‘HAVING CONSUMED TOO MUCH BIBLE’: CONCERNING THE IDENTITY OF THE RUSSIAN JUDAIZERS OF THE XIXTH — EARLY XXTH CENTURY

Abstract

Th e article attempts to analyze some aspects of the Russian Judaizers’ self-representation from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. During the period under review the identity of the followers of ‘Mosaic Law’ was being constructed on the basis of the Old Testament. Th e religious constituent was dominating in both negative and positive identities of the Subbotniks. Th e Judaizers called themselves ‘Jews’ (biblically), ‘the congregation of the Lord’, ‘newcomers to Israel’, ‘Abraham’s off spring’, ‘the ten tribes of Israel’ and so forth. Th e negative identity of the followers of ‘Mosaic Law’ was being realized by means of correlation with contemporary Jews and Orthodox Christians. Th e attitude to Jews varied from hostile distancing to full identifi cation in diff erent sectarian communities. Contrasting themselves to the Orthodox Christians the Judaizers used such concepts as ‘captivity’, ‘gentiles’, correlating surrounding reality with biblical eschatology, toponymics and ethnonymics. At the same time Christian notions and ideas were implicitly represented in the self-consciousness of some of the Subbotniks. Refs 20.

Keywords:

the Russian Judaizers, positive identity, negative identity, Mosaic Law, ‘newcomers to Israel’