Thus, among Russian and Ukrainian Jews belief in God and adherence to
Judaism are not strongly connected. Moreover, even those who both believe in God and
prefer Judaism to other religions are not significantly more observant of rituals, customs
and traditions than others. As one researcher who has interviewed FSU émigrés in Vienna
has put it, "religion [is] a spiritual quest, dissociated from daily practices. With Easter and
Christmas cards from her friends displayed on her shelves, Z. seems to find more
difference between atheism and religion than between Judaism and Christianity. 'It's
simple, either you believe in God, or you don't."12
Perhaps an ethnicized “religion” could be a major form of ethnic expression in the
FSU. In much of the West, mitzvoth, which are literally commandments, have been
transformed into customs and traditions in the popular mind. The Pesach seder and
celebrations of Hanukah are perhaps the best examples, whereas Shavuot and Tisha b’Av
go largely unobserved except by the Orthodox because they lack the drama, special foods
and joy or “fun”—not to speak of coincidence with major Christian holidays—that mark
Pesach and Hanukah. Similarly, communal holiday celebrations have become quite
popular among FSU Jews. Observances, whatever their motivations, have been moved
out of the private sphere into the public one, as semi-secretive family observances have
become communal ones. Judaism is out of the closet, but it is social, communal Jewish
activity rather than theologically committed observance.
Diaspora Jewish culture has been “thinned” everywhere. There are only two
minorities of Jews in the Americas and western Europe whose daily lives are intensively
informed—in many cases driven—by Judaism or Jewishness. These are the Orthodox and
the committed activists of Jewish civil religion.13 The latter are heavily involved in
Jewish charitable and education work, communal organizations, federations, and political
activities, Jewish communal volunteers and civil servants. Most Jews, however, are
“occasional” Jews, and some only very occasional. For them, Jewishness is produced for
special occasions—rites de passage, a small number of holidays, some political and social
occasions. It is fundamentally “symbolic ethnicity,” in Herbert Gans’ terms—not a force
that drives most of one’s thinking and actions. It is ethnicity devoid of much of its
18
original cultural content but which persists as an identity, something that has a boundary
around it and is deployed occasionally.14 This thin culture carries no obligations but it is
sufficient to engender a sense of belonging; in fact, in some cases the conviction of
belonging exists without even the thinnest veneer of culture. Jewishness becomes a
voluntary activity, in the absence of anti-Semitism, and all Jews, to use a well worn
cliché, become “Jews by choice.” FSU Jews, too, can be “Jews by choice” now that the
states no longer impose Jewishness. This is a great relief to those who wish to escape
Jewishness and to those who wish to remain actively Jewish but in ways and at times of
their own choosing.
If this is the form Jewish identities will take in the FSU, as seems likely, postSoviet Jewry will come increasingly to resemble the rest of diaspora Jewry, with its
distinctive values and self-perceptions, as outlined earlier, though these will be rapidly
vitiated by intermarriage and the emigration of the most Jewishly conscious and
committed. One wonders whether occasional Jewishness will be able to preserve a people
and its culture to the same extent as Jewishness that is commanded by some mysterious,
omnipotent force, in a word, religion. The Talmud offers a remarkable insight into the
difference between actions that are chosen and those commanded. “Rabi Hanina omer:
gadol hametzuveh ve’oseh yoter m’shayno metzuveh ve’oseh”15 Counter-intuitively,
Rabbi Hanina asserts that the person who performs a mitzvah because he or she is
commanded to do so is more meritorious than the person who performs the same activity
voluntarily. Tosafot explains, “because he always assiduously curbs his will in order to
fulfill the will of his creator.” Only a minority of Jews today feel commanded to fulfill
the will of God. Mitzvah is popularly understood not as obligation but as “good deed,” an
optional act. Jewishness is a matter of picking and choosing, selecting that which is
comfortable, pleasant, and sensible. While the demands made on individuals and
communities by this kind of Jewishness are more modest than those made by the full
range of mitzvoth, and thus the stability, continuity of the Jewish collective and the
thickness of its culture are less certain, for FSU Jewry the ability to choose any sort of
Jewish expression is a major change, and for world Jewry a great gain.
19
1
Sources: Solomon Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union (Syracuse, 1951); Mordechai
Altshuler, Soviet Jewry Since the Second World War (New York, 1987); Mordechai Altshuler,
Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR, 1939 (Jerusalem, 1993). Data from the
questionable 1937 census have become available but are not included here since they are only
partial results. See Akademiia Nauk SSSR, Vsesoiuznaya perepis naseleniia 1937 g. (Moscow,
1991) pp. 83, 85, 94.
2
Stephen Cornell, "The Variable Ties That Bind: Content and Circumstance in Ethnic Processes,"
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 19, 2 (April 1996), p.271.
3
See Zvi Gitelman, Valery Chervyakov and Vladimir Shapiro, “Religion and Ethnicity: Judaism
in the Ethnic Consciousness of Contemporary Russian Jews,” Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 20,
No. 2 (April 1997) 280-305; Zvi Gitelman, “Thinking about Being Jewish in Russia and
Ukraine,” in Zvi Gitelman, ed., Jewish Life After the USSR (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2003), 49-60, and (with Valeriy Chervyakov and Vladimir Shapiro), “E Pluribus Unum?
Post-Soviet Jewish Identities and Their Implications for Communal Reconstruction,” in ibid. For
a fuller account, see (with Valeriy Chervyakov and Vladimir Shapiro), “Natsional’noe
samosoznanie rossiiskikh evreev.Materialy sotsiologicheskogo issledovaniia 1997-1998,”
Diaspory, No. 3, 2000, 52-86; Part 2 in Diaspory, No. 1, 2001, 210-244, and Part 3, Diaspory No.
2, 2001, 222-260; “Native Land, Promised Land, New Land: Jewish Emigration from Russian
and Ukraine,” in Zvi Gitelman, Lubomyr Hajda, John-Paul Himka and Roman Solchanyk, eds.
Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Europe (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute,
2000), 137-164; “Becoming Jewish in Russia and Ukraine,” in Zvi Gitelman, ed., New Jewish
Identities in Contemporary Europe (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003).
4
The 300,000 or so non-Jews who have immigrated from the former Soviet Union present a
challenge in this regard.
5
In addition to the other sources cited, I base these generalizations on over 200 in-depth recorded
interviews with Soviet Jews who immigrated to Israel, available at the Institute of Contemporary
Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as my 1992 survey of over 800 Soviet
immigrants in Israel and my earlier survey of 550 Soviet immigrants in Chicago. See Zvi
Gitelman, Immigration, Identity and Israeli Politics: The Resettlement and Impact of Recent
Immigrants from the Former USSR (Los Angeles: Wilstein Institute, 1995); Zvi Gitelman,
“Becoming American Jews: Resettlement and Acculturation of Soviet Jewish Immigration in
Chicago,” unpublished report to Jewish United Fund of Chicago, 1995
6
A classic statement of this is Frederik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social
Organization of Cultural Difference (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964).
7
See Ben Nathans, Beyond the Pale : the Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002); Michael Beizer, Evrei v Peterburge (Jerusalem: Sifriyat
aliyah, 1989).
8
The sharp decline (1997/98) in the percentage having relatives in Israel there may be explained
by extended families having moved to Israel in the five-year interim, so that only distant relatives
were left in Russia.
9
It is interesting that in the 2002 “Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion” sponsored by the
American Jewish Committee and involving 1,008 American Jews interviewed by telephone, only
five percent said that “support for Israel” was the most important quality of their Jewish identity.
“Being part of the Jewish people” ranked first with 41 percent.
Seehttp://ajc.org./IntheMedia/Publications.asp.
10
On the Soviet attitude toward the Holocaust, see my chapter in Zvi Gitelman, ed., Bitter
Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the Soviet Union (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1997).
20
Steven M. Cohen,” Changing Conceptions of Jewish Collectivity Among Young Adult Jews
and Their Implications for Jewish Education: A Dual Research Project,” unpublished paper,
Research Unit, Dept. of Jewish-Zionist Education: A Dual Research Project, August 25, 2002, 11.
11
David Mittelberg, The Israel Connection and American Jews (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999),
128.
12
Ksenia Gorbenko, "A Quest for a Homeland: The Concept of Homelands among Bukharan and
Ashkenazi Jewish Immigrants in Vienna," unpublished M.A. thesis, Central European University,
Budapest, 2004, 50.
13
See Jonathan Woocher, Sacred Survival : the Civil Religion of American Jews (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1986).
14
Herbert Gans, "Symbolic Ethnicity," Ethnic and Racial Studies, V.2 (1979) 1-20.
15
Babylonian Talmud, Avoda Zarah, 3a.
11