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Doubly Chosen: Jewish Identity, the Soviet Intelligentsia, and the Russian Orthodox Church
Doubly Chosen provides the first detailed study of a unique cultural and religious phenomenon in post-Stalinist Russia—the conversion of thousands of Russian Jewish intellectuals to Orthodox Christianity, first in the 1960s and later in the 1980s. These time periods correspond to the decades before and after the great exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union. Judith Deutsch Kornblatt contends that the choice of baptism into the Church was an act of moral courage in the face of Soviet persecution, motivated by solidarity with the values espoused by Russian Christian dissidents and intellectuals. Oddly, as Kornblatt shows, these converts to Russian Orthodoxy began to experience their Jewishness in a new and positive way.
Working primarily from oral interviews conducted in Russia, Israel, and the United States, Kornblatt underscores the conditions of Soviet life that spurred these the virtual elimination of Judaism as a viable, widely practiced religion; the transformation of Jews from a religious community to an ethnic one; a longing for spiritual values; the role of the Russian Orthodox Church as a symbol of Russian national culture; and the forging of a new Jewish identity within the context of the Soviet dissident movement.
Working primarily from oral interviews conducted in Russia, Israel, and the United States, Kornblatt underscores the conditions of Soviet life that spurred these the virtual elimination of Judaism as a viable, widely practiced religion; the transformation of Jews from a religious community to an ethnic one; a longing for spiritual values; the role of the Russian Orthodox Church as a symbol of Russian national culture; and the forging of a new Jewish identity within the context of the Soviet dissident movement.
203 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2004
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February 17, 2014
The Soviet dissidents who entered the Russian Orthodox Church between the 1960s and the collapse of the USSR included not only lapsed Christians unsatisfied with the official culture of atheism but many thousands of Jews as well. Judith Deutsch Kornblatt's Doubly Chosen is a study of this phenomenon, based on interviews with these converts still in Russia or having emigrated to the USA or Israel. As Kornblatt makes clear in her introduction, she is herself a devout Jew and deeply unhappy with her fellow Jews' embrace of another religion, but she tries to keep a dispassionate tone and signs of her discontent are rare.
I had known about the phenomenon of Soviet Jews embracing Orthodox Christianity from reading Oliver Bullough's The Last Man in Russia, a biography of the dissident priest Dmitry Dudko who drew a broad crowd including Jews to his sermons against the Soviet regime. Kornblatt makes clear why this happened: unlike Jews in, say, the United States where religion remained part of their identity, Russian Jews had been completely separated from their religion by the early 20th century. Their "Jewishness" was merely a line in their passport, an ethnic category, but otherwise they were Russian in language and worldview. Thirsting for any kind of spiritual life in a country they viewed as a desert, these Jews entered the Orthodox Church because it was the only religious body around, and it was the religious faith they knew about due to the Russian literary tradition that they were brought up with.
Kornblatt goes on to explore how these converts reconciled their Jewish identity with their Orthodox Christian beliefs. Many of those she interviews claimed that they felt somehow more Jewish after their conversion, not less, and they took advantage of their Jewishness to emigrate to Israel and escape the USSR. She also describes their feeling on the institutional church, where anti-semitism has become a major force since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, I found this a very slight and insubstantial book. Only than 200 pages long, it feels very padded, with the same points and some of the quotations repeated multiple times. Kornblatt spends a significant portion of the book describing Brother Daniel, a Polish Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism and is therefore outside the bounds of her subject (and what presumably motivated many readers to pick this book up). Then, as an appendix we get a sample interview as transcribed from the author's tape recording, but even this is padded out with filler words, mention of the phone ringing, etc. This book could have been so much more and it leaves me unsatisfied.
I had known about the phenomenon of Soviet Jews embracing Orthodox Christianity from reading Oliver Bullough's The Last Man in Russia, a biography of the dissident priest Dmitry Dudko who drew a broad crowd including Jews to his sermons against the Soviet regime. Kornblatt makes clear why this happened: unlike Jews in, say, the United States where religion remained part of their identity, Russian Jews had been completely separated from their religion by the early 20th century. Their "Jewishness" was merely a line in their passport, an ethnic category, but otherwise they were Russian in language and worldview. Thirsting for any kind of spiritual life in a country they viewed as a desert, these Jews entered the Orthodox Church because it was the only religious body around, and it was the religious faith they knew about due to the Russian literary tradition that they were brought up with.
Kornblatt goes on to explore how these converts reconciled their Jewish identity with their Orthodox Christian beliefs. Many of those she interviews claimed that they felt somehow more Jewish after their conversion, not less, and they took advantage of their Jewishness to emigrate to Israel and escape the USSR. She also describes their feeling on the institutional church, where anti-semitism has become a major force since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, I found this a very slight and insubstantial book. Only than 200 pages long, it feels very padded, with the same points and some of the quotations repeated multiple times. Kornblatt spends a significant portion of the book describing Brother Daniel, a Polish Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism and is therefore outside the bounds of her subject (and what presumably motivated many readers to pick this book up). Then, as an appendix we get a sample interview as transcribed from the author's tape recording, but even this is padded out with filler words, mention of the phone ringing, etc. This book could have been so much more and it leaves me unsatisfied.
Displaying 1 of 1 review