Between marginality and multiplicity: mapping Jewish public home-making in modern Stockholm
Between marginality and multiplicity: mapping Jewish public home-making in modern Stockholm
This thesis explores the construction, contestation and maintenance of the Jewish population’s multiplicity of religious buildings, as well as the performance of diverse bodily movements in between them, aiming to evaluate communal and individual strategies for making Stockholm a Jewish home between their emancipation in 1870 and the Second World War. Although being a small community and residing in a relatively stable societal setting, the Jewish community in the Swedish capital still expressed an interest in religious institutions and traditions, such as synagogues, ritual baths, the keeping of kashrut, and religious schools. The first chapter shows the communal, individual and non-Jewish commitment to the construction of different synagogues and the practice of religious customs at elite funerals. The impact of inner-communal socioeconomic hierarchy on spatial sacred multiplicity is explored in the second chapter, while the third chapter investigates the collective adoption of individual spatial strategies for the dual performance of Jewishness and the Swedish national identity.
Spatial and performance theories suggest the existence of individual agency in the modern urban setting, and when approached with an interdisciplinary methodology, this study finds that the Stockholm’s Jewish community religious landscape demanded non-Jewish cooperation and inner-communal dependence. Individuals and smaller groups in the margins strategically approached these relational spaces to try to impact the outlook of Jewish sacred places. The result was multiple material and bodily versions of Jewishness in the public, largely non-Jewish milieu. The Jewish population’s urban fragmentation needed traditional institutions to promote the continuation of Jewish rituals and social cohesion. The streetscape of Stockholm between 1870 and 1939 was, therefore, a stage for Jewish religious performances, the spatial arena negotiated and contested in individual ways to collectively communicate, emphasise and convince the non-Jewish society of their belonging to the Swedish nation as religio-cultural Jews and national Swedes.
University of Southampton
Hultman, Maja
5ee70cf9-d325-4154-840a-f44fd8b52a6e
October 2019
Hultman, Maja
5ee70cf9-d325-4154-840a-f44fd8b52a6e
Schloer, Joachim
bb73c4ae-2ef4-44ba-b889-b319afb40b03
Hultman, Maja
(2019)
Between marginality and multiplicity: mapping Jewish public home-making in modern Stockholm.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis, 332pp.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
This thesis explores the construction, contestation and maintenance of the Jewish population’s multiplicity of religious buildings, as well as the performance of diverse bodily movements in between them, aiming to evaluate communal and individual strategies for making Stockholm a Jewish home between their emancipation in 1870 and the Second World War. Although being a small community and residing in a relatively stable societal setting, the Jewish community in the Swedish capital still expressed an interest in religious institutions and traditions, such as synagogues, ritual baths, the keeping of kashrut, and religious schools. The first chapter shows the communal, individual and non-Jewish commitment to the construction of different synagogues and the practice of religious customs at elite funerals. The impact of inner-communal socioeconomic hierarchy on spatial sacred multiplicity is explored in the second chapter, while the third chapter investigates the collective adoption of individual spatial strategies for the dual performance of Jewishness and the Swedish national identity.
Spatial and performance theories suggest the existence of individual agency in the modern urban setting, and when approached with an interdisciplinary methodology, this study finds that the Stockholm’s Jewish community religious landscape demanded non-Jewish cooperation and inner-communal dependence. Individuals and smaller groups in the margins strategically approached these relational spaces to try to impact the outlook of Jewish sacred places. The result was multiple material and bodily versions of Jewishness in the public, largely non-Jewish milieu. The Jewish population’s urban fragmentation needed traditional institutions to promote the continuation of Jewish rituals and social cohesion. The streetscape of Stockholm between 1870 and 1939 was, therefore, a stage for Jewish religious performances, the spatial arena negotiated and contested in individual ways to collectively communicate, emphasise and convince the non-Jewish society of their belonging to the Swedish nation as religio-cultural Jews and national Swedes.
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M Hultman Thesis
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Published date: October 2019
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Local EPrints ID: 435785
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/435785
PURE UUID: 9b65da51-e110-4e34-9058-5780ce8dac11
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Date deposited: 20 Nov 2019 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 05:08
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