Exile, Homeland, and Milieu in the Oral Lore of Carpatho-Russian Jews
Abstract
In her article "Exile, Homeland, and Milieu in the Oral Lore of Carpatho-Russian Jews" Ilana Rosen analyzes oral narratives of Central and East European Jewish communities. The Jewish people have spent most of their lifetime outside their promised land. Accordingly, their ethos, as reflected by holy teachings, expresses a yearning for a return to the holy land by divine agency once the nation is purified of its sins. In modern times, with the rise of nationalism, this creed changed into activist political Zionism, although traditional and conservative religious circles resisted this change. In the oral narratives of Central and East European Jewish communities, these dilemmas inevitably involve or touch upon those of living among other nations and communities. Therefore, in the oral lore of Jews of Carpatho-Russia in inter-war eastern Czechoslovakia (presently the western part of Ukraine), narratives about the life of Jews in exile present intricate and at times surprising notions about coping with the new political borders following World War I, the symbiotic yet stressful life with both Ruthenians and Hungarians, the abrupt ending of Jewish life in this area in World War II and the Holocaust, and its memory amongst contemporary Israelis coming from the region.
Recommended Citation
Rosen, Ilana. "Exile, Homeland, and Milieu in the Oral Lore of Carpatho-Russian Jews." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 11.1 (2009): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss1/8
The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 154 times. Note: the download counts of the journal's material are as of Issue 9.1 (March 2007), since the journal's format in pdf (instead of in html 1999-2007).
Download
