Food for Thought

Russischsprachige Juden, die nach Deutschland oder Israel ausgewandert sind, leben in vielschichtigen sozialen Realitäten. Dazu gehört auch die Esskultur, die eine besondere Rolle für die Konstruktion von Identität spielen kann, wie Julia Bernstein zeigt. Ihre ethnografische Studie des Alltagslebens, von Lebensmitteln und Lebensmittelverpackungen bringt kulturelle, soziale und ökonomische Bedeutungen des früheren Lebens in der Sowjetunion und des gegenwärtigen Lebens in Israel und Deutschland zum Vorschein. Transnationale Bezüge, so stellt sich heraus, haben tragenden Anteil daran, die widersprüchlichen Lebenswirklichkeiten zu bewältigen.

Auteur

Julia Bernstein, Kulturanthropologin und Künstlerin, ist derzeit wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin und Dozentin an der Fachhochschule Frankfurt.

Échantillon de lecture
1 Migration collages: Studying Russian-speaking Jews in Israel and Germany The study focuses on migrants who are involved, by necessity, in reconstructing their cultural perceptions as well as finding and confirming their place in a new reality. The comparative investigation presented here was conducted in two different contexts-Germany and Israel-among Jewish immigrants who came from the former Soviet Union (SU) after the initiation of Perestroika. The study's principal aim is to examine the multiple affiliations of immigrants that were shaped and modified in these two different cultural and social contexts. This analysis highlights and illuminates the cosmological perceptions and self-definitions of migrants transported from the SU along with their own meaningful experiences and interpretation of key concepts and symbols (Golden 2002; Stonequist 1935, 1937). Undertaken as a project in cultural anthropology, this study aspires to highlight the sites of conjunction and contradictions between, on the one hand, the ideas and perceptions that evolved while living in the SU; and, on the other hand, the expectations of receiving societies, normative thinking, and everyday knowledge of dominant host society. 1.1 Migration and socio-cultural affiliations One of the basic, central premises of the study is that the perceptions as well as the physical conditions of the individual are dynamic and subject to change. Therefore, identities of individual and collective affiliations also undergo changes. As, for example, in the foods selected and prepared by immigrants on their dining table. Hence, we will find that these food products symbolize being-Russian, Jewish, Israeli, German, educated, European and/or that they signal transnational practices of belonging to a certain social stratum. In investigating the migrant experience, I assume that people do not bear or transport with them a self-contained completed culture, but rather there is fluid nature to cultural affiliations as they select and employ cultural elements that are integrated through involvement in special situations, states, or conditions of their existence (Bloch 1963; Boyarin 1994; Gudeman and Rivera 1990; Kalekin-Fishman 2000; Welz 1996, 1997, 1998). Hence, I assume that culture is created through dynamic dialogues as well as permanent changes and modifications, rather than being limited to preserving of stable habits and practices. Therefore, based on these assumptions, this study sought to understand how different affiliations of migrants-be they cultural Russian, European, ex-Soviet, Jewish and different Others-are constructed, modified, co-exist, and presented/performed in particular situations in response to needs within specific situations. Bodnar (1985) referred to this process of identity redefinition as transplantation. Accordingly, analyses advanced in this study do not perceive participants through insulated categories, such as Jewish, Soviet, Russian or German, but rather as "doing being Jewish" (Inowlocki 2000, 175) or doing being-ex-Soviet, Russian, Israeli, or German-through their dynamic practices and everyday interactions. The findings demonstrate that multiple identities co-exist and often contradict one another in various ways: Interviewees speak Russian and act according to Russian cultural practices, but are offended if referred to as Russians; or, they consume pork and simultaneously feel themselves to be Jews, accept support by the social welfare system but perform elitist cultural habitus, invest significant energies and time over three days to prepare meals for a birthday celebration, but claim that food "has actually no meaning for spiritual life." In addition, participants in both contexts articulated affiliation with different collective and "imaginary communities" (Anderson 1991), often expressed through linguistic forms of "we" and "they." These uses were created, changed in situ, presented, confirmed, and performed in various manners. For example, self-referential terms nashi and svoi [lit. ours, ourselves, our own, Rus. approximated meaning as "people of our kind" or those who represent a unified "us"] were involved in a very dynamic and fluid process of doing being nashi that could be called nashi-zation. The meanings evolving in this process are presented throughout different chapters of this work. Thus, the numerous examples of empirical evidence presented throughout this monograph demonstrate different uses and modified meanings of key cultural symbols in the Russian language.

Contenu
Table of Contents Acknowledgments 11 1 Migration collages: Studying Russian-speaking Jews in Israel and Germany 15 1.1 Migration and socio-cultural affiliations 15 1.2 The research approach 17 1.3 Research questions 20 1.4 Research methods 22 1.5 Comparative view of the two populations 33 1.6 General characteristics of the investigated groups 34 1.7 Transporting Jewish identity from the SU 39 1.8 Overview of the book 41 2 Transnationalism and capitalism: Migrants from the former Soviet Union and their experiences in Germany and Israel 45 2.1 The Soviet kind of capitalism: Soviet spirituality vs. Western materialism 50 2.2 Post-Soviet capitalism on food commodities 56 2.3 "Arrival on a new planet" 67 2.4 Reviving Soviet knowledge about the social reality of life in the capitalist system 80 2.5 "The Russia we had always dreamed of"-some conclusions 89 3 "Chocolates without history are meaningless": Pre- and post-migration consumption 95 3.1 Soviet "hunting and gathering" 98 3.2 The classic Soviet recipe rook: On the Tasty and Healthy Food Book 107 3.3 Social skills of post-migration consumption 114 3.4 Alternative ways of procurement and free consumption 123 3.5 Contested procurement 141 4 Russian food stores in Israel and Germany: Images of imaginary home, homeland, and identity consolidation 142 4.1 Visibility of Russian food stores in Israel and Germany 146 4.2 Image of the hostess in the Russian food stores 150 4.3 Longing for the REAL home via food 153 4.4 Commercial promotion of nostalgia 164 4.5 Images of the Soviet paradise 172 4.6 Image of Soviet proletarian food or the imaginary proletarian home 178 4.7 Images of the Soviet empire and the Soviet political iconography of food post-emigration 184 4.8 Nationalized Russia in food products and gastronomic Slavophilism of ex-citizens abroad 200 4.9 Meanings of Russian food stores in Israel and Germany 211 5 Russian food stores in Israel and Germany: Different national symbolic participations and virtual transnational enclave 219 5.1 Special national key symbols crossing borders and manifestations of identity: The symbolic meaning of pork and caviar in different national contexts 222 5.2 Pork 226 5.3 Caviar 248 5.4 Mixed national identities in Russian food stores in Israel and Germany 256 5.5 Reconsidering the immigrant enterprise: From traditional, closed ethnic business toward a virtual transnational enclave 268 6 Transjewish affiliation: The construction of ethnicity…