Abstract
This article focuses on two contemporary forms of individual Holocaust commemoration: “Small Purims,” a festive meal and celebration of deliverance usually held on a Holocaust survivor’s liberation date, and “Marker Memorialization,” commemorating Holocaust victims in the deceased’s family on their gravestone. I first mentioned these commemorative forms in passing in my 1995 article about Holocaust commemoration. In this article I revisit them close to three decades later, examining how they reflect the development of a central and dynamic strand of Jewish and Israeli identity connected to the Holocaust. Three generations after the end of the Second World War, this Holocaust-centered strand is no longer primarily institutional or statist but rather performative-personal and domestic, while remaining connected to a broader community. Describing and analyzing these commemorative forms as “invented traditions,” I discuss the Holocaust narrative that each form supports and analyze the nature of Holocaust-related Jewish identity that these new traditions strengthen. Finally, I discuss what we can learn from them about the relationship between the personal/family/survivor community acts of memorializing and the larger context of post-Holocaust Jewish identity and Jewish collective memory.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 149-164 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Journal of Jewish Identities |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 1-2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 2023 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Philosophy
- Religious studies
- History and Philosophy of Science
- Literature and Literary Theory