Jewish Lives Under Communism: New Perspectives

Book Overview

Jewish Lives under Communism: New Perspectives provides twelve groundbreaking views of Jewish life across the Soviet bloc from the end of the Second World War until the collapse of Communism in 1989. The chapter authors, historians and anthropologists from Europe, Israel, and the United States, move beyond official state documents and policy to historicize the lived experience of Jews under Communist regimes. They show how Jews creatively seized opportunities to develop and express their religious and secular identities under great duress. Where the historiography positioned Jews as objects of Communist state policy and of prejudice from neighbors, Jewish Lives under Communism attests to the agency of Soviet-state Jews after the Holocaust. Jewish lives did not vanish or rupture in this period. Instead, the contributors present unexpected continuities in the lives of Jewish communities under Communist state pressure to acculturate, assimilate, or become secular, and the essays reveal how these Jews retained some of their pre-Holocaust traditions and ways of life. This lens on Jewish history shifts the narrative from a traditional Soviet-centric perspective, which lacks transnational awareness, to a view that shows the wide variety of Jewish experiences in law, traditions, and institutional frameworks as conceived across and within Communist nations. With cases examining Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, and the Soviet Union, the contributors center this history around East Central European networks and beyond. Taken together, this volume launches a crucial rethinking of social and cultural life under Communist regimes. Book jacket.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1978830793
• ISBN13: 9781978830790
• Release Date: July 2022
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher