Doubly Chosen
Subtitle: Jewish Identity, the Soviet Intelligentsia, and the Russian Orthodox Church
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: January 15, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 200
ISBN-13: 9780299194840
Subjects: Christian conversion; European history: from c 1900 -; Orthodox Churches; Religion - Commentaries / Reference; History: World; Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe); Russia; Europe - Russia & the Former Soviet Union; History; Jewish - General; Religion / Judaism / History; Anthropology - Cultural; 20th century; Jewish Christians; Jews; Judaism; Relations; Russkaia pravoslavnaia t; Russkaëiìa pravoslavnaëiìa ëtìserkov§; Soviet Union
Description: "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 conversions: the virtual elimination of Judaism as a viable, widely practiced religion; the transformation of the Jewish community from a religious one 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."--BOOK JACKET.