Reference Type: Journal Article
Author: Crăciun, Camelia
Year: 2012
Title: Between marginal rebels and maintream critics. Jewish Romanian intellectuals during the interwar period
Journal: Buletinul Centrului, Muzeului şi Arhivei Istorice a Evreilor din România
Issue: 14-15
Pages: 209-225
Language: English
Keywords: Jewish minority, history, intellectuals, interwar period, ethnic identity, literature, culture, elites, integration, language
Abstract: (En) The current analysis represents a case study concerning the larger process of interaction between ethnic groups and the state, in which conflict and integration function as key concepts. Basically, my dissertation aimed at investigating the long-belated process of inclusion of the Jewish identity within Romanian culture during the first decades of the 20th century, by analyzing social mechanisms such as marginalization, conflict and integration, and by focusing on cultural descriptions of identity construction and inclusion strategies. Within this framework, the process of identity construction, the significance with which it was invested, as well as the discursive structure of identity, in connection with the majority's position, became crucial for the communication and relations established between groups.
In more specific terms, my dissertation aimed at analyzing the group of Jewish intellectuals acculturated to the Romanian milieu, actively present in Romanian culture from slightly before WWI and during the interwar period, until the anti-Jewish legislation of 1938 imposed their silence. Born in the last years of the 19th century and the early 20th, these intellectuals preserved a solid Jewish identity, but also used Romanian language for writing their works both before and after Emancipation which was granted in 1923. Thus, their initial significant social and cultural exclusion was followed by a legal symbolical inclusion in the body of the nation following the Emancipation moment. Being the first generation of Jewish intellectuals growing up within Romanian culture, as the result of a process of profound acculturation, the group manifested a strong identity crisis, demonstrated within their works and public discourse, when facing marginalization and exclusion, which they eventually overcame through the adoption of different identity models and inclusion strategies.
URL: http://www.csier.jewishfed.ro/public_html/documente/buletine/buletin14-15.pdf