Annual Conference of the Society for Sephardic Studies "Sephardic Jews between Religious, Ethnic, and National Identity" (10 ; 2022 ; Belgrade)

Abstract

Even our era of fluid and overlapping identities has not ended the age-old tension between different aspects and perceptions of Jewish identity. Is the principal determinant of Jewish identity a person’s relationship to "Judaism", or should Jewishness be perceived primarily as an ethnic culture and identity? After all, the term Iudaismos (Judaism) is not a Jewish one; it was coined by the ancient Greeks to designate the laws and customs of the people of the Israelite state of Judah. The pre-modern Hebrew language did not even have a word for "religion". Classical rabbinic texts generally do not speak of "Jews", but rather of the collective "Israel", whose redemption would be communal and occur in history, within this world. However, during their long Diaspora, the overwhelming majority of Jews lived in one of the two hemispheres, Christian or Islamic, and in both, they were recognized as an ethnic-confessional entity, with rare ruptures between the two components of this syntagm. Rupture in one of these components was usually accompanied by the rupture in the other. However, the Hispano-Christian "crusade" against Judaism (led mainly by local clerics, theologians, and preachers), led to the near-destruction of Castilian and Aragonese aljamas from 1391 to 1415, and to the concomitant problem of judeoconversos, subverted the validity of this syntagm. For the first time, the religion and ethnicity of tens of thousands of people once known - and still widely regarded - as Jews were at odds. The New Christians were Jewish in terms of their social and economic relations, their ethnic culture, and their social reputation; yet their religious identity was at least theoretically identical to that of the majority population. The Expulsion sought to end the Jewish subversion of the assimilation of New Christians into their new faith, but the "problem" endured well into our own days. In subsequent centuries, while the overwhelming majority of their Ottoman brethren reembraced the securities of the double but mostly indivisible ethno-confessional identity, the Conversos played a major role in shifts and changes in the ways that Jews and Christians understood the relation between religion, society, and state. In the two Serbian revolutions of the early nineteenth century, followed by the Greek and Bulgarian uprisings, the Ottoman Jewish rabbinic elite (including such figures as Ribbi Yehuda Bivas and Ribbi Yehuda Alkalay) led a revolutionary change of Jewish identity, creating the Jewish national idea and the Zionist movement.

Čak ni naša era fluidnih i preklapajućih identiteta nije okončala vekovnu napetost između različitih aspekata i percepcija jevrejskog identiteta. Da li je glavna odrednica jevrejskog identiteta odnos osobe prema "judaizmu", ili bi jevrejstvo trebalo posmatrati prvenstveno kao etničku kulturu i identitet? Na kraju krajeva, izraz Iudaismos (judaizam) nije jevrejski; skovali su ga stari Grci da označi zakone i običaje naroda izraelske države Jude. Predmoderni hebrejski jezik nije imao čak ni reč za "religiju". Klasični rabinski tekstovi uglavnom ne govore o "Jevrejima", već o kolektivnom "Izraelu", čije bi iskupljenje bilo zajedničko i dogodilo se u istoriji, unutar ovog sveta. Međutim, tokom svoje duge dijaspore, ogromna većina Jevreja je živela na jednoj od dve hemisfere, hrišćanskoj ili islamskoj, i u obe su bili prepoznati kao etničko-konfesionalni entitet, sa retkim prekidima između dve komponente ove sintagme. Ruptura jedne od ovih komponenti obično je bila praćena rupturom druge. Međutim, hispano-hrišćanski "krstaški rat" protiv judaizma (predvođen uglavnom lokalnim klericima, teolozima i propovednicima), koji je skoro doveo do uništenja kastiljanskih i aragonskih aljama od 1391. do 1415. i do pratećeg problema judeokonversosa, srušio je valjanost ove sintagme. Po prvi put, religija i etnička pripadnost desetina hiljada ljudi koji su nekada bili poznati - i još uvek široko cenjeni kao Jevreji, bili su u suprotnosti. Novi hrišćani su bili Jevreji u smislu njihovih društvenih i ekonomskih odnosa, njihove etničke kulture i društvenog ugleda; ipak je njihov verski identitet bio barem teoretski identičan onom većinskog stanovništva. Progon je nastojao da okonča jevrejsku subverziju asimilacije novih hrišćana u njihovu novu veru, ali je "problem" opstao sve do naših dana. U narednim vekovima, dok je ogromna većina njihove osmanske braće ponovo prihvatila sigurnost dvostrukog, ali uglavnom nedeljivog etnokonfesionalnog identiteta, Konversosi su igrali glavnu ulogu u smenama i promenama u načinu na koji su Jevreji i hrišćani razumevali odnos između religije, društva i države. U dve srpske revolucije ranog devetnaestog veka, praćene grčkim i bugarskim ustankom, otomanska jevrejska rabinska elita (uključujući ličnosti kao što su Ribi Jehuda Bivas i Ribbi Jehuda AlkalaJ) predvodila je revolucionarnu promenu jevrejskog identiteta, stvarajući jevrejsku nacionalnu ideju i cionistički pokret.