Kaupunkivähemmistön rajat : Helsingin juutalaisyhteisö Venäjän keisarikunnan loppuajoista 1970-luvulle

The aim of this study is to analyze how ethnic-boundary drawing has been influenced in the urban context by the turbulent events of twentieth-century Europe. The analysis is specifically applied to the social boundaries of the small Helsinki Jewish community from the early twentieth century until the 1970s. In the period covered by this research, Helsinki evolved from a multilingual and heterogeneous military town of the Russian empire into the capital of an independent nation. As one of the few Eastern European Orthodox Jewish communities not destroyed in the Holocaust, the history of the Helsinki Jewish community offers a different set of spatial contexts that make this history an empirical case study of changing ethnic relations from one generation to another. My study suggests that empirical materials can be used as clues for teasing into existence the long-vanished practices of boundary-drawing done at various times in the past. Collecting and organizing information in archives is always guided by decisions that reflect the contemporary ideas of relevant and meaningful social categories. Consequently, as Jews in Finland became Finnish Jews, the ethnic background subsequently lost its distinction in the archival material; in short, the sources gradually became mute in this respect. My research strategy is to focus on questions concerning the economic aspects of social boundaries, for example, whether the members of the Helsinki Jewish congregation were entrepreneurs or were self-employed. I have operationalized occupational status to analyze changes in the social position of the community. The occupational titles were collected from three different cross-section years and organized by using a Historical International Classification of Occupations (HISCO) Scheme. By combining the occupational titles with the data on the Jewish-owned companies, I have established a set of descriptive statistics. Supported by the findings of this empirical material, my study analyzes how the concept of Finnish Jews has taken shape over the entire period of this study. Contemporaries writing about the Jews of Finland did not use concepts of ethnic boundaries, but nevertheless considered questions related to economic aspects as the key elements in modern societies. Such questions were a constant theme in modern economic antisemitism with a major influence on Jewish policies, such as the restriction of Jewish occupations in Finland until 1918, which in turn influenced the (counter-)narratives of Jewish business. This is what makes the Jewish occupations so interesting and also makes discussing them such a sensitive issue. The community is an important part of the history of Helsinki, but it has only been accepted as a part of the larger Finnish society since the Second World War. During this process, Jews were clearly less frequently categorized as Jews and more frequently categorized by the professions they represented. In this study I have contextualized different aspects of what has been selected and written down as Finnish-Jewish history. This involves discovering the political positions of its various authors. All histories on the Finnish Jews have been written during the post-Second World War period and, in consequence, are unavoidably viewed through post-Shoah/Cold War lenses. In these writings, the national and transnational aspects are totally severed and become, indeed, mutually exclusive. The Jewish history of Helsinki is often told as a collective story, where each generation faces similar challenges and options. In this way, the past has been described as a joint striving for all Finnish Jews. In reality, wide economic differences have played an important role in what is ultimately a business-oriented community. In this narrative, the Jewish history has been reduced to a bare minimum in order to serve as a collective story. Consequently, in the histories of the city of Helsinki, Jews have either been described as poor, or they have not been remembered at all.Valtiotieteiden maisteri Laura Ekholmin väitöskirjatutkimus analysoi Euroopan 1900-luvun suurten murrosten vaikutuksia kaupunkiväestön etnisiin suhteisiin. Tarkastelun kohteena on Helsingin juutalaisyhteisö 1900-luvun alusta 1970-luvulle. Helsingin historia luo siten ainutlaatuisen asetelman etnisten ja sosiaalisten suhteiden pitkän aikavälin empiiriselle tarkastelulle. Helsinki muuttui Venäjän keisarikunnan monikielisestä varuskuntakaupungista itsenäisen valtion pääkaupungiksi. Lisäksi Suomen juutalaisyhteisöt olivat niitä harvoja Itä-Euroopan ortodoksijuutalaisista yhteisöistä, joita ei tuhottu holokaustissa. Monet juutalaisista perheistä ovat todellisia kantahelsinkiläisiä, mutta osaksi Suomen historiaa heidät on hyväksytty vasta toisen maailmansodan jälkeen. Ekholm osoittaa tutkimuksellaan, että historiallisia aineistoja voi käyttää etnisyyden tutkimuksessa. Asiakirjalähteet on koottu ja järjestetty sen perustella, mitä on pidetty tietämisen ja säilyttämisen arvoisena. Ne heijastavat siten heijastavat aikalaisten tekemiä luokitteluja. Tutkimusajanjaksolla Suomessa asuvista juutalaisista tuli suomenjuutalaisia. Aineistossa prosessi näkyy etniseen taustaan liittyvien luokittelujen vähenemisenä. Aineistot vaikenevat vähitellen asioista, joita ei ole enää pidetty yhteiskunnallisesti merkittävänä; yksilöitä ei enää luokiteltu juutalaisina vaan ammattikuntiensa edustajina. Työssä käytetty tutkimusstrategia on lähestyä etnistä rajanvetoa talouteen liittyvien kysymysten kautta, esimerkiksi tarkastelemalla, ovatko Helsingin juutalaisen seurakunnan jäsenet työskennelleet palkansaajina vai toimineet yrittäjinä. Yhteisön sosiaalisen aseman analysoimiseen on käytetty ammattiasemaan liittyviä määreitä. Juutalaisen seurakunnan ammattirakenne on kartoitettu kolmelta eri poikkileikkausvuodelta ja ammattinimikkeiden jaotteluun on käytetty HISCO (Historical International Classification of Occupations) -luokitusjärjestelmää. Vaikka aikalaiset eivät puhuneet etnisen rajanvedon käsitteillä, he olivat kiinnostuneita vähemmistöjen taloudellisesta asemasta. Talous on ollut merkittävä osa antisemitististä retoriikkaa, mikä on vaikuttanut politiikkaan juutalaisten ammatteja koskevat rajoitukset olivat voimassa Suomessa vuoteen 1918. Tällä oli myös vaikutusta juutalaisen yrittäjyyden (vasta)narratiiviin. Jännite tekee suomenjuutalaisten ammattirakenteen tutkimisesta kiinnostavaa, mutta samalla vaativaa. Suomenjuutalaisia käsittelevä historiankirjoitus on toisen maailmansodan jälkeiseltä ajalta, minkä vuoksi tarkastelua on rajannut holokaustin jälkeisen ajan ja kylmän sodan reunaehdot. Kansallinen näkökulma on sulkenut pois transnationaalisen, eikä kansainvälisiä kysymyksiä ole yleensä johdettu koskemaan suomenjuutalaisia

Jews, second-hand trade and upward economic mobility : Introducing the ready-to-wear business in industrializing Helsinki, 1880-1930

Peer reviewe

Name changes and visions of ”a new Jew” in the Helsinki Jewish community

This article discusses an organized name-change process that occurred in the 1930s in the Jewish community of Helsinki. Between 1933 and 1944 in approximately one fifth of the Helsinki Jewish families (c. 16 %) someone had their family name changed. We argue that the name changes served two purposes: on the one hand they made life easier in the new nation state. It was part of a broader process where tens of thousands of Finns translated and changed their Swedish names to Finnish ones. On the other hand, the changed family names offered a new kind of Jewish identity. The name-changing process of the Helsinki Jews opens a window onto the study of nationalism, antisemitism, identity politics and visions of a Jewish future from the Finnish perspective

Culture, context and family networks : Value and Knowledge Transfers among Eastern European Jews in Nordic Countries, 1880-1940

Peer reviewe

Ulkomaiset yritykset Suomessa : toiveet ja pelot

Peer reviewe

Kuinka trikoosta tuli päällysvaate? : Trikoovaatteet 1960-luvun murroksena

Peer reviewe

Reading the Margins of Business Censuses : The Garment Industry and Home-based Industrial Work in Sweden and Finland, 1930s to 1960s

Peer reviewe

Linguistic, cultural and history-related studies on Jews in Finland: a look into the scholarship in the twenty-first century

There has been a significant growth in volume and disciplines working on Jewish history and culture in Finland for the past fifteen years, yet no systematic overview of scholarly efforts have been available. This article aims to fill this gap. Our focus is on the disciplines of linguistics, cultural studies and history. Our overview covers monographs and articles that have appeared in academic publications since 2000, with a focus on Finland. Consequently we have left out Finnish research on Jews in other parts of the globe from our review. About half of the works introduced in this article have been published in Finnish and will now be briefly introduced to a wider Nordic scholarly community. The article consists of four parts. First we discuss Jewish studies and social history pursued in Finland. We then discuss studies focusing on antisemitism in Finland. The third part introduces the relevant literature on Finland’s role in the Second World War and its responsibility towards the conflict’s Jewish refugees and prisoners of war, after which studies on Finnish history culture and memory politics are presented. The final part presents biographies and general studies about the Jewish community in Finland.