Transcarpathia Judaizers: Religious Dynamism and Confessional Identity

Abstract

In the culturally complex Irshava raion of Transcarpathia is a confessional community that has been practicing a post-Soviet version of Judaism, following religious law norms and biblical text understandings of the Old and New testaments. Small and peripheral, they nonetheless illustrate a dynamic understanding of religious conversion and “textual rationalization” that has similarities with the historical creation of new religious communities out of Christianity and Judaism. Although termed here “Judaizers,” this is not a self-appellation. Data derives from fieldwork in 2011-12.