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