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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1301

Part of Session 116: God in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

Jewish Identities in the Last Days of Empire: Language Repertoires in Turn- of-the- Century Lviv

Authors: Wilson, Tracie L
Submitted by: Wilson, Tracie L (Leipzig University, Germany)

Scholars often discuss processes of globalization as a phenomenon primarily relevant to the late twentieth  and early twenty-first centuries. However, dramatic social changes  and  a collapsed sense of space and time are processes that began considerably earlier. Certainly by the late nineteenth century many features were already well underway. The transformation of religious identities and ways of life in urban contexts provides an opportunity to examine the central role of language in such processes.

At the turn-of-the- century,  the Hapsburg city of Lviv  was home to multiple ethnic and religious communities. The three largest ethnic groups were Jews, Poles (mainly Roman Catholic), and Ukrainians (mainly Greek Catholic and Orthodox).The city, which served as the capitol of Galicia, also became an important political and cultural center and site for migration. This paper examines language repertoires in the administration of Jewish inhabitants of the city. Literacy and bureaucratic institutions increase opportunities for elites to control subjects (Burke 1987, Scott 1998) and the issue of who  had control and who represented the Jewish population generated ongoing tension. In particular, I consider  the ways that language was employed within documents that address the changing environment with regard to charity. During this period social welfare institutions were undergoing dramatic change from charity that was primarily religiously motivated and affiliated toward more secular, state-sponsored forms of providing for those in need.

Throughout the nineteenth century, religious institutions in the Hapsburg Empire were  incorporated into bureaucratic state structures (see, for example, Leskiv 2012). In Jewish communities in Galicia, this meant a shift from more autonomous self-government to the more subordinate Jewish municipal authority (Gmina wyznaniowa izraelicka ). Another important trend was the emergence of competing Jewish identities. Jewish inhabitants of the city included multiple communities of reform-oriented and Orthodox, including Hassidim, Zionists, as well as “Poles of Mosaic faith.”

Regarding language, Fishman stresses that religious variations coexist within the same religious community for a variety of reasons, for example, due to  a lag between practices in outlying peripheral regions (2006). However, in Lviv sharp contrasts existed within an urban environment, in which the majority were Orthodox  Jews. On the other hand, the great differences and animosity between these groups calls into question whether they constituted a single Jewish community. Indeed, attempts to bring about change in Jewish religious practices were hotly contested throughout the nineteenth century, at times with violent consequences (Stanislawski 2007)

My objectives include examining the ways that language and strategies became institutionalized (Bauman 1983) with regard to charity practices. In addition, I address key questions that underscore varied understandings of Jewish identity and community. For example, what terms were used to argue that someone was a valid member of the community, and therefore, deserving of assistance (i.e. city resident, the child of married parents, kinship with donor of charity funds)  and what language and terms were used to demonstrate connections to or distance from the many Jewish migrants from Russian-controlled areas.