3 5 RECONSTRUCTING JEWISH IDENTITY IN CROATIA: TOWARDS A REFINED SYMBOLIC ETHNICITY Nita Ginger Hofman DePaul University, Chicago This paper has two aims. To begin, the analysis ofthe model to include it examines whether the symbolic broader dimensions will also contribute to ethnicity model is relevant to identity our understanding of ethnic identity negotiation among Croatian Jews. In negotiation in capitalist as well as post­ symbolic ethnicity, individuals are not so socialist societies. much interested in the maintenance of I argue, employing ethnographic traditional lifestyles as they are with and historic analyses, that the imposition choosing how to express cultural identity. ofan essentialist view of Jewish identity In the past, scholars have either employed by national and supranational the model to discuss identity negotiation constituencies may ultimately have among ethnics in the United States and adverse effects on cultural groups such as other core societies, or they have the Croatian Jews who have embraced dismissed it altogether. The second aim humanist and idiosyncratic versions of describes the existing tension between the Jewish identity since the mid-nineteenth self-images of the Croatian Jews and century (Goldstein 1988). Ethnographic those projected on them by others. Both data reveals that despite a lack of strong Croatian "cultural diversity campaigns" religious commitments and highly and international Jewish support idiosyncratic expressions of cultural organizations consider Jewish identity to identity, Croatian Jews are not on the road have an essentially religious core. to amalgamation. I suggest that the Programs sponsored by these disappearance thesis, put forward by the constituencies have constructed critics of symbolic ethnicity, is pronounced cultural differences between contradicted by the experience of Croatian Croatian Jews and non-Jewish Croatians. Jews and that Jewish identity negotiation The symbolic ethnicity model has in Croatia reflects national and not been employed to analyze identity supranational dimensions of cultural negotiation in cross-national comparisons. identity formation without dislocating the Although the model's treatment of importance of individual meanings. identity negotiation continues to be highly applicable to ethnics in core as well as post-socialist societies, I suggest that the Methods model needs to be refined to include The conceptualization of this cultural forces that highlight temporal and paper is based on ethnographic and political aspects of identity construction. historic information collected over the Community based, national and course ofthree visits to Croatia between supranational dimensions of identity construction must be included in an 1997 and 2000. Library research and application of symbolic ethnicity if the participant observation methods in the model is going to continue making a Jewish Community Center Zagreb (ZOZ) contribution to ethnic theory. Extending were used. Jewish community life in Croatia was examined prior to Wodd War Vol. 179, No.2 Autumn, 2001, Page: 5 6 II and compared to contemporary associated with mono locality is expressions ofJewish identity. During my disappearing. Gans argues that this research in Croatia I kept abreast of local explains why ethnic cultures do not political events, conducted research at the experience the straight-line assimilation libraries ofthe Ethnographic Institute in patterns that melting-pot theorists have Zagreb and the community ZOZ center. I proposed, but instead respond to social participated in many organized social pressures with patterns of behavior in activities including religious services, which ethnic and religious identities are Torah study groups, seminars on Jewish maintained on an idiosyncratic basis. education and meetings with seniors, While Gans applies his model specifically women and youth. I also spent a good deal to ethnics in the United States, he clearly of time in the company of friends intends the model to have wider discussing politics and the changing applications (Baldassar 1999, Bjorklund meaning ofJewish identity over coffee in 1987, Buckser 1999, Levine 1993, Sprott the recently kosherished cafe of the ZOZ. 1994). Throughout my research I worked Gans's model of symbolic closely with two key consultants, an ethnicity appropriately describes the observant member who introduced me to importance ofnostalgia and sentiments to the spiritual world in the ZOZ and his identity negotiation. Gans argues that antagonist a consultant who defined many ethnic cultures in the United States herself as a secular Jew. Both were employ symbolic ethnicity rather than invaluable resources. They respected the formal rites and religious-based cultural neutrality ofmy position in the practices and values. A concern with community as well as my social Jewish identity rooted in nostalgia and engagement in both religious and cultural sentiment ("cultural Judaism") as opposed activities though neither participated in to rigorous adherence to Judaic practices both these spheres ofactivity. I took their and traditions, are paradigmatic examples views to be representative of the religious of symbolic ethnicity. minority and the majority ofCroatian While nostalgia and sentiments are Jews who define themselves as secular deemed relevant to the invention of Jews. While my key consultants viewed tradition, his critics have viewed Gans' s one another as antagonists they model as a precursor to the disappearance unknowingly shared many views of ethnics. In response, Gans has insisted pertaining to Croatian politics. that nothing in his model implies that Analytic Context groups employing symbolic ethnicity will dissolve within a fixed period of time. Herbert Gans uses the related Symbolic ethnicity is more accurately concepts of symbolic ethnicity (1979) and regarded as a social identity strategy that symbolic religiosity (1994) to refer to a helps maintain individual allegiances to range of strategies associated with ethnic cultural (ethnoreligous) heritage. Gans and religious identity negotiation in further claims that ethnicity is not contemporary societies. Symbolic "doomed to fade away before the ethnicity helps to mitigate the social and irresistible forces of assimilation," but psychological upheaval experienced by could instead "become a permanent source cultural groups as they adapt to a of identity" (Gans 1992: 44-45). (post)modern world in which interaction Vol. 179, No.2 Autumn, 2001, Page: 6 j 7 Gans's is not the only model that universally accepted. Bershtel and interprets the "post-traditional" terms in Graubard (1992) have disputed the thesis which contemporary identities are that non-religious behavior among Jews understood. Alba (1990) and Waters will result in cultural assimilation. (1990, 1999) have proposed models which Jonathan Webber (1997) points out that an complement symbolic ethnicity. These image of all Jews identifying as members scholars seem to share the view that ethnic of an ethnoreligious group is no longer identity negotiation in many post­ applicable since sociopolitical processes industrial societies greatly relies on have impacted European Jews in their individual expressions ofidentity. Gans's respective countries differently. Similar, critics, however, assume that symbolic Chervyakov, Gitelman and Shapiro (1997) ethnicity is a misreading ofthe argue that Jewish identity in Russia has communitarian basis of cultural identities become fused with national identities to (Bershtel and Graubard 1992, Conzen et the extent that its no longer possible to al. 1992, Kivisto and Nefzger 1993). divorce Jewish identity negotiation from Like the critics ofGans's model, a citizenship and the national political economy. number of scholars writing on Jewish identity construction have asserted that Building upon the views ofthese Jews engaged in idiosyncratic expressions scholars, my analysis ofthe identity of Jewish identity will ultimately strategies employed by Croatian Jews disappear as a group. Predictions that expands the model of symbolic ethnicity Jewish identity will disappear are to include historic and contemporary typically based on sociocultural processes images, collective and individual such as the near absence ofreligious meanings, local and global influences, and inclinations prevalent in many socialist national politics as important variables in societies. The view that a decline in the process of cultural identity Jewish religiosity eventually results in a negotiation. I argue that the locus of an weaker sense of Jewish identity or idiosyncratic or individual basis of disintegration has been put forward by a identity construction must, ultimately, number of scholars who have studied reside within larger-than-individual Jewish identity maintenance in the United cultural forces. States (Amyot and Singelman 1996, Bakalian 1993, Cohen 1983). A similar Background view has been advanced by scholars Most early Jewish settlers in studying Jewish identity maintenance in Croatia were merchants from regions Europe (DellaPergola 1994, Keller 1966, within the territory ofthe Austro­ Schweid 1994) and is epitomized by Hungarian Empire. Speaking either Harriet Pass Friedenreich's remark that: Hungarian or German as their mother "[The] vibrant Jewish communities of tongue, they measured their success in interwar Yugoslavia, well adapted to terms of social acceptance in Croatian survival in a multinational state, live on society (Svob 1997). The lack of a today as memories,