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The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee between universal being and particular suffering
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Avital, Yarden. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee between universal being and particular suffering. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-j4se-sf69

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TitleThe Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee between universal being and particular suffering
NameAvital, Yarden (author); Hellbeck, Jochen (chair); Surkis, Judith (member); Zerubavel, Yael (member); Walke, Anika (member); Rutgers University; School of Graduate Studies
Date Created2022
Other Date2022-01 (degree)
SubjectHistory, Jews, Soviet, Evreĭskiĭ antifashistskiĭ komitet v SSSR
Extent193 pages
DescriptionThrough an exploration of the history of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC), this dissertation examines the larger story of Jews in modernity and the tension between the universal and the particular Jews came to embody. Modernity, as the epoch born out of European Enlightenment, is an epoch of paradoxes and unresolvable tensions between the universal man – the abstract individual – and the particular other it assumed and sustained in order to maintain its own boundaries. The Soviet nationalities policy, based on the same universal ideas, was marked by these very tensions. Its attempts to negotiate universal ideas of class struggle with fighting against Great Russian Chauvinism and the oppression of nationalities, kept reproducing these modern paradoxes. As this dissertation shows, Soviet Jews - an anomaly among the many Soviet nationalities - became the ultimate culmination and expression of this tension between the particular and the universal. The JAC, established in 1941 as part of the war against fascism, was to negotiate this very tension in a time where Soviet Jewish particularity came to the fore and was even officially embraced. Exploring the story of its members, their actions, and the different meanings assigned to them, I show how the tension Soviet Jews embodied in their otherness ultimately became irreconcilable. This was an outcome of the recognition of Jewish particular suffering during the war that unavoidably also pointed to Soviet paradoxes and aggression. The particular suffering, thus, had to be repressed along with the particular aggression, only to return as the Anti-cosmopolitan campaign – the very campaign that marked the JAC’s demise. This dissertation, thus, explains the shift in attitude toward Soviet Jews in the postwar years, not through such causalities as the beginning of the cold war or the establishment of the state of Israel, but through an exploration of Soviet fantasies of friendship, unity, and universality.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-j4se-sf69
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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