Jewish Odesa
Negotiating Identities and Traditions in Contemporary Ukraine

Marina Sapritsky-Nahum (Author)

9780253070111

Paperback / softback, published 23 July 2024

374 pages, 32 b&w photos
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.549 kg

"Marina Sapritsky-Nahum's Jewish Odesa: Negotiating Identities and Traditions in Contemporary Ukraine is an extremely interesting and analytically rich ethnographic study of the Jews in Odesa in the early twenty-first century. Sapritsky-Nahum explores such important issues as the meaning of home and homeland, diaspora, religious revival, Jewish tradition, and the role of the "Odesa myth" in the identities of the Jews who reside in the city.  According to this myth, Odesa was a Jewish city because it was open, tolerant of ethnic diversity, and cosmopolitan. That identity began to change after the fall of Communism as Jews primarily from Israel and the United States came to Odesa to introduce new ways of being Jewish. Their efforts were only partially successful, as Odesan Jews struggled with conflicting ways of being Jewish, Russian, and Ukrainian in the post-Soviet world.  Beautifully written, Jewish Odesa is a serious scholarly book that is utterly accessible to non-specialists."—Marsha L. Rozenblit - University of Maryland
"A beautiful, empathetic, rich ethnographic portrait of Jewish life at a unique moment in the history of a city that has nurtured many, many Jews of world historical significance. The importance of this manuscript as a document of Odessan and post-Soviet Jewish life in the mid 2000s cannot therefore be overstated. . . Its value lies precisely in the prominence given to the voices of the people Sapritsky-Nahum spoke with, and the way in which she weaves their voices into a narrative that engages with bigger processes of political economic dislocation, desecularization, and nation-building and academic debates about them."—Tanya Richardson - Wilfrid Laurier University
"This is an incisive analysis of the home/diaspora model, sharpened by the inclusion of a short epilogue chapter that considers the ongoing war in Ukraine. Sapritsky-Nahum considers the ways the war has shaped and altered Jewish Odesan perceptions of nationhood and belonging due to their liminal placement between so many categories: Jewish, Odesan, Ukrainian, or Russian-speaking, to name a few."—LSE Review of Books

Jewish Odesa: Negotiating Identities and Traditions in Contemporary Ukraine explores the rich Jewish history and contemporary Jewish life in Ukraine's port city of Odesa. Long considered both a uniquely cosmopolitan and Jewish place, Odesa's Jewish character has shifted as ethnic and cultural identities have dramatically changed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine. 
 
Drawing on extensive field research, Marina Sapritsky-Nahum examines how the role of Russian language and culture, alongside lingering memories of the Soviet era, have been critically re-evaluated, leading to new forms of expression for Odesa's Jewish community within the broader Ukrainian national context.  
Jewish Odesa reveals how a city once famous for its progressive and secular Jewish traditions has been shaped by migration and altered by competing projects of Jewish revival. Russia's war in Ukraine has further challenged Jewish communal life while simultaneously fostering a deeper sense of Ukrainian-Jewish belonging.

Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction: A Jew in a Kippah
1. Historical Background: The Lost, the Revisited, and the Recreated
2. Remembering the Past and Making Sense of the Present: Narratives of Elderly Jews
3. From Evrei to Iudei: Turning or Returning to Faith?
4. Asymmetric Cultural Encounters: Jewish Philanthropy Missions and Revival on Display
5. "Jewish Is a Mode of Transportation": Between Home, Homeland, and Diaspora
6. Odessa: A Jewish City?
Conclusion: Negotiating Traditions
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index