Doubly Chosen

Jewish Identity, the Soviet Intelligentsia, and the Russian Orthodox Church

Judith Deutsch Kornblatt

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780299194833
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

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 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.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Russian Jewish Christians
• 2. The Jewish Question in Russia: Separation of National and Religious Identity
• 3. The Path of Faith: The 1960s Generation
• 4. The Path of Faith: The 1980s Generation
• 5. The Paths Diverge: The Conflict of Identity
• 6. Concluding Thoughts: The Responsibility of Chosenness
• Appendix A: Sample Transcript: Interview with “Marina”
• Appendix B: Father Daniel’s Mass
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index