Folk Judaism: Variations of Religious Practices among the Jews of Ukraine and Moldova (Findings of 2004-2011)
The article draws on the analysis of interviews with the Jews of Ukraine and Moldova, who had lived the first part of their lives following traditional Jewish ways, while the other part fell on the period of strong anti-religious pressure in the Soviet Union. As a result, several variations of what we can call “folk Judaism” emerged. One form is a forced refusal to follow the laws of Judaism and elaboration of various ways for breaking taboos. The second option is a conscious rejection of ancestral religious traditions, parcial observing as a “camouflage”, and minimal interaction with modern Orthodox Judaism. The third option is creating their own individual rules for observing selected religious commandments. Several key mechanisms of the formation of new Jewish “folk” religious practices can be identified. They are the transformation of the existing halakhic regulations with the help of a) ritual fraud; b) changes in the status of the ritual object; c) application of the laws of ritual purity to an object known to be unclean.