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C H A P T E R F I V E The Paths Diverge zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcb The Conflict of Identity But the deeper I went into the Church, the more deeply Ifelt myselfas belonging to the people ofIsrael. —Avraham, Jerusalem 1998 Either you are a Christian, or you are an antisemite. You cannot be both. —Marina, Moscow 1997 In the end my move to Christianity was not an escape from Judaism but, on the contrary, a way of rinding answers to my problems as a Jew. —Brother Daniel, in Tec, In the Lions Den, 167 T H E R U S S I A N J E W I S H C H R I S T I A N S interviewed for this book moved along their respective paths of faith at various speeds, and to varying destinations. One, at least, has left Christianity completely , although he maintains social ties with other Orthodox believers. Yura, this Jewish Christian "apostate," refused to be recorded, claiming he did not want to talk about himself, but was willing to give general statements about the period, and to help me meet others. H e was as curious about why an American Jew (myself) would have an academic interest in Russian Orthodoxy, as I was interested in the Russian Jews (like himself) who had at some point joined the Orthodox Church. W h e n pressed for specifics, he spoke of his former cohort in the Church fondly, but referred to the "blinders" that they wear. It is a group, he claimed, that does not look on Jews as people, but as a concept. They read Berdyaev and Florensky as contemporaries, not seeing that life has changed. Marina had 100 The Conflict of Identity IOI already spoken with me about this naive "misreading" of Berdyaev's use of the term "freedom" by Russian Jewish intellectuals attracted to Orthodoxy . There was sure to be some disillusionment, or reassessment at best, when the Church did not prove to be so existentially free. For those who begin to see the disparity between their assumptions and hopes for a new life in freedom and the reality of the Church, any retreat can be painful. Marina, perhaps referring directly to Yura, I cannot be sure, confessed that ChristianityzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONM is afire that is very difficult to exit. I know very many people . . . I have a very goodfriend who has gone through this. A Jew. He was baptized, and then somehow put it aside. I know a lot of such people. . . . Thefact is that Christianity does not let you out very easily. It is difficult to enter, and even more difficult to leave. It always remains with you, thatfeeling of stepping away, of leaving. Speaking with Yura, I began to recognize not only the similarities, but the differences among my "clients," as he jokingly called them. Those differences , I realized, were most pronounced not at the beginning of their paths, but further along the road; baptism into the Orthodox Church led these Jews in many different directions. Despite the difficulties, I suspect that quite a few Russian Jews, perhaps even the majority, stepped away from the Church after their initial flirtation with it, and now look at their earlier faith as no more than a youthful phase, confined to a time and place in their and the Soviet Union's past. I was not as likely to know about those "ex-Christians," who have, now, no connection whatsoever to their former Christianity. And because of my interest in the relationship of national and spiritual identity , I would not be as interested in their path. Instead, I have focused on those who passed through a period of intense participation in the Russian Orthodox Church—sometimes serving as lay officials, sometimes, as we saw, even entering the clergy—and now, in Israel, in New York, and even in Moscow, find themselves searching for a new expression of their religious faith that includes, rather than rejects, what they learned of themselves—as Jews—in the Church. To a certain extent, the degree of distance from or participation in the official Orthodox Church today depends for these Russian Jewish Christians on the ways in which they have come to understand their Jewishness , and how they have chosen to cope with antisemitism within the Church, the latter a factor that virtually every one of my interviewees acknowledged. Not surprisingly, the issue of antisemitism forces their Jewishness back into conflict with their religious identity. [18.117.182.179...

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