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Sveta Roberman

Bio: Sveta Roberman is an academic researcher from Tel Aviv University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Judaism & Anti-Zionism. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 23 citations.

Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the early 1990s, Germany officially opened its gates to the immigration of Russian Jews as part of the politics of repentance and restitution for the Holocaust as mentioned in this paper, and the immigrants seemed to offer an opportunity to strengthen and revitalize Jewish life in the country, even to restore it to its pre-war scale and condition.
Abstract: In the early 1990s, Germany officially opened its gates to the immigration of Russian Jews as part of the politics of repentance and restitution for the Holocaust. The immigration of Russian Jews seemed to offer an opportunity to strengthen and revitalize Jewish life in the country, even to restore it to its pre-war scale and condition. For the Russian-Jewish immigrants, that task has proven a difficult challenge. Tracking the stumbling blocks and difficulties of the project of revitalization and recreation of Jewish life, this article moves through different arenas of the immigrants' performance of Jewishness – artistic, ritual, and mundane, individual as well as communal. It examines the situation in which role-playing or ‘passing’ as Jews fails to be perceived as credible and is interpreted as ‘imposture.’

13 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored the processes of the reconstruction of Jewish identities and Jewish communal life by Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany, focusing on the stereotypes of Jews and Jewishness evident in immigrants' perceptions and imaginings of their physical gathering spaces.
Abstract: Glancing at the Jewish spaces in contemporary Germany, an occasional observer would probably be startled. Since the Russian Jewish migration of the 1990s, Germany's Jewish community has come to be the third-largest in Europe. Synagogues, Jewish community centres, and Jewish cultural events have burgeoned. There is even talk about a “Jewish renaissance” in Germany. However, many immigrants claim that the resurrection of Jewish life in Germany is “only a myth,” “an illusion.” This paper is part of a project exploring the processes of the reconstruction of Jewish identities and Jewish communal life by Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany. The focus of this paper is on the stereotypes of Jews and Jewishness evident in immigrants' perceptions and imaginings of their physical gathering spaces – the Jewish community centres (Gemeinden). Focusing on the images that haunt a particular place, I seek to shed light upon the difficulties of re/creating Jewish identity and life among the Russian Jewish immigrants in co...

12 citations


Cited by
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01 Mar 2006
TL;DR: Yurchak as discussed by the authors argues that the processes of everyday life that reproduced the Soviet system and those that resulted in its continuous internal displacement were mutually constitutive, and argues that this wide array of ironic, unconventional lifestyles was enabled by an entrenched paradox: when authoritative discourse became hypernormalized, its performative dimension grew in importance and its constative dimension became unanchored from concrete core meanings and increasingly open to new interpretations.
Abstract: Alexei Yurchak. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. In-formation Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. x, 331 pp. Halftones. Illustrations. Tables. $59.50, cloth. $24.95, paper.Reacting against the system/anti-system binarism that characterizes so many analyses of the late Soviet period, Alexei Yurchak casts the last Soviet generation in quite a different light. He confronts a paradox-that although young people were caught off-guard by the collapse of the USSR, as soon as it occurred realized that they had been prepared for that unexpected change-by arguing that the processes of everyday life that reproduced the Soviet system and those that resulted in its continuous internal displacement were mutually constitutive. No mask/reality; public/private; falsehood/truth dichotomy here. Instead, each of the book's chapters explores different, seemingly contradictory or nonconformist lifestyles and shows that these were enabled by the very laws and structures that they seemed to defy, but did not. Komsomol organizers performed their jobs wholeheartedly while distinguishing between tasks that were "pure formality" and "work with meaning." At the same time they blended love of Western heavy metal with their deep belief" in socialist values and often organized amateur rock bands to play at Komsomol events (Chapters 3 and 6). Based on letters, diaries, documents and retrospective interviews, Yurchak makes a convincing case that those involved in the youth wing of the Communist Party developed future-oriented notions of a good, interesting and "normal" life that included cacophonous electric music, jeans, and other products of the real or imaginary West (Chapter 5), along with socialist state welfare practices and a broader Marxist-Leninist vision.At the same time, other less conforming or less ambitious young people simply found the Komsomol and politics in general "uninteresting." Yurchak devotes Chapter 4 to how they formed deterritorialized communities and lived vnye-simultaneously inside and outside of the system-holding down jobs or pursuing studies that gave them both a wage, or stipend, and an opportunity to follow their decidedly apolitical interests. Living vny,; the amateur rock scene, those boiler-room attendants, guards and doormen who abjured careerism to focus almost exclusively on obshchenie (an intense form of socializing), and various kinds of pranksters, were, as Chapters 4, 6 and 7 show, agentive and creative choices but not resistance against the Communist Party or the state. In fact, Yurchak argues that this wide array of ironic, unconventional lifestyles was enabled by an entrenched paradox: "In the late Soviet context, when authoritative discourse became hypernormalized, its performative dimension grew in importance and its constative dimension became unanchored from concrete core meanings and increasingly open to new interpretations" (p. …

498 citations

01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: In 1992 members of an environmental group Swatch Ganga attended a conference conducted by the Friends of the Ganges in order to gain moral technical and financial support for cleaning up the river as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The Ganges River particularly in the old and religious city of Varanasi is polluted by the discharges of cities and towns into the river. Human corpses and raw sewage are the major sources of the rivers pollution. There is no sewage system for 90% of the population. Coliform levels are 120000 colonies/100 milliliters of water. Industry must pay for a permit to dump into rivers but there is no rule governing urban contributions to pollution control. In 1992 members of an environmental group Swatch Ganga attended a conference conducted by the Friends of the Ganges in order to gain moral technical and financial support for cleaning up the river. A strong point was made about fertility levels being lowered when infant mortality declined particularly infant mortality due to water-borne diseases. 50 teachers were also trained to test for water quality by a simple method that students could use. The engineers in attendance discussed the construction of a deep water gravity system for transporting sewage which would not harm the citys ancient architecture but would be costly. Other suggestions were a Chinese-style composting of sewage and an American method for chemical treatment of water. There was no perfect method suggested. The publicity attracted the attention of the Minister of Environment; Dr. Mishra an elite Brahmin founder of Swatch Ganga was asked to personally present the conference recommendations. Friends of the Ganges was also able to raise funds for a community water testing laboratory and to send Dr. Mishra to the USA to study successful river cleanup models. There is a great love of the river and an estimated 70000 pilgrims come to Varanasi every day. There is a need to unite the Moslems Buddhists Jains and Sikhs in a grass-roots effort to clean up the river. There is also need for strong national government financial support. The late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi spearheaded the Ganga Action Plan to construct and renovate treatment plants for 24 cities along the river but the program ended with much to be done; monsoons overwhelm the sewage pumps many months of the year. There are fights over regional cost-sharing.

317 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2010

292 citations

Journal Article

198 citations