This chapter presents Belarus and Ukraine as case studies to examine how postsocialist states have shaped their Holocaust histories to secure the continuing political legitimacy of the ruling elites. The major theme of Belarusian governments since 1995 is that Belarus deserves sovereignty because it is the “partisan republic,” the country that resisted the Nazis ferociously, courageously, making the greatest sacrifices. In Jewish and Israeli literature, Jewish partisans in Belarus are depicted as resisters to the Holocaust and heroes. However, when one examines memoirs and oral testimonies by Jewish partisans one finds many testimonies to the capriciousness of partisan commanders, theft, rapes, desertion, betrayal, drunkenness, corruption, and licentiousness. Accounts such as these, bringing to light antisemitism, ethnic tensions, and arbitrary behavior among the partisans, do not appear in Soviet or post-Soviet Belarusian literature. The chapter then considers the role of national myths and national history in guiding individual and collective behavior.

“We are Jews Again”: Jewish Activism in the Soviet Union. By Yuli Kosharovsky. Trans. Stefani Hoffman. Ed. Ann Komaromi. Modern Jewish History. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2017, xxvi, 420 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. $39.95, paper. - Volume 77 Issue 4

Before the USSR collapsed, ethnic identities were imposed by the state. This book analyzes how and why Jews decided what being Jewish meant to them after the state dissolved and describes the historical evolution of Jewish identities. Surveys of more than 6,000 Jews in the early and late 1990s reveal that Russian and Ukrainian Jews have a deep sense of their Jewishness but are uncertain what it means. They see little connection between Judaism and being Jewish. Their attitudes toward Judaism, intermarriage and Jewish nationhood differ dramatically from those of Jews elsewhere. Many think Jews can believe in Christianity and do not condemn marrying non-Jews. This complicates their connections with other Jews, resettlement in Israel, the United States and Germany, and the rebuilding of public Jewish life in Russia and Ukraine. Post-Communist Jews, especially the young, are transforming religious-based practices into ethnic traditions and increasingly manifesting their Jewishness in public.

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Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsErased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present‐Day Ukraine. By Omer Bartov. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xxiv+232. $26.95. The Anti‐imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew. By Yohanan Petrovsky‐Shtern. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi+344. $65.00.Zvi Y. GitelmanZvi Y. GitelmanUniversity of Michigan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 83, Number 2June 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/659204 Views: 12Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization. Ed. Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. ix, 378 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. Tables. Maps. $35.00, hard bound. - Volume 69 Issue 1

One of the oldest cases of the intersection of ethnicity, religion and politics is that of the Jews. As religion and ethnicity began to be differentiated in modern times, Jews faced the challenge of re-defining themselves from a religious to an ethnic group. Some rejected this, others seized upon secular forms of Jewishness, and still others insisted on maintaining the ethno-religious fusion. This course aims to illuminate issues of ethnicity, religion and politics by exploring ways in which Jews have combined flexible self-definitions with the maintenance of characteristics that came to be regarded as defining; and how Jewish religious and secular conceptions of politics have been worked out. The Jewish experience should enable us to understand better broader issues of ethnic identity, national formation, the relationship between religion and ethnicity, and between them and politics. Can a group whose nexus was historically religious shift the ties that bind to secular culture and ethnicity in modern societies? In this regard the Jewish experience may be compared to those of Christian, Muslim and other religious groups who also seek their places in modern polities.

Can someone be considered Jewish if he or she never goes to synagogue, doesn't keep kosher, and for whom the only connection to his or her ancestral past is attending an annual Passover seder? In Religion or Ethnicity? sixteen leading scholars trace the evolution of Jewish identity. The book examines Judaism from the Greco-Roman age, through medieval times, modern western and eastern Europe, to today. Jewish identity has been defined as an ethnicity, a nation, a culture, and even a race. Religion or Ethnicity? questions what it means to be Jewish. The contributors show how the Jewish people have evolved over time in different ethnic, religious, and political movements. In his closing essay, Gitelman questions the viability of secular Jewishness outside Israel but suggests that the continued interest in exploring the relationship between Judaism's secular and religious forms will keep the heritage alive for generations to come.

This course should give you an understanding both of major topics in political analysis— political culture, proportional representation, coalition formation, ethnopolitics, the interplay of religion and politics—as well as of the interaction of society and politics in the State of Israel, a relatively new state in a very old land, and one, which despite its small size, confronts many important political issues that arise in other societies.

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Introduction Part 3 Jews and the Soviet Regime: Encounters and Interactions Chapter 4 The Battalions in the Red Army Chapter 5 Zionism in the Early Soviet State: Between Legality and Persecution Chapter 6 Jewish Agricultural Settlement in the Interwar Soviet Union: The Black Sea Littoral Chapter 7 The Struggle for Survival in the Belorussian Shtetl in the 1920s and 1930s Chapter 8 The Jews of a Soviet Metropolis in the Interwar Period: The Case of Leningrad Chapter 9 Social Trends among Jews in the Post-Stalin Years Part 10 Antisemitism in War and Peace Chapter 11 Jewish Refugees and Evacuees under Soviet Rule and German Occupation: The North Caucasus Chapter 12 The Genesis of Establishment Anti-Semitism in the USSR: The Black Years, 1948-1953 Chapter 13 Attitudes towards Jews in Post-Soviet Russia and the Problem of Anti-Semitism Part 14 Reconstructing Jewish Communities in the USSR and its Successor States Chapter 15 The Jewish National Movement and the Struggle for Community in the late Soviet Period Chapter 16 The Problematics of Jewish Community Development in Contemporary Russia Chapter 17 Putin & the Jewish Oligarchs: Prejudice or Politics? Chapter 18 Major Trends in Post-Soviet Jewish Demography, 1989-2004 Chapter 19 The Demography of Post-Soviet Jewry in its Global and Local Contexts Part 20 The New Russian-Jewish Diaspora: Reception and Adaptation Chapter 21 The Russian Aliya in Israel: Community and Identity in the Second Decade Chapter 22 Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in the Israeli Population and Labor Force 23 Looking into the Future