Contemporary Jewish Writing in Europe: A Guide

4. Bonds with a Vanished Past: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Scandinavia

four ‰ Eva Ekselius Bonds with a Vanished Past: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Scandinavia The Jewish communities in the Scandinavian countries represent an extremely small demographic minority. (“Scandinavia” formally comprises Sweden, Norway , and Denmark but, as is the case here, often includes Finland.) Sweden, whose Jewish population keeps increasing, has the largest concentration of Jews—some 18,000 out of a total population of 9 million—whereas Catholics and Muslims are each about ten times as numerous as Jews. Denmark, Norway , and Finland have about half the population of Sweden (each with 4.5 to 5 million inhabitants), but while there are 8,000 Jews in Denmark, there are only 1,500 in Norway and 1,200 in Finland. Given the size of the Jewish population , the large number of contemporary Jewish authors is astonishing. The literature of Scandinavian writers of Jewish origin reflects their relationships toward the past, with its long history of Jewish assimilation into a Protestant yet exceedingly modern secular society. The Shoah and the previous incidents of persecution brought new waves of Jewish immigrants; their experiences constitute the dark core of many of the narratives told by Jewish writers active in Sweden. In the writings of Danish Jewish authors, the period of German occupation and the dramatic evacuation of virtually all of Denmark’s seven thousand Jews to Sweden remain recurrent themes. Bonds with a Vanished Past 63 In many of the stories by authors born during or after the Shoah, the Jewish world appears to have vanished, with only faint and fragile memories remaining. The plot often centers on the protagonist’s attempt to reconstruct an image of a past that he or she—as well as the authors themselves—never knew. Survivors of the Shoah have borne witness to the atrocities both in memoirs and autobiographical novels. However, those authors who belong to the next generation often describe having to confront a wall of silence surrounding the trauma of the Shoah. The shadow of the Holocaust is despicted as everpresent , but the traumatic experiences of war, persecution, and concentration camps are communicated only through fragments of conversations, or by means of letters or notes found by those who remain. The attempt to penetrate this wall of silence and to create a narrative out of these shattered pieces of information reflects the desire to reconnect with a broken Jewish tradition and to reestablish a link to a vanished Jewish world. There are also those writers who feel well grounded in Judaism and Jewish thought. They are often nonfiction writers concerned with aspects of Jewish ethics related to issues of global and social justice, gender, and the political situation in the Middle East. In their writing they respond to the challenges of Jewish philosophy by bringing it into contemporary political discourse. Jewish writing in Scandinavia has to be viewed in the light of the history of the Scandinavian Jews. Even if “Portuguese” Jews were already living in Copenhagen in the seventeenth century, Jews did not represent a significant minority in the Scandinavian countries until the nineteenth century. In 1775 the first Jew was allowed to settle in Sweden without first becoming a Christian. He soon received permission to let another ten Jewish men and their families join him. In 1815 there were 785 Jews residing in the country; by 1870 their numbers had increased to 3,000. Many of these Jews were highly skilled, and enjoyed royal protection . Their descendants soon acquired wealth and prestige within the commercial , financial, and industrial sectors where they were permitted to work. Well-to-do merchants, manufacturers, and factory owners dominated the first generations of Jews in Sweden. Material wealth rather than scholarship and piety led to social rank and prestige. To consolidate the fragile acceptance of the Jews and to counteract anti-Semitism, some of the wealthiest Jews donated large sums for philanthropic purposes or to support the arts. A few generations later the Jewish community had produced some of the country’s most prominent scholars. Several of Sweden’s most well known families—Josephson, Philipson, Lamm, Hirsch, Bonnier, Wahren, Markus, Mannheimer, Schück, Heckscher, Abrahamson, Benedicks—were descended from these pioneer Jewish immigrants . Influenced by the accomplishments of the Enlightenment and of emancipation , many sought total assimilation. As Per Wästberg has commented 64 eva ekselius with respect to his ancestor Axel Hirsch, “Stockholm and its archipelago were their home district, not the desert and olive groves...