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- Title
Jewish Conversion in an Imperial Context: Confessional Choice and Multiple Baptisms in Nineteenth-Century Russia.
- Authors
Schainker, Ellie
- Abstract
This article uses Moshe Schneerson's 1820 conversion to Catholicism and subsequent attempt to convert to Russian Orthodoxy as a frame for the multiconfessional political and social backdrop of conversions from Judaism in imperial Russia. Though the Russian Empire legally promoted Russian Orthodoxy as the 'preeminent and predominant' imperial religion, it granted religious toleration and institutional support to a host of non-Orthodox confessions in whose churches Jews could be baptized. I trace the genesis of confessional choice for Jews, the problem of serial baptisms, and the social and cultural contacts that enabled converts to move between confessional communities, arguing that the study of religious conversion in modern Jewish history needs to be analyzed as a social encounter with the peoples and institutions of neighboring confessional communities rather than just an impersonal, strategic move to gain entrée to 'mainstream European society.'
- Subjects
JEWISH conversion to Christianity; RUSSIAN Jewish history; SCHNEERSON, Moshe; RUSSIAN Orthodox Church &; politics; BAPTISM; CONVERSION (Religion); RELIGIOUS tolerance; NINETEENTH century
- Publication
Jewish Social Studies, 2014, Vol 20, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0021-6704
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2979/jewisocistud.20.1.1