jews and judaism in contemporary europe: religion or ethnic group?
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [Fondren Library, Rice University ]On: 16 November 2014, At: 16:43Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T3JH, UK
Ethnic and Racial StudiesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rers20
Jews and Judaism incontemporary Europe: Religionor ethnic group?Jonathan Webber a b ca Fellow in Jewish Social Studies , Oxford Centre forHebrew and Jewish Studies , 45 St Giles', Oxford,OX1 3LP, UKb Hebrew Centre Lecturer in Social Anthropology ,Oxford Universityc Research Fellow, Wolfson College , OxfordPublished online: 13 Sep 2010.
To cite this article: Jonathan Webber (1997) Jews and Judaism in contemporaryEurope: Religion or ethnic group?, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20:2, 257-279, DOI:10.1080/01419870.1997.9993961
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1997.9993961
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporaryEurope: religion or ethnic group?
Jonathan Webber
Abstract
The Jewish experience in Europe over the past two hundred years offersmuch of interest to the student of ethnicity and the sociologist of religionbecause of the opportunity to undertake comparative work on a singlegroup living in a range of diverse socio-political environments. EuropeanJews have been treated from the outside as constituting a religion and,more recently, as an ethnic group; both these models have beeninternalized by Jews themselves. However, they coexist with majorprocesses of internal change involving not only the disintegration oftraditional Jewish culture and its reconstruction in highly attenuated form,but also the respective influences of the devastation of the Holocaust andof newer models deriving from Israeli perspectives on diaspora Jewishidentity. Under these circumstances, ethnicity and religion as analyticcategories do not easily fit the Jewish case: the proposal is made thatattention to Jewish historical consciousness may be useful in advancingcomparative and ethnographic studies.
Keywords: Jews; European Jews; Holocaust; ethnicity; identity; religion; diaspora.
The Jews of modern Europe: insider and outsider categories ofdescription
Despite the existence of stereotypes about Jews - stereotypes held byJews as well as by non-Jews - it is in fact very difficult to generalize aboutthe Jews of Europe. Communities of Jews are to be found today in everycountry across the continent, with the sole exception of Iceland andperhaps one or two of the smaller principalities such as Liechtenstein andAndorra; but these communities possess very different formal features.First of all, they vary enormously in size of population. For example, ofthe two million Jews now living in Europe there are 530,000 Jews inFrance, 470,000 in Russia; Italy and Belgium each have 31,000; Switzer-land and Turkey each have 19,000; Greece and the Czech Republic eachhave 4,800; Luxembourg and Gibraltar each have 600; Portugal and
Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 20 Number 2 April 1997© Routledge 1997 0141-9870
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
258 Jonathan Webber
Albania each have 300. The European territory with the highest per-centage of Jews in the total population is Gibraltar, at 2 per cent, followedby Moldova, at 1.14 per cent, and then by France, at 0.94 per cent.1
Quite apart from figures such as these, easily exemplifying the some-what esoteric nature of the Jewish ethnic spread across the continent,there are a number of other considerations that would challenge any sim-plistic view of a uniform population. Although, it is true, a larger thanaverage proportion of those Jews who today live in the countries of theEuropean Union are to be found in the Union's more developed regions(such as Greater Paris, Greater London, and Greater Brussels),2 Jewishcognitive maps of Europe may also distinguish between those communi-ties which are old and well established (Jewish settlement in Italy, forexample, dates back to the second century BC) and those which are quiterecent (such as Finland, where Jews were not allowed to settle until 1889),those which were major centres of Jewish life before 1939 (such asPoland, Lithuania, Germany, Hungary, Austria), and those which were incultural terms thought of historically as lying on the periphery (such asEstonia, Ireland, Spain).3 Jewish communities in most European coun-tries were devastated during the Holocaust, but some were less so andsome (notably the United Kingdom) not at all.
The social, economic, and political history of Jews in different Euro-pean countries is very different: for example, there were considerabledifferences in the timing and sociopolitical context when European coun-tries offered political emancipation to their Jewish citizens (a process thatbegan only about two hundred years ago). Standing behind the realitiesof Jewish life in contemporary Europe, then, is an exceptionally complexhistory of social relations between Jews and the wider environments inwhich they have lived and a long series of adjustments Jews have beenmaking over many centuries in terms of their economic, political, lin-guistic and cultural roles in a very wide range of different Europeansocieties. As far as European Jews are concerned, easy generalizationsare thus hard to come by.
The point is worth making here at the outset if only to draw attentionto the fact that the Jewish experience in Europe is potentially of excep-tional interest to the student of ethnicity and the sociologist of religion -just because (or so it may be argued) comparative material is theoretic-ally available to chart the course of a single control group living in avariety of sociopolitical environments and thereby to formulate and testa wide range of hypotheses regarding the comparative form and contentof cultural strategies involving religion and ethnicity made by this onegroup over an extended period of time in a series of neighbouring coun-tries. Unfortunately, however, there is little material of this kind readilyavailable. Surprisingly little is, in fact, known at a comparative level aboutcontemporary European Jews: the scholarly literature in the social sci-ences is remarkably limited, there are few academic specialists, and
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 259
'traditional' Jewish society is difficult for an outsider to penetratebecause of its cultural complexity. Certainly there is a fair amount ofsurvey data on Jews in Western Europe, collected on a country-by-country basis by agencies of the Jewish communities themselves, largelyfor the purposes of rational community planning (for example, for theprovision of community welfare services). But even a single demographicsurvey of Jews, using a single analytic framework and a single set ofassumptions, has never been conducted transnationally at the pan-Euro-pean level, let alone anything more abstract or scholarly such as a com-parative treatment of ethnic, religious, or broader cultural issues - or, forthat matter, sensitive fieldwork studies that would offer explanations ofclaimed attitudes and behaviour recorded in such surveys. Jewish com-munities have historically been organized on a highly local basis: byvillage or city or, at most, by country; transnational European frame-works for community action barely exist.4 The very concept, in otherwords, of Jews as a single control group is not established as an empiri-cal reality in Jewish social organization or native Jewish categories.
The idea that Jews are a single people possessing a single, or at leastunited history assuredly has great power at the level of theology or politi-cal ideology; but, in practice, the overwhelming majority of EuropeanJews today also function as citizens of the respective countries in whichthey live. To put the point more strongly but no less accurately, they areonly partially Jewish in the sense that their cultural identities as French-men, Italians, and so on operate alongside, if not in competition with,their identities as Jews. They may belong to a synagogue or other com-munity organization; but most of the time they go shopping for the samelocal food and watch the same television programmes as their non-Jewishneighbours and fellow-citizens. It means that the assumption that Jewsform a single, transnational collectivity (whether in Europe or world-wide) needs careful empirical, ethnographic qualification. Such anassumption is not to be dismissed out of hand, for that would in its ownway distort other sets of realities; but it does need to be set in context.
It is issues such as these which render the study of Jews operationallyand methodologically difficult but at the same time worthy of attentionfrom the perspective of ethnic and religious identity. The purpose of thisarticle therefore is to offer some comments on how these two classictypes of identity relate to each other as far as Jews are concerned - orwhat light, if any, the Jewish material can throw on the nature of the twoand their interrelation. If Jews possess a single 'religion' (however this isto be defined), do they simultaneously form a series of disparate ethnicminority groups in a variety of countries (as outlined above)? The ques-tion is by no means a new one; however, the solutions to it, and theirrespective implications, are not at all straightforward. For example, ifJews are an ethnic group, then they should, both analytically and ethno-graphically, be comparable to other ethnic groups.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
260 Jonathan Webber
This, indeed, was the position adopted by Herbert Gans in an articlepublished in this journal in 1979, where he argued that Jews and Catholicethnics in the United States could be taken together, as if they were thesame kinds of groups. In a more recent article published in this journal,however, Gans (1994) withdrew from his earlier position, apologizing ina footnote (p. 590, n. 3) for the influence of Robert Park and the Chicagoschool of sociology (which, in the name of a field of study entitled 'Raceand Ethnicity', reported on Jews together with other European immi-grants) for having led him to such a mistaken conclusion. Instead, Gansnow defined Jews as 'a religious group with ethnic secular characteristics'and hence worthy of the analytic label 'religio-ethnic group', in contrastto Catholic ethnics and others, which he proposed to call 'ethno-religiousgroups'. Quite apart from the question of whether terminological solu-tions of this kind actually help the analysis forward beyond matters ofmere taxonomy, the emphasis placed by Gans on the religious componentof Jewish identity and social behaviour does assert the view, certainlyheld by most contemporary Jewish scholars, that in practice it is the uni-fying features of Jewish culture (some would prefer today to call it sharedJewish destiny rather than religion as such) which should be the starting-point of analysis and not - as argued above - the infinitely large set ofdifferent ethnic histories which characterize the experience of Jews in thedifferent countries and societies in which they have lived.
The former position is certainly tenable, and in fact has received a con-siderable degree of ethnographic actuality over the past hundred yearsunder the influence in the Jewish world of Zionist ideology which stressesthe intrinsic if not indissoluble bonds which link diaspora Jewish com-munities together, thereby rendering its members equally eligible forIsraeli citizenship in the national homeland. But whether such a quasi-mystical, mythological or essentialist view of worldwide Jewish bondsalso renders the idea of local Jewish ethnicity meaningless, irrelevant, orat the very least merely secondary (Gans's 'with ethnic secular charac-teristics'), is from an ethnographic point of view no longer the issue. AsGans correctly notes (1994, p. 584), concern over the long-term effects ofintermarriage and of declining community affiliation rates have made thedebate over the primacy of religion or ethnicity somewhat sterile nowa-days: instead, public Jewish community concern is fixed on the questionof survival. Traditional Jewish religion has substantially disintegratedinto an eclectic and structurally incoherent 'symbolic religiosity'; it hasbecome a 'civil religion', the main significance of which seems to be forthe functional purpose of enhancing group survival.5
Note the slippage in and out of analytic categories on the one hand,and categories derived from the ethnography, on the other. Some ofGans's material, such as the evidence he brings for the notion of 'sym-bolic religiosity', hovers between the two - indeed, he laments theabsence of anthropological studies that would offer appropriate insight
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 261
into the motives and state of mind of the performers of decontextualizedsnippets of traditional Jewish ritual practices; and in fact he chastiseshimself for not having broached the distinction between ethnicity andreligion when doing his own fieldwork back in the 1950s - these conceptsof identity were simply not in use in those days. In other words, we donot really know from this ethnography much about the status of this dis-tinction. Educated Jews today are perfectly capable of using these termsabout themselves merely because they have entered ordinary daily dis-course, in the newspapers or on the television; they may be strugglingwith these terms (which I think is more typical of the ethnography), orthey may also have abandoned them, on other grounds. But would suchethnographic usages necessarily be pertinent to the analysis? Where doesone draw the line here between insider and outsider categories, and whatare the criteria that would constitute the rules of evidence here? In prac-tice, the categories by which Jewish society is conventionally describeddraw simultaneously on insider and outsider categories, without anynecessary structural coherence.
'Assimilation', for example, was once a technical term used by a par-ticular school of sociology; today, though the term for many anthropolo-gists seems crude and out of date, it is a perfectly normal and acceptedform of speech used by Jews about each other. It forms part of the nativeapparatus of making sense of what happened to the Jewish world inEurope over the past two hundred years; it is in this sense a folk categoryderiving from scientific discourse that explains that the process of thepolitical emancipation of the Jews, beginning with the French Revol-ution, entailed a readjustment of their cultural values and patterns ofbehaviour and belief to the norms of majority society. Now whether thisis historiographically the only way of presenting the process - asopposed, for example, to an analysis that might put the emphasis on arestructuring of Jewish society and culture to suit the new circumstances(as I would prefer to suggest), rather than stressing a straight set of bor-rowings or other unidirectional cultural influences - is not the point. It isa powerful explanatory model which appears to account for a substantialrange of the relevant social facts. The point is that an 'assimilationist' viewof recent Jewish history, a view often disseminated by Jewish scholarsthemselves (such as Gans, who in following the idea through even refersto 'host culture', a phrase in fact often encountered in the literature),deals directly with two key characteristics of contemporary Jewishsociety. The first of these is that the overwhelming majority of Jews incontemporary Europe have for several generations now had no desire tothink of themselves, or be thought of, as unequivocally 'other'. On thecontrary, it was very common throughout Europe in the nineteenthcentury, and indeed down to World War II, for Jews to style themselvesas 'Germans of the Jewish faith', 'Hungarians of the Mosaic religion' (andso on). These were new Jewish self-definitions, based on the desire to
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
262 Jonathan Webber
stress total loyalty to the nation-states which had offered them politicaland civic equality; serving in the national army for example - even beingawarded medals for military bravery - became new Jewish virtues thatbrought honour and prestige within the Jewish community, just becauseit offered evidence (so it was believed) for social acceptance within thewider 'host' society.
But, secondly, the process did not work consistently, neither acrossEurope in national terms nor within the Jewish world. 'Assimilation'deals directly with these inconsistencies. For over the past hundred yearsthere were substantial Jewish migrations within Europe, largely fromEastern Europe (the principal centre of Jewish settlement in earlymodern times) to Western Europe; and the break-up of the Tsarist andAustro-Hungarian Empires after World War I, followed by the establish-ment of a series of successor states in Central and Eastern Europe, pre-sented quite new circumstances for their Jewish populations. In the main,although Jews had inhabited Eastern Europe for many centuries, theywere estranged from a national Polish culture; they did not speakLithuanian or have any experience in their cultural repertoire of knowinghow to deal with living in a sovereign, independent Latvia; in any case,they had, if anything, usually sided themselves culturally, politically, andeconomically with the metropolitan imperial power that had existed forcenturies. Hence the unusual ferocity of anti-Semitism in many of thesesuccessor states in the twenty years that separated the two world wars:the Jews had been culturally taken by surprise when the empires col-lapsed. They had had no time to 'assimilate', to become loyal Polish citi-zens - or, if they emigrated to Paris or Amsterdam, to be treated asnatives of their newly adopted countries.
'Assimilation', then, contains the remarkable unevenness of the Jewishcultural experience of the twentieth century - an unevenness that existsdespite repeated attempts by Jewish elites, both secular and religious, toestablish consensual values. It implies the process, at different speeds indifferent countries, of the Jewish adjustment of dress, food, architecture,vernacular language - even liturgical music - to a believed pattern ofacceptability within majority society, that is, in the general pursuit of theredefinition of Jewish social otherness. This reworking of traditionalJewish culture from the inside implies a simultaneity of contradictorygoals: retaining group identity while also finding ways of allowing it todisappear. The culture of assimilated Jews is thus very complicated andfull of new inconsistencies, based on selective rearrangements of tra-ditional forms of behaviour.
The absence of consensus means that some Jews are more assimilatedthan others (in nineteenth-century Germany, conversion to Christianitywas not uncommon): some Jews attend synagogue only once a week,others only once or twice a year. But it is not merely a question of'more'or 'less' assimilated, as if there were some sort of sliding scale operative
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 263
here. Some Jews may be assimilated in the sense that they have aban-doned religious practice altogether, but they may at the same time bequite unassimilated in the sense that they have retained an abiding inter-est in historical, political, or literary Jewish matters ('secular Judaism', asthis is sometimes called). And then there are large differences amongJews about how to operationalize their own particular attitude towardsassimilation when it comes to the precise application of the details(whether or not to wear a skull-cap in public, for example, or the reten-tion of traditional Jewish foodways in the home); they have, as it were, afolk notion of context - when to assert or admit to their Jewishness andwhen not to do so. There are also quite a few places across WesternEurope where one can find small but well-defined pockets of Jews whoremain strictly religious or traditionalist and who claim to be totally unas-similated.
Whether or not strictly orthodox Jews are indeed totally unassimilated,that is, despite their evident traditionalism in such matters as dress andvernacular language, begs the wider and more basic question of thenature of their internal cultural reconstruction, including the inventionof tradition - and in this respect they may not differ analytically fromtheir more modernist coreligionists, as I have alluded to above. Mypurpose here, however, rather than developing a line of inquiry toexamine the fruitfulness or otherwise of the assimilation model, is tofollow through one of its more important implications - and here I returnto the question of terminology.
In generalizing about Jews, whose categories are the most appropri-ate? European Jews possess a complex recent history which underliespresent-day realities, and finding a suitable reference-point is not at allself-evident. For example, the existence of strictly orthodox Jews, oftentreated as quaint, photogenic exemplars of an ethnically distinctiveculture so beloved of folklorists and certain producers of television docu-mentaries, cannot be allowed to provide on its own the justification of anemphasis on otherness. This would misread the ethnography: there istoday no cultural uniformity among Jews which would specify preciselythe application of a sense of Jewish otherness in relation to the particu-lar majority societies in Europe where Jews live. Strictly orthodox Jewscertainly do not function as an undisputed cultural role model for thebroader Jewish masses, who see the former's totalizing Jewish discourseas out of date if not irrelevant to them. Assimilated Jews, by definition,have other cultural interests and other identities in addition to theirJewish interests and their Jewish identities. They do not see their inheri-tance of the totality of Jewish culture and tradition as the single mostimportant social fact about themselves: their identity as Jews is in effectpartially submerged (if not indeed repressed), according to context. Howthen to specify those other categories and analytic strategies which arenevertheless sufficiently finely tuned to capture whatever it is that
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
264 Jonathan Webber
characterizes their residual notions of Jewish cultural distinctivenesswithout at the same time falling into the trap of exaggerating Jewish cul-tural exoticism? In particular, what can be said about the twin categoriesof 'ethnicity' and 'religion'? How do they fit the Jewish case?
The drift from 'religion' to 'ethnicity'
In a Jewish perspective, 'ethnicity' and 'religion' are both categories thatderive from the outside. Like the term 'assimilation', they have, however,come to develop their own dynamic on the inside of Jewish society -although it needs to be kept in mind that even this distinction betweeninside and outside may be somewhat tendentious, given the fact that mostJews, by virtue of their relationship of assimilation with majority society,are capable of being simultaneously both insiders and outsiders to theirown Jewishness.
'Ethnicity' and 'religion' came to the European Jewish world in specificsociocultural contexts. In France, for example, Jews at the time of theRevolution two hundred years ago for the first time in Europe becamecitizens of the state as individuals, not as members of a collectivity; thatis to say, the French revolutionary notion of 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity'meant that there was to be no Jewish corporate group that functioned atstate level. French Jews were to be Frenchmen in all respects; their col-lective identity as Jews was redefined by the state as dealing exclusivelywith matters of religion. Synagogues were permitted, on the grounds thatwhat was practised inside them constituted essentially private matters offaith. Thus, what now defined Jewish cultural distinctiveness was called,and indeed was understood as, a 'religion'. As later developed in Englandand other European countries, this use of the term 'religion' was in effecta residual cultural category used by the state to define out what in lawbecame treated as a strictly private matter for the individual. From thepoint of view of the state, religion became so to speak a private hobby,like gardening; in every other respect, French Jews were to be thought ofas partaking in the same rights and duties as any other Frenchman. Froma Jewish point of view, Jews could indeed think of themselves as identi-cal to all other citizens, except for their 'religion' - hence the notion of'Hungarians of the Mosaic faith'. On the other hand, there could now beno Jewish 'community' in the same sense as it was when its existence waspresupposed, if not imposed, by the state: technically at least, member-ship was henceforth entirely voluntary. The effects of this development,which, having begun in France, was then introduced (albeit with varyinglegal arrangements) into Germany and then other countries across thecontinent, have been profound.
A voluntaristic Jewish religion has meant a considerable readjustmentand restructuring within the Jewish world. Jews became free to opt outaltogether, to cut down substantially their ritual practices, or, even if they
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 265
did decide to retain some form of Jewish identity, to remain unaffiliatedto a synagogue or other Jewish organization. All of these forms becamevery common. Intermarriage with non-Jews increased dramatically,leaving the children of such marriages either uncertain about their iden-tity or else compelled to regard themselves as only partly Jewish.6 Defin-ing Jewish identity on the basis of a single criterion henceforth becamevirtually impossible - and, as indicated above, membership of the Jewishpopulation in a given city or country became exceedingly difficult toquantify in demographic terms, particularly because of the very largenumbers of Jews known not to be affiliated (that is, in today's terms, notto be paying a membership subscription to a synagogue or other Jewishorganization). In more recent times, with the steady embourgeoisementof West European Jews, voluntaristic Jewish religion has meant anincreased concentration of religious activities in the sphere of leisure-time and the concomitant professionalization of ritual and educationalspecialists such as rabbi, cantor, youth leader, or undertaker - that is,people who wish to be paid (and who would therefore need to display anappropriate qualification) if they are to devote their working time tomanaging ritual or educational activities.
Meanwhile the Jewish religion itself split into a variety of competingfactions - Orthodoxy and Reform, to name the two main denominations- each with its own sets of institutions, rabbinates, theologies, and othersources of power and authority. Voluntarism, in short, has entailed a com-plete revision of the structure of Jewish society, starting with the steadydecline and ultimate collapse of the power of the traditional rabbinateand the rise of quite new focuses for the expression of Jewish religiouslife. But all this could hardly have been predicted at the time of theFrench Revolution. On the contrary, the Jewish minority in France in theearly and mid-nineteenth century was able for the first time to defineitself in terms of a religious affiliation that was (at least ostensibly)entirely non-ethnic and non-national in character. It was thought of bymany Jews, even Orthodox Jews, as a kind of Messianic paradise: oneFrench Chief Rabbi of the period is quoted with the remark, 'it seemedas though the era predicted by the prophets of Israel had finally begun'(see Schnapper 1994, p. 172).
Even given our historical hindsight, the Chief Rabbi can perhaps beforgiven for failing to see what a voluntarist Jewish religion would yieldin the long term. The Jews became well established in France: despite theanti-Semitic campaigns of the 1880s, the Dreyfus Affair did eventuallyend with Dreyfus himself being proved innocent; and attacks on Jewsfrom the extreme right did not prevent Leon Blum becoming prime min-ister in 1936. But where the turning-point came, a turning-point thatmarked the end of Jewish belief in the magical nature of their destiny inFrance, was during the period of the Holocaust. The Vichy regimeenacted an edict in 1940 that excluded Jews from a variety of social
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
266 Jonathan Webber
positions: for the first time in 150 years Jews in France were declared tobe a legal collectivity in the eyes of the state, and as members of this col-lectivity ceased to have equality before the law. It was this step thatenabled their subsequent deportation and murder.
It does have to be said that the collective Jewish sense of betrayal inmany countries during the Holocaust (Denmark and Bulgaria being twonotable exceptions) has contributed, at least retrospectively, to the his-torical failure of assimilation as a Jewish social ideal; it put into questionthe whole viability of modern Jewish hopes and expectations concerningthe very basis of Jewish existence in European society and the nature ofthe relationship between the European nation-state and its Jewish popu-lation. As far as France is concerned, wider trends in French politicalculture after the war in any case came to coincide with the relief of Jewishpost-Holocaust anxieties: Jews slowly began to develop the institutionssuitable for self-expression as a recognized ethnic community within thestate, that is, a public identity additional to that of Frenchness. The trendover the past fifty years has unmistakably been one towards the buildingup of Jewish community organizations on American lines; indeed, it wasan American Jewish philanthropic institution (the American Jewish JointDistribution Committee) which originally took on the responsibility ofrebuilding French Jewish life from wartime ruin.
The trauma of the French Jewish experience in terms of the shock offailed ideals has no direct parallel elsewhere in Europe, although in manyrespects it should be taken as an extreme case of developments that werealso to be found in other countries. There are, for example, certain simi-larities with the recent history of Jews in Britain. Although, of course,there was nothing in Britain analogous to the public French declarationof human rights as one of the country's founding principles, Jewish iden-tity has also been thought of for some time as a religious identity, andhence a private matter for the individual. Jewish voluntary religion inBritain in the twentieth century was not, however, unlike the French case,fettered by any constraints limiting its scope in law that would interferewith an organic development towards a sense of community on lines thatwould today be called ethnic. As long ago as the 1950s, the social anthro-pologist Maurice Freedman, writing about the Jews of Britain, noted thecollapse of the synagogue and talmudic seminary as the principal publicdomains of Jewish life, in favour of a whole host of Jewish sporting, recre-ational, philanthropic, political and cultural associations and privatesocieties, the principal Jewish raison d'etre of which was the creation ofa social framework for the exclusive recruitment of Jews rather than thepursuit of specifically Jewish aims or cultural goals (as traditionallydefined).7 This, it would seem, provided the institutional basis for thesteady drift over the following decades into Jewish self-definition as anethnic group: it implies, at least in the Jewish case, the absence of a defi-nite need to treat religion as the central feature of group activity.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 267
As far as synagogues are concerned, these buildings today often func-tion as community centres rather than as structures consecrated solelyfor divine worship or talmudic study.8 Indeed, a recent report commis-sioned for a group of Orthodox synagogues in London, concerned aboutfalling membership and lack of use, seriously considered among otherthings the possibility of their part-time use during weekdays as fitnesscentres for Jewish businessmen during their lunch-hours.9 The drift awayfrom religion as definitionally central is unmistakable. It should beemphasized, however, that 'ethnic' does not necessarily mean 'secular',but rather that there would appear to be no a priori requirement for areligious component. In recent years the term 'ethnic' has indeed slowlyfound its way into Jewish usage in Britain, but not always without reser-vations. Some strictly orthodox Jews in North London (usually Yiddish-speaking, and thus without much of a feel for linguistic nuances inEnglish) have successfully applied for funding from their local boroughto support their independent schools, on the grounds that they representan ethnic group whose community programmes deserve financial assist-ance. Other, more assimilated, Jews are less sure about this label, feelingthat its use would inevitably commit them to membership of some sortof ethnic underclass in British society.
The French and British examples outlined above may help to show that'religion' and 'ethnicity' function as constructions in the Jewish case, andsomewhat transparently so. Neither term, of course, is biblical. Neitherbelief nor ritual practice, nor even some sort of formal initiation cere-mony, defines membership of the Jewish group, even though all of thesethings can be found within the scope of Jewish tradition. The Bible usesa variety of terms to characterize the collectivity of ancient Israelites,people (Heb. am), nation (goy), or congregation (kahal or edah) beingthe most frequent.10 As expounded in greater detail in the post-biblicalcommentaries of the Talmud, the group's existence before God dependedon an intrinsic relationship between themselves as a descent group, theirTorah (Bible), and their promised land. When the Jews lost their sover-eignty in Palestine at the hands of the Romans in AD 70, one of these ele-ments was lost - although, theologically speaking, their restoration totheir homeland, based on divine promise, remains eternally lurking in thewings - with the consequence that until such a restoration takes placethey are not whole or complete as a people.
Certainly in Zionist ideology the emphasis has been on Jewish peo-plehood (am yisrael, 'the people of Israel'), although given earlyZionism's secular stance towards diaspora Jewish identity, it could hardlyhave been otherwise. Still, Zionist clarity on this point is the exceptionthat confirms the rule: Jewish identity, as seen from the outside (and thusincluding many assimilated Jews also), is difficult to pin down. The Jewsare not a church; but 'religion' seemed to many Frenchmen or English-men at the time as a reasonably satisfactory approximation - and, after
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
268 Jonathan Webber
all, justifiable as such in Christian perspective. 'Religion' and 'ethnicity'thus take their origin as outsider categories, deriving from the politicalculture of the majority society in which Jews live, but that is far from theend of the story. They subsequently became internalized by Jews andthen re-presented (and occasionally instrumentalized) as part of theirown Jewish self-image - even though not all Jews, at a given place andtime, would always consistently agree with these models or what theymean.
On the basis of this Jewish evidence, therefore, one can conclude thatthe relationship between minority ethnic and minority religious cleav-ages does not always exclusively depend on the political culture of themajority society; one also has to take into account the scope availablefor the acceptance and instrumentalization, by the minorities con-cerned, of the models offered by that political culture. This acceptancewill depend on a variety of factors: for example, the variable class com-position and therefore class interests of the members of these minoritygroups, as well as the historical time-lag of their collective group rep-resentations, which are often out of date in relation to the thinkingcurrent in majority society. Time-lag often arises because of the inade-quacy of institutional mechanisms available to minorities to updatetheir self-image in relation to developments in the majority culture or,alternatively, for the simple reason that group dynamics (dealing withterminological inertia, for example) within a minority may move at adifferent speed (usually more slowly) than group dynamics withinmajority society.
Furthermore, minorities may also be influenced, in the construction oftheir self-image, by knowledge of the position of their minority inmajority societies other than their own where their situation may berather different. This kind of knowledge deriving from co-ethnics livingoutside is an important peculiarity of diaspora peoples, particularly thosewho maintain close ties with a national homeland, a category which theJews finally joined fifty years ago. The need for a Jewish nation-state, asargued by the first Zionist ideologues at the end of the last century, restedon a perception of an intrinsically anti-Semitic Europe in which Jews hadno long-term hope to live in peace and security (it should be rememberedthat 90 per cent of the world's Jews in 1860 were to be found in Europe,according to DellaPergola 1994, p. 59). European Jews thus live with theawareness that many Israelis see them as part of a people inhabiting anincurably anti-Semitic environment, and some may well accept this to betrue. It is quite a different picture from one promoted for example by theEuropean Union. But what, indeed, is more typical for Jews as a modelof contemporary Europe: Maastricht or Auschwitz? In practice, manyminority groups, Jews included, hold more than one model in their headsat any one time; some models out of date, some deriving from the inside,and some presented to them from the outside.11
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 269
Lack of fit between standard categories of description and the Jewishcase
Where the argument has brought us, then, is to the question of the inter-nalization by Jews of the ethnicity-religion paradigm, and the degree towhich these have become insider categories. But once again the ethno-graphic evidence is not clear-cut, and one must inevitably conclude thatthese are constructions that do not serve a particularly useful analyticpurpose. Let me very briefly review the issues. Certainly it is possible toargue, using a somewhat crude interpretation of the two terms, that dis-tinctions can be drawn and indeed are drawn by Jews between those Jewswhose daily behaviour and forms of collective consciousness seem pri-marily 'religious' (the ethnography certainly does reveal attitudestowards Jews as constituting a 'faith community', comparable to andfunctioning alongside Catholic or Baha'i faith communities), versus thosesecular Jews who do not claim to practise very much by way of religion,who describe themselves as 'just Jewish', and who claim, in effect, thatJewishness for them is a form of 'ethnic' affiliation - for example, reflect-ing their food preferences or choice of Israel as a holiday destination orthe literary magazines that they read. Hence, of course, the title 'Jews andJudaism' for this article - as if 'Jews' are an ethnic group and 'Judaism' isthe name of their classical religion.
There certainly is some ethnographic justification for charting aninternal Jewish cultural debate between religion and ethnicity as alterna-tive bases for their identity; the best examples relate to the effects of thewidespread popularity in Eastern Europe before the last war of ideolo-gies of Jewish diaspora secularism bound up with a commitment to social-ism or Communism. But these ideologies of Jewish socialism have largelybecome defunct today, partly because of the political failure of the social-ist ideal, notably in its failure to bring about an end to anti-Semitism insocialist countries, partly because of the widespread contrary drift ofmodern European Jews into a bourgeois liberal lifestyle and bourgeoisvalues, but mainly because of the Holocaust, which among other thingsdestroyed the main intellectual centres of secular Jewish life in EasternEurope. Among European Jews today there is comparatively little senseof a fundamental opposition between Jewish religion and Jewish ethnic-ity, that is to say, even despite the evident gap between practising andnon-practising Jews; however, a binary opposition of this kind is muchmore securely institutionalized in Israel, partly because of the structureand history of the political parties in the Israeli democratic system, andit is quite possible that this may come to influence diaspora Jewish life inthe longer term.
But in contemporary Europe such a straightforward binary distinctionis rare and would be too simplistic to propose as a major organizing prin-ciple. 'Jewishness', as the dominant term for 'Judaism' today, subsumes
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
270 Jonathan Webber
both categories, and does so in a non-controversial manner. It extends, infact, over a much broader range of meanings, including cultural, intellec-tual, and political matters, suggesting that 'what it means to be Jewish' (tocite the phrase often used in this context) is far from restricted to'religion' or 'ethnicity' as such but points rather to a much more com-posite approach to Jewish self-definition. If anything, the ideology under-lying 'Jewishness' (such as it is) rests on inclusiveness; today's voluntaryJews are to a great extent self-made cultural bricoleurs (pace HerbertGans's 'symbolic religiosity'). Note also that those Jews in the Londonborough of Hackney, for example, who received funding for their Jewishschools because they claim to be an ethnic group, are precisely the moststrictly religious of Jews; there are, indeed, plenty of examples of con-temporary religious Jewish life that expresses itself nowadays in variouspost-modern forms of ethnic assertiveness.
There is, in short, no direct fit in the Jewish case between ethnicity andsecularism that would make the internalization of the paradigm of an eth-nicity-religion cleavage relevant to the structuring of contemporaryJewish society, which is largely preoccupied with rather different issues.Do not, therefore, be misled by the title of this article: the terms 'Jews'and 'Judaism' are constructions albeit in different ways. The term 'Jew' isfar from being a fixed identity (there are many competing definitions ofgroup membership and of 'who is a Jew');12 and 'Judaism' as a closedsystem or fixed theological entity, analytically comparable at this level,say, to Christianity or Buddhism is a relatively recent invention (pro-duced mainly for the benefit of outsiders convinced that Judaism is areligion) that is far from being universally accepted. It is not true there-fore to say that Jew is to Judaism what ethnicity is to religion.
However, when religious ideals come to reinforce a sense of ethnicallegiance, an especially fervent and intense degree of commitment doestend to arise among group members. The behaviour of the Israeli GushEmunim, the religious settlers on the West Bank whose attitude to set-tling the biblical land of Israel is often called 'fundamentalist', would bea classic example. But Jewish militancy in the diaspora communities ofcontemporary Europe is quite differently structured; it does not dependon religious ideals coinciding with or reinforcing ethnic allegiances. Onthe contrary, it is usually explicitly «o«-religious and to a large extent canbe taken as a secularist substitute for religious ideals (traditionallydefined), not at all the direct expression of them. Jews who join organiz-ations to fight anti-Semitism or who campaigned for such causes as therelease of the Jews from the Soviet Union, or the adoption of pro-Israelpolicies by the European governments of which they are citizens, are ifanything to be taken as expressive of a minority Jewish ethnicity ratherthan of a specifically religious content of their Jewishness.13 EuropeanJews do possess their own religious militants, who as strictly orthodoxJews indeed try to encourage a more fervent, less internally inconsistent
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 271
pattern of religious commitment amongst assimilated Jews - but as I haveindicated, it is not only through religion as such that such commitmentcan be strengthened. Zionism, as a nationalist redefinition of Jewish iden-tity based on an attachment to an ancestral homeland, has offered a farmore convincing way of doing this for most European Jews, whether ornot they have actually emigrated to Israel.
There is even one further input to the obsolescence of ethnicity andreligion as basic categories of Jewish self-description or action that oughtto be mentioned. Recent developments in Europe since the fall of theBerlin Wall and the Maastricht and other recent agreements underpin-ning a much more assertive and proactive European Union may welltogether encourage a new sociopolitical outlook that will eventuallyrender obsolete the narrowness of ethnicity and religion as usefulworking categories - certainly as far as Jews are concerned. Seen fromJewish perspective, these two categories may in any case not be broadenough to encompass the composite character of contemporary Euro-pean Jewish identities; but in the past three or four years the thinking hasgone much further still.
Some of the younger intellectuals and bureaucrats associated withEuropean Jewish issues see quite a new world opening up: the present-day situation of a totally open, democratic and pluralist Europe, stretch-ing from Lisbon to Moscow, offers an entirely fresh paradigm and freshpossibilities completely unknown until half a generation ago. Jewishrelations with the outside are as never before in history: there is a newpublic authenticity granted to Jewish art, literature, film, and music, forexample, through exhibitions and cultural festivals; the Vatican has finallyrecognized the state of Israel and is energetically pursuing the insights ofVatican II in totally restructuring its formerly hostile theological positiontowards Jews; Europeans have begun to understand the trauma of theHolocaust; peace seems finally to be coming to the Middle East. The oldEuropean Jewish dilemma, then, of having to choose some cultural posi-tion between assimilation (including patriotism for their country) at oneend, and indifference to majority culture at the other, is - potentially, atleast - quite out of date; instead, so it is argued, the new sense of agrowing European identity enables Jews to identify with the emergentpluralism manifesting itself across the continent. In short, given that iden-tities today are plastic and flexible, and that the state, for its part, is givingup many of its former habits in labelling its populations with fixed iden-tities, Jews can now learn how to belong in quite new ways.14
It may well be, for the variety of reasons suggested above, that there isa fundamental asymmetry of the Jewish case vis-a-vis the categories ofethnicity and religion as normally understood, regardless of how out-moded they might become more generally in a new Europe of the future.But I am reluctant to leave the matter there. I would like to make onefinal point, which might perhaps offer some methodological scope for
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
272 Jonathan Webber
comparing Jews with other cases; this concerns the question of historicalconsciousness, which I think deserves closer analytic attention.
Towards a reconciliation: the role of historical consciousness
It probably goes without saying that the mode in which people constructtheir past says a great deal about their self-image in the present and theirexpectations for the future. References to authenticity, for example, isone commonly used technique whereby justification for action in thepresent often embodies a reading of the past, a reading which of courseis highly selective and obscures the fact that much of the past has beenlargely forgotten. Debates among European Jews today over the rele-vance of internalized outsider models of their identity - for example, theapplicability or otherwise of their status as an ethnic group, or whetherindeed a new epistemological paradigm has been emerging since 1989 -in practice take the form of debates over what to do with the inheritedpast in general.
What it is that all segments of today's Jewish world have in common isthe internal cultural debates they engage in over the relevance of his-torical definitions. For example, Jews who have given up the biblical pro-hibition on eating pork often assert that this prohibition derived fromconsiderations of hygiene relevant in the ancient Near East and there-fore inapplicable nowadays. Historicizing the culture in this way yieldsthe immediate conclusion that large tracts of traditional Jewish ritualpractice are simply 'out of date', with the corollary that the opportunityfor assimilation can thus present Jews with new opportunities and newchallenges to express a progressive, revolutionary vitality in the recon-struction of their cultural heritage. Another example of such debatesconcerns the role of women: whether the circumstances in which today'sJewish world moves are sufficiently new in relation to what has gonebefore as to constitute the overwhelming imperative to admit women toareas of Jewish life formerly the exclusive preserve of men.15
This sensing of a need for change is an attribute of the collapse of tra-ditional sources of power and authority in the Jewish world. Control ofthe past was a key feature of that power: indeed, the sheer 'weight ofhistory' was often heavy enough as to block any perception of new eventsaltogether, or at least to render them irrelevant in the context of a longerview of the group's identity. Rabbinic Jewish culture, during the twothousand years of diaspora existence, had no room for new events, as any-thing of importance had already taken place (that is, apart from the even-tual in-gathering of the exiles and the arrival of the Messianic age); it wasprecisely the process of learning how to historicize this culture that con-stituted the decisive intellectual step marking Jewish entry into mod-ernity, and, by the same token, provided the historiographic justificationfor a fundamental shift of cultural paradigm.16
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 273
At a popular level, this Jewish sense of a break with the past derives,however, not only from the wider context of modernity and post-mod-ernity but also, of course, from the incontrovertibility of specific recentevents: the establishment of a Jewish state (for the first time in two thou-sand years) and the devastation of the Holocaust. In 1939 European Jewswere about 60 per cent of the world's total Jewish population; today theyhave become reduced and marginalized down to 17 per cent (DellaPer-gola 1994, p. 62). Popular Jewish explanations of the Holocaust tend onthe whole to set the events within a specifically Jewish frame of refer-ence, notably within the history of anti-Semitism; and the claim is rou-tinely made that the immensity and structure of the catastrophe sets itapart, by definition, from other cases of genocide. Such beliefs in theuniqueness of the Holocaust are to some extent justifiable (that is,depending on the criteria that are advanced in support of the idea);nevertheless, there does appear to be another layer of comparative inter-est here that should not be overlooked - after all, every people would inany case see its own history as peculiar to them alone. For the way inwhich the Holocaust is popularly inscribed in today's Jewish historicalconsciousness is not inaccessibly ethnocentric. On the contrary, many ofthe images used are perfectly general, if not universal: a case of ethnic orreligious war that was fundamentally asymmetrical, committed by armedwicked perpetrator against defenceless innocent victim. At this level thesociology of genocide, and the folk memories of the sociology of geno-cide, seem to me one of the most significant elements in understandingnot only today's European Jewish world but also many other cases ofapparently symmetrical ethnic conflict elsewhere in the world. The kindsof histories children learn about at home, the kinds of historical heroesthey learn to identify with, the constant awareness of the pragmatic andemotional need to develop survival strategies - all these are part of whatit is to be a member of a minority group. Even if today's realities mayseem on the surface to be calm and untroubled, the historical conscious-ness of a time when things were rather different may still be nurtured infolk tales, stories told to children, and other monuments dedicated to thememory of more dangerous days and nights.
This is a good example, I think, of the scope for the cognitive disso-nance that may be engendered more generally by historical conscious-ness and the concomitant perception that certain features of socialorganization or patterns of behaviour (such as out-of-date rituals or theexclusion of women), once they are set within a historicized frameworkof explanation, are by definition not in touch with contemporary reali-ties. People do not always know what to do with memories of their pastwhich seem to be dysfunctional: they survive for a while, sometimes fora very long while, as a sort of critical commentary to the present, a criti-cal counter-argument to it. This is true not only of memories of a mass-acre or even genocide, but also of founding myths in a much wider sense.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
274 Jonathan Webber
European Jews, in considering the meaning and purpose of their Jewishidentity today, may seem to be arguing pragmatically about whetherMaastricht or Auschwitz provides a more accurate European represen-tation of their short-term future in the continent; but at another levelwhat also lies behind such discussions is a deeper preoccupation with bib-lically derived ideas about the meaning and purpose of Jewish identity -nothing at all to do, in other words, with the stability of the EuropeanUnion or the reliability of public declarations of human rights.
Hidden behind the surface realities lies a field of historical conscious-ness which in many ways acts to direct how a minority group sees itselfvis-a-vis the outer world. This is especially clear in the Jewish case, where,given the particular attitude to history within diaspora culture, the scopeoffered by historicization marked the emergence of a radical internal re-evaluation of the Jewish cultural personality. But it is in terms of externalrelations that the Jewish experience is of substantive comparative inter-est. As is well known from many minority groups, memories of massacreseem to survive indefinitely among the victim population, certainly wellbeyond what one might have thought to be their natural span of historicalrelevance; these memories feed into founding myths or myths of originto sustain a sense of shared destiny underlying minority group identity.The catastrophe of the Holocaust undermined assimilationist Jewishhopes and expectations regarding the relationship between the state andits Jewish population; particularly in countries that experienced theGerman occupation, these hopes are unlikely to be permanently and fullyrestored. The spectre of the Holocaust will most probably continue toprovide that critical counter-argument which will haunt any generalizedoptimism about the constitutional safeguards supposedly embedded inlabels such as 'ethnicity' or 'religion'.
So where do European minorities go from here? Given the steady con-temporary drift towards the democratization of memory and the record-ing of previously unacknowledged histories (such as women's histories),national narratives in the sense that these have been known for the pastfew generations are likely to be re-examined if not eventually super-seded. A pluralist and democratic Europe, or at least those nations whichidentify themselves with such a Europe, will steadily incorporate the(folk) histories of its minorities, a process which in turn will transform thestandard readings. The Crusades look quite different when seen throughJewish eyes; or, conversely, rulers well disposed towards their minoritieswill emerge into greater prominence. The point is that in the new con-frontation by Europeans with the histories of their minorities it will nolonger be possible - to cite the image used by Diana Pinto (1996, p. 11)- for minorities confidently to be expected to say nos ancetres les Gaulois,be stirred by Wagner's evocations of the great Teutonic myths, or other-wise identify themselves with the national myths, heroes, battles, andgreat historical turning-points of their respective nation-states in the
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 275
same manner as has gone before, when they were deemed to have beenparticipants in the national epic from the very start.17
In short, if the control of history has indeed shifted away from its tra-ditional power-base, what happened internally in the Jewish world maybe helpful as an analytic paradigm for other developments cross-cultur-ally. It may also not be too much of an exaggeration to claim that one ofthe long-term effects of the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe has been toencourage a greater public concern for the cultural well-being and self-confidence of minority groups generally. The key here would seem to restin the acknowledgement of histories previously relegated as marginal towider public interests, if indeed articulated publicly at all. The signifi-cance of these trends should not be underestimated. For many Jews, asindeed for many other Europeans today, history has become a newreligion, the basis for a critical and rational re-evaluation of theirinherited identity. This kind of 'objective' history is steadily becoming thedominant European mode for dealing with the past, replacing the closedsets of meanings and certainties supplied from the past as embodied inpre-modern ritual, belief and ceremonial; or, to put it more strongly,today's history does not supply that sort of meaning - it has simplyreplaced it. Like all social groups, Jews are constantly redefining them-selves - which today means also reformulating the main features of theirhistorical consciousness. It may therefore be at this level that the appar-ent asymmetry of the Jewish world with regard to ethnicity and religion,compared with that of other minority groups to these categories, canperhaps fruitfully be analysed and reconciled.
Acknowledgement
The paper on which this article is based was first presented at a confer-ence at the London School of Economics in May 1995 on the theme'Ethnic minorities and religion'.
Notes
1. For these and other figures, based on data collected in 1990, see DellaPergoIa 1994,pp. 64-5. However, it should be noted that Jewish population figures are misleading andcannot be relied upon in any absolute or literal sense: defining membership of the Jewishcollectivity is not at all a self-evident matter, let alone quantifying it.2. Ibid., pp. 66-9. Even this generalization, however, needs qualification: a notable
exception is Germany, which despite being the leading economic power on the continenthas a relatively small Jewish population (40,000 in 1990). The reason is clearly historical,that is, Holocaust-related, indicating that (as DellaPergoIa notes), the chief single factorcapable of explaining all these demographic results - a factor stronger than any other geo-graphical, political, or socio-economic criterion - is the intensity of the Holocaust in eachcountry (ibid., p. 61). But even here the Jews of present-day Germany do not quite fit thepattern: Germany is the only country in Europe today whose Jewish population is growingsubstantially in size. This is because of emigration from the former Soviet Union: 80,000
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
276 Jonathan Webber
visas to Germany have been issued since 1991, although it is unknown how many of theseJews will actually take them up, rather than choose to live in Israel or the USA, or indeedchoose not to emigrate at all.The subject is not often publicly discussed in the Jewish world;on the contrary, it is very common for Jews outside Germany to express the view that theyfind it inappropriate, if not distasteful, that Jews wish to live in that country at all, with theresult that the issue has become something of a taboo for ordinary Jews elsewhere (but forrecent scholarly studies on Jewish life in present-day Germany, see Cohn 1994; Lappin 1994;Gilman 1995).3. The Encyclopedia Judaica (1972) has excellent entries on all European countries;
for a convenient and authoritative handbook see Lerman 1989. The interested reader mayalso be recommended to consult the individual papers in Webber 1994, a work surveyingmuch of the material described in the present article, which is based also on numerous field-work visits to Jewish communities across Europe over the past ten years.4. Pan-European Jewish interest-groups, as forums for encounter and dialogue, have
indeed existed for several decades, such as the Conference of European Rabbis or the Euro-pean Union of Jewish Students. It is more than likely, however, that broader-based com-munity action will evolve in the coming years as a function of the wider impact of theEuropean Union. The European Council of Jewish Communities, or the European JewishCongress, hitherto functioning merely as umbrella organizations, might be expected to fulfilsuch a role, alongside the more informal transnational Jewish networks maintained by par-ticular interest-groups.5. Not all scholars would agree with this pessimistic view ('lachrymose', as it is con-
ventionally termed by Jewish historians in other contexts), regarding the incoherence ofsymbolic Jewish religiosity; for the contrary opinion of one British social anthropologist,see Epstein 1992. But a number of studies have appeared in recent years asserting in oneform or another that diaspora Jewish society is heading for cultural extinction, for thereasons mentioned (for a recent such view see Wasserstein 1996). Exception is routinelymade, however, for the small number of strictly orthodox Jews (conventionally estimatednowadays at 10 to 15 per cent of the total), whose survival is not questioned by such authors.Their intermarriage rates are negligible and their birth rates very high, as are their com-munity affiliation rates. Despite their awareness of certain other difficulties, notably econ-omic issues, they are not, therefore, concerned about the basic issue of survival as such(which is guaranteed theologically, in any case). For example, the numbers of studentsenrolled in talmudic seminaries have now, it is commonly asserted, climbed back to wherethey were before the Holocaust. It may thus be the case that study of these Jews requiresquite different methodological strategies. Interestingly enough, Gans specifically excludesthem from his taxonomy, stating (Gans 1994, p. 590, n. 4) that they are neither 'religio-ethnic' nor 'ethno-religious', but that 'yet another term is needed' (although he does notprovide one). This article similarly does not attempt to include strictly orthodox Jews intothe analysis, except where stated (they are referred to in the text below); for a classic studyof one such community in Belgium, see Gutwirth 1970.6. Jewish identity, according to Jewish law, is defined on the basis of descent from the
mother (or alternatively through conversion by a competent rabbinic authority). Jewish lawdoes not recognize partial Jewishness: in the case of a mixed marriage, if the mother isJewish the children are Jewish, but if the father is Jewish the children are not Jewish. Jewswith a non-Jewish father may in practice, however, find themselves at a severe social dis-advantage within a traditionally Orthodox environment.7. Freedman 1955, p. 208. Similar observations were being made about Jews in the
United States in the 1950s by the sociologist Marshall Sklare (Sklare 1972).8. They are often even called community centres (in Germany, for example, it is quite
usual to find the term Gemeindehaus in this context). Interestingly, modern purpose-builtcommunity centres are more commonly constructed today than purpose-built synagoguesas such. They will usually include provision for a synagogue or prayer-room somewhere onthe premises, which will predictably also house classrooms for Sunday-school teaching as
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 277
well as a library and a kitchen and hall for community events; architecturally speaking, thesynagogue in such cases often disappears into a more broadly based concept of a communitybuilding or private clubhouse. In the nineteenth century (a period of intense synagogue con-struction all over Europe), European synagogues tended to be modelled on the style of(Protestant) churches, with a single nave and a gallery for women; they did not usually havemany additional facilities as would be demanded from a community centre nowadays.9. Personal communication from the secretary of the review body. The idea did not,
however, become one of the report's formal recommendations; for the full text see Kalms1992.10. Goy meaning Gentile (as opposed to the Israelite nation) derives from Yiddishusage, although in certain contexts biblical Hebrew does allow the word to refer also toother nations.11. An interesting terminological example is the term 'community', which normallyspeaking would imply bounded social organization and some sort of consensual values.Down to the end of the Jewish Middle Ages (which in practice means the nineteenthcentury in most European countries), local Jewish life in a city or a village was organizedaround a kahal, or 'congregation', with a single rabbinic authority. The modern term 'com-munity', which would fit this designation perfectly adequately, survived the disintegrationof the kahal, and came to be used in ordinary Jewish speech to refer not only to membersof a single synagogue (say, in a London suburb) but also to any body of Jews locally defined(such as 'the Jewish community of Northwest London') as well as those denominationallybut not necessarily locally defined (such as 'the community of Reform Jews in the UK').The idea is that Jews exist in 'communities', as if they all belong to some local synagogue.But the term 'community', technically speaking, does not fit well with such varied usages;it is something of a hollow category (or Jewish political rhetoric), given the huge numbersof unaffiliated Jews whose relationship with an established 'community' is by definition oneof non-belonging. In that sense it is an example of terminological inertia: there is no self-evident alternative. But it has manifestly taken on a new lease of life from the 'community'model now so often proclaimed in multicultural Britain: all minorities consist of communi-ties, and all are notionally members of such communities.
12. There are a number of reasons why a plurality of new definitions have arisen inrecent decades (contra note 6 above). Perhaps the most emotionally compelling of thesederived from the Nazi practice of defining a person as Jewish (and therefore subject toarrest and murder) who was not in fact Jewish according to Orthodox rabbinic criteria andwho may not have regarded himself or herself as Jewish at all (someone who had a Jewishfather but not a Jewish mother, to take the simplest of such cases). Many such people, ifthey survived the war, had suffered as Jews and may therefore have wished to be acceptedas Jews by other Jews. Non-Orthodox rabbinates looked favourably on the point and somehave formally accepted Jewish identity as transmissible patrilineally. The state of Israel'sLaw of Return (granting automatic citizenship to diaspora Jews) also took a broad view,enacting that individual Jews had the right to immigrate to the country accompanied bytheir spouse, children and grandchildren. If the female spouse in such cases is not Jewish,then neither are her children or grandchildren (in Orthodox Jewish law), but manyextended households of this kind have in fact immigrated to Israel, especially from theformer Soviet Union since 1991. This article makes no attempt to cover what is in fact anextremely complicated sociology of classificatory Jews (including newly rediscovered Jews)in both Israel and the former Soviet Union; for a useful survey see Chlenov 1994. The mainpoint, however, is that the category 'Jew' has in ethnographic terms been substantiallyextended in recent times - broadly speaking, to include all those who declare themselvesto be Jewish, on whatever grounds (under Jewish law, under Soviet law, under Israeli law,or else for emotional, intellectual, or economic reasons that they wish to identify themselveswith the Jewish collective destiny). It should be added, of course, that uncertainties and dis-putes, as a consequence of such conflicts of laws, have become a regular occurrence inordinary daily life. For a recent study of intermarried couples in Britain, see Romain 1996.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
278 Jonathan Webber
13. On this kind of public Jewish militancy in Europe (curiously, best known about inFrance), see Schnapper (1983), who has set out the subject in the context of other types ofJewish identity; Finkielkraut (1994) is also worth consulting as a personal memoir devotedsubstantially to the same theme.14. For a clear and forthright presentation of this vision, see Pinto 1996. 'Such a quali-tative change', she writes (p. 5),'should encourage Jews across the continent to affirm theirEuropean identity all the more enthusiastically as the best guarantor of their collectiverights inside the new democratic and pluralist space. Only at a European level can Jews andall other groups combat the forces of intolerance. They should be defending a Europe thatis variegated and multicoloured: Europe as a kaleidoscope'. Although she does also say thatJews must identify themselves with the countries in which they live (ibid.), there is some-thing here that is more than evocative of the old Jewish preference for the metropolitanculture of a plural empire, such as Tsarist Russia or Austria-Hungary, as opposed to a moreunambiguously regional self-identification with majority society; and I am sure that manyJews will indeed turn to Europeanism in the years ahead.15. I have written in greater detail about the status of women in Jewish life in Webber1983.16. For a classic exposition of this subject, see Yerushalmi 1982, chs 2 and 4.17. Assimilated Jews, of course, embraced all these things, as she says. Now Jews are'among the founders of the post-1989 reconstructions of the national pasts [in Europe], eastand west' (Pinto 1996, p. 11). The argument may be drawn a little too sharply, perhaps; butthe contrast is helpful. Norman Solomon makes a similar point - less strongly, by merelyasking the question whether a Welsh Jew telling his children about how the early Britonsresisted the Romans would say 'we resisted' or 'they resisted'. Early British history is notnormally part of Welsh Jewish identity, which has not appropriated the period into its pastas other indigenous groups in Britain have: 'if my ancestors had been Angles or Saxons orVikings I would almost certainly say "we resisted", though Angles and Saxons and Vikingsdid not come until the Romans had left' (Solomon 1994, p. 86).
ReferencesCHLENOV, MIKHAIL A. 1994 'Jewish communities and Jewish identities in the formerSoviet Union', in Jonathan Webber (ed.), Jewish Identities in the New Europe, London:Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, pp. 127-38COHN, MICHAEL 1994 The Jews in Germany, 1945-1993: The Building of a Minority,Westport, CT: PraegerDELLAPERGOLA, SERGIO 1994 'An overview of the demographic trends of EuropeanJewry', in Jonathan Webber (ed.), Jewish Identities in the New Europe, London: LittmanLibrary of Jewish Civilization, pp. 57-73EPSTEIN, A. L. 1992 'Ethos and identity revisited: some aspects of Jewish identity in con-temporary Britain', in Hochschule für Jüdische Studien (ed.), Studien zur jüdischenGeschichte und Soziologie: Festschrift Julius Carlebach, Heidelberg: Carl Winter Univer-sitätsverlag, pp. 17-28FINKIELKRAUT, ALAIN 1994 The Imaginary Jew, Lincoln, NE: University of NebraskaPress [first published in French in 1980]FREEDMAN, MAURICE 1955 'Jews in the society of Britain', in Maurice Freedman (ed.),A Minority in Britain: Social Studies of the Anglo-Jewish Community, London: Vallentine,Mitchell, pp. 201-42GANS, HERBERT J. 1979 'Symbolic ethnicity: the future of ethnic groups and cultures inAmerica', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-20
1994 'Symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity: towards a comparison of ethnic andreligious acculturation', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 577-92GUTWIRTH, JACQUES 1970 Vie juive traditionelle: Ethnologie d'une communauté has-sidique, Paris: Editions de Minuit
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014
Jews and Judaism in contemporary Europe 279
GILMAN, SANDER L. 1995 Jews in Today's German Culture, Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity PressKALMS, STANLEY 1992 A Time for Change: United Synagogue Review, London: StanleyKalms FoundationLAPPIN, ELENA 1994 Jewish Voices, German Words, North Haven, CT: Catbird Press [firstpublished in German]LERMAN, ANTONY (ed.) 1989 The Jewish Communities of the World: A ContemporaryGuide, 4th edn, Basingstoke: Macmillan (in association with the Institute of Jewish Affairs)PINTO, DIANA 1996 A New Jewish Identity for Post-1989 Europe, London: Institute forJewish Policy Research (Policy Paper No. 1)ROMAIN, JONATHAN A. 1996 Till Faith us Do Part: Couples who Fall in Love across theReligious Divide, London: HarperCollinsSCHNAPPER, DOMINIQUE 1983 Jewish Identities in France: An Analysis of Contem-porary French Jewry, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
1994 'Israelites and Juifs: new Jewish identities in France', in Jonathan Webber (ed.),Jewish Identities in the New Europe, London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization,pp. 171-8SKLARE, MARSHALL 1972 Conservative Judaism: An American Religious Movement,New York: Schocken Books [1st edn 1955]SOLOMON, NORMAN, 'Judaism in the New Europe: discovery or invention?', inJonathan Webber (ed.), Jewish Identities in the New Europe, London: Littman Library ofJewish Civilization, pp. 86-98WASSERSTEIN, BERNARD 1996 Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945,London: Hamish HamiltonWEBBER, JONATHAN 1983 'Between law and custom: women's experience of Judaism',in Pat Holden (ed.), Women's Religious Experience, London: Croom Helm, pp. 143-62
(ed.) 1994 Jewish Identities in the New Europe, London: Littman Library of JewishCivilizationYERUSHALMI, YOSEF HAYIM 1982 Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory,Seattle: University of Washington Press
JONATHAN WEBBER is Fellow in Jewish Social Studies at the OxfordCentre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; Hebrew Centre Lecturer in SocialAnthropology, Oxford University; and Research Fellow, WolfsonCollege, Oxford.ADDRESS: Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 45 St Giles',Oxford OX1 3LP, UK.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Fond
ren
Lib
rary
, Ric
e U
nive
rsity
] a
t 16:
43 1
6 N
ovem
ber
2014