Former Fellows

Project Outline

The process of modernisation, acculturation and secularisation of the Jewish communities in Europe has been traditionally described in analogous terms, regardless of the community or country analysed. Nevertheless, recent studies have prompted that this generic process might have varied for each country or case-study, according to the specificity of each Jewish community involved, and the corresponding cultural, religious, political, and socio-economic peculiarities of the particular Gentile society in question. The topic of the proposed research places the historicity frame represented by the generational debate and its perception as a concept at the crossroad of modernisation, identity debate and its representation.

Comparisons between the Central European and Romanian modernisation and Jewish identity pattern in generational terms suggests a permanent tension between he cultural, political and social conditions set by the specificity of the Jewish, but also Gentile communities in both cases. Hence, by focusing on the generational identity changes representedpublicly and debated intellectually, the proposed research work analyses the connection between modernity and historicity to be found at the core of the identity discourses among the Jewish intellectuals of Romanian languages during the interwar period. It aims to connect debates on modernity, historicity, and identity in a larger equation relevant for both the Jewish Romanian intellectual life, and Romanian history in the interwar historiography. By building on the cultural instrumentalisation of the concept of generation, the proposed research hopes to reach roader conclusions in terms of the social, cultural and political life during the interwar period.