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Understanding museum as a tool of mediation, premediation and remediation of cultural memory, I focus in this article on two case studies — the Jewish Museum in Sarajevo and Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade. While the Jewish Museum in Sarajevo positiones the city of Sarajevo as the first center of Jewish life in Balkans, the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade claims to be the only museum in ex-Yugoslavia presenting the history of Jews in the entire region. Both museums, therefore, claim to be the most important museums on this topic in the region, and certainly in a way compete to each other. What are the real stories hidden under these narratives, and which political and historical circumstances influence the fact that these two museums represent such contrasting stories? With the help of content analysis of the museum exhibitions, I detalize the narratives presented in the both case studies. In the focus of my interest is contextualization of Jewish history in the region and juxtaposition of the ways it is presented in the chosen museums. Obviously, Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade still represents the unifying Yugoslavian narrative, serving as an umbrella museum for the entire region. In case of Sarajevo, close connection between ongoing process of victimization of the recent past of the city and mythologization of preYugoslavian life in Sarajevo, together with idealization of Bosnian-Jewish relations can be observed. Additionally, I look into the way of representation of the topic of the Holocaust. In the both case studies, the way of narration of the Holocaust is closely linked to the dominant historical narrative of the country, and the museum exposition serves as yet another justification of it. In both cases, the narrative of the Holocaust is shadowed by the previously existing historical tradition — in Yugoslavian times, the Holocaust was predominantly connected to the Ustasha regime and was symbolized by Jasenovac. Nevertheless, within current political realities, the Holocaust memory and the memory of Jewish life in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina undergoes certain changes and becomes instrumentalized in many contexts.

One of the most prominent and at the same time the most complicated storylines of Lithuanian history between two world wars — the conflict between Lithuania and Poland for Vilnius. It is important to note that dramatic events occurred in Vilnius and around it, which essentially determined the democratic relations between Lithuania and Poland in the interwar period, influenced not only Lithuanians and Poles, but also national minorities living there for many centuries, first of all — the most numerous and influential Jewish communities. Geopolitical changes, the loss of historical capital and proclamation of Provisional capital affect the new search of coexistence of Vilnius and Kaunas Jewish communities with the dominant nation and directly affects cultural, political development. This paper attempts to present how the Vilnius question influenced the positions and choices of the Kaunas Jewish community in interwar years. Kaunas Jews have survived the crisis of identity in a provisional capital. In this period, Kaunas Jews began to create a new system — the alternative "Jerusalem of Lithuania". Furthermore, Kaunas Jews joined the Vilnius liberation campaign in 1930s together with Lithuanians.

The article analyzes the "passportization" of the local, primarily Jewish, population of the Polish territories annexed to the USSR, particularly in Western Belorussia in 1940–1941. The Author considers this transformation not only as a measure of unification, but also as an important method of migration control, as well as "purification" of the social image of cities in the "new" border zone. In the focus of the article is the Jewish population. Since the majority of the Jews fitted at the same time to several paragraphs of the secret instructions on the issuance of passports "with restriction" (which in fact meant a ban on residence in the border town), they were particularly affected during the implementation of the "passportization".

The article makes an attempt to compare handwritten texts of local correspondence received by the newspaper "Bezbozhnik" in the 1920s–1930s, and citizens' letters published in the newspaper. I consider «a letter to the editorial office of the newspaper "Bezbozhnik'» as the situation of social interaction "here and now" and discuss the roles of the participants, editors and correspondents, in this situation. As a research method, I use the language analysis of texts, its form and content. I review two cases: the implicit editors' struggle against anti-Semitism in the newspaper and five unpublished letters from Odessa demanding the closure of synagogues. The chosen approach allows me to make some observations about the social and cultural attitudes of Jews in the USSR in the 1920s–1930s: their relation to a cultural and family memory, social responsibility, power and time. These attitudes, expressed in the letters language, I guess, had consequences in the further social and, in particular, anti-religious processes in the USSR.

In the article, we consider such language realities as abbreviations that were found at the Beshenkovichi cemetery in Belarus during the field expedition which was conducted by the "Sefer" Center in 2016. The goal of all the abbreviations is to reduce space on the material and to speed writing. The article describes in detail all kinds of abbreviations (alphabetic, sound and spelling) found in the epitaphs as well as general tendencies and peculiarities of their use on tombstones are revealed. For example, the most common abbreviations are the abbreviations "Here rests" ("Pei-Nun") and "Tantzevah" ("ה''תנצב — ("the final blessing. They are traditional for the region, but relate to two different types of abbreviations, alphabetic and sound respectively. Per contra, the use of the abbreviation "modest woman" ("שהצנו(י)הא ,("which does not occur in other burials of Eastern Belarus, is a characteristic feature of the cemetery epitaphs. Its peculiarity is in the fact that both words are written together, and the connecting part represented with the letter "hey" ("-ה ,("- which semantically is perceived the ending of the feminine gender of the word "woman" (Hebrew האשה (as well as a definite article to the adjective "modest" agreed with it (Hebrew הצנועה.( Thus, the abbreviations found in the epitaphs of the Beshekovichi cemetery were identified and described in the article together with the potential reasons for their use in the texts indicated. However, it is difficult to draw a conclusion on the interpretation of such phenomena (at the same time, both traditional abbreviations and explicit features of the cemetery). This may require further study of the funerary culture of the region.

This paper presents an article by Rabbi Dr. S. Levi published in 1921 in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums about French Jewish army rabbis and Jewish praying books from World War One distributed among Jewish soldiers in French Army. Levi served himself as an Army Rabbi in German army. He used his own experience to highlight the most interesting and significant features of French approach toward Jewish military service in time of war. This article of Rabbi Levi serves as an example of continuation of the pre-war GermanJewish self-identification as both culturally German and religiously Jewish. However, it also presented an interesting depiction of the technical details about French Army praying book. In contrast to German Jewry, their French counterparts published praying book under the auspices of the Chief Rabbi of France and distributed in with the help of his office. Levi pointed out that these praying books reflect in their content the original war time religiosity, which was still important to reconstruct and to reflect about in the after war epoch. The Great Rabbi of France gave his sanctions for the publishing the Prayer for the War Time and Prayer for France, both prayers bore his name and originated in the years 1914-1915. Dr. Levi justly saw in the figure of the Great Rabbi a central authority for the Jews in the French uniform. The French praying book was designated not only for the French Jews of European origin who mostly had had Alsace and Lorraine roots, but also for the Sephardic Jews from the French colonies in North Africa (Morocco and Algiers). Because of this fact, this praying book was different in its content from both German Jewish praying books. It provided two versions of the Hebrew texts in accordance to Ashkenazi and Sephardic rites. Both versions, the Ashkenazi (and the German one as Dr. Levi called it) and the Sephardic were printed together. Dr. Levi thought that it was necessary to highlight the differences between these two Jewish rites. He found that there elements in general were of great importance whereas his Ashkenazi German readers would find it confusing to differentiate between ritual nuances with their Sephardic co-religionists, namely in the conducting the death-, burial- and mourning praying ceremonies. In accordance to the articles published in the Monatsschrift Jewish experiences during the First World War were positively evaluated by their German co-religionists.

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate an influence of Jewish salons of Berlin on the intellectual life of Prussia at the turn of the XVIII–XIX centuries. As a form of communication, salon is characterized with an active participation of women in «traditionally» men's discussions on politics, philosophy and literature. Woman, as a rule, an aristocrat, selected a public at her discretion and moderated a conversation. A blossom of salon culture in Prussia took place at the second quarter of the XVIII century. Influence of Jewish salons on intellectual life of the kingdom is consided to be a one of the topics-in-question for researchers in this field. Deborah Hertz, Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger and Renata Fuchs are inclined to represent Jewish salons as a phenomenon of a great significance for both Prussian Jews' life and cultural climat of German- speaking space. Hannah Lund and Barbara Hahn assess Jewish salons as one of integrative channels at the turn of the XVIII–XIX centuries. The sourse base of this article is presented with a wide correspondense and memoires by actors of salon communication in Berlin, as well as with satirical writings. In this article, the most famous Jewish salons' hostesses — Henriette Herz and Rahel Levin — are presented. High social position of Jewish women's families, as well as their accomplishment and originality incited a great interest to them. Eminent German cultural activists were among the guests of Jewish salons. Intensive communication with Jewish women affected creativity of German authors. So, it is traced in the present article, how a friendship of Henriette Herz with Friedrich Schleiermacher influenced on his formation as a founder of the original religious concept. Also, a role of Dorothea Mendelsohn in Friedrich Schlegel's life and creativity is highlighted. A special attention is paid to the Jewish women's literary activity as an important component of cultural integration. On a Dorothea Mendelsohn's example, author makes an attempt to demonstrate that affiliation to salon circles gave Jewish women a possibility to start their literary activity. Author of the present article traces a reaction of Prussian conservative literary circles to a popularity of Jewish salons. On examples of Friedrich Nicolai and August Bernhardi is demonstrated, how a fear of feminization and Jewish integration are reflected in Prussian satire at the end of the XVIII century.

The article discusses the problem of social identity, its characteristics, conditions of formation. The theme of identity is the most relevant at the present stage of development of Russian society. This is due to the fact that the reforms being carried out in the country require active civic participation in their implementation, and this requires an understanding of the relationship in the socio-economic transformations to individual and social, subjective and group, national and personal, that is, there is reason for the formation of a multidimensional phenomenon of identity. The authors conclude that ignoring the process of identity formation poses a threat of failures in economic, political and cultural transformations, since new forms of socio-economic relations often conflict with the already existing concept of the individual "I" that embodies his life ideals, conditions and forms of life. It was established that under these conditions it is the formation of positive social
self-identification as a reflection of personal self-awareness that is the most important factor in the stable development of modern society and the leading motivating factor in combining people's efforts to solve socially significant problems. The article presents a theoretical analysis of the interpretations of the concepts of identity, identification, social identity, as well as an empirical analysis of the social identity of the inhabitants of the Jewish Autonomous Region. The study not only made it possible to establish the interests of the inhabitants of the study area, but also to make predictions regarding the content of their social activities, reactions to external events.

Introduction. "Crimea project" is unsuccessful attempts to create a Jewish national territorial autonomy on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula in 1920–1940s of the 20th century. The topic was poorly elaborated in historiography. In this regard, this topic frequently became the ground for historical myths and pseudo-scientific statements. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the "Crimea project" coverage in American media in 1920–1940s of the 20th century and to identify the patterns in topic presentations.

Methods. In this paper, we used such methods as analysis, synthesis, retrospective analysis, the historical genetic method, historical comparative, and the analysis of text. We selected The New York Times newspaper as the main source as it is one of the oldest, continuous and credible media reflecting liberal agenda.

Analysis. In the paper, we analyze articles devoted to "Crimea project" during 20–40s of the 20th century. This article examines about 30 articles devoted to the Jewish agrarization, the project of creating a Jewish national autonomy in Crimea, the anti-Semitism problem in the USSR. This publications are examined in the context of struggle between zionists and anti-zionists in the USA as well.

Results. Most articles focuse on the social aspect, namely agrarization. The political moments of "Crimea project" are addressed less frequently, mainly in the frame of the statements of Soviet officials on the possibility of creating a Jewish autonomy on the territory of the Steppe Ukraine and Northern Crimea. The paper pays attention to the authors' little knowledge on the real situation and mistakes in its coverage.

The interwar period is characterized by changes in social and economic structure of the Jewish population of Poland. The policy of state regulation caused sharp decline in living standards and the social status of broad masses of the Jewish population here. It could not but cause violations of processes of socialization. In general the number of the penal acts made by Jews in the territory of the Western Belarus during the interwar period was lower, than the number of the crimes committed by other citizens of Poland: the number of criminals in the Jewish environment was half less, than among representatives of other nationalities. It is explained by a number of factors. But in the Jewish environment did not do without crimes. Poles more often than Jews, judged for theft, a robbery, for murders and also for the crimes committed for political motives. Jews in turn are more often mentioned in the affairs connected with economic crimes: buying up and sale stolen, fake of money, trade in foreign currency, falsification of documents. Article is written on the basis of the analysis of materials of the State archive of the Grodno region. Here as the most widespread in the Jewish environment the following crimes are recorded: theft, speculation, illegal crossing of border and also murder.

II–III c. gave the world what is now called "Judaism" and "Christianity". Two religions, which are now perceived as original and separate from each other, at that time had many intersection points. Christianity had not yet rid itself of its Jewish past, and in the Jewish environment there were many people who accepted Jesus' messianism and converted to a new faith. However, more gentiles people in the II c. come to the Christian community, while the Jewish are closing themselves from the outside world. Christian literature directed against the Jews (Adversus Judaeos) contributed to this. Although studying the treatises created in this period from in different provinces of the Roman Empire, we can see how much more refined and reasoned these works become. However, it is evident that, in the process of the development of the Adversus Judaeos texts Christian authors rarely invest their own knowledge of Judaism, but only draw us the image of the Jew of that time, borrowing arguments from the writings of their predecessors. In this article we will trace the transformation of the image of the Jews and the emergence of the concept of "Judaism" in the Christian environment on the basis of three polemic works — Justin's "Dialogue with Trypho" (mid-2nd c.), "On the Passover" by Melito (160–170) and Tertullian's "Against the Jews" (2nd half of 3rd c). At the same time, the analysis of the historical and cultural context of the places there the treatises were created, shows that the extent to which the image of Judaism was perceived in the Christian anti-Judaic treatises was influenced by the position of these two communities in ancient society. Furthermore, the notion "Judaism" emerges in the Christian environment, which Christian authors counter posed to "Christianity", creating a counterculture, through which they indicated the distinctive features of their religion, showed its advantage.

Jewish population of the USSR can be characterized by very high and growing level of tertiary education and high share of intellectual laborers. At the same time as it is evident from memoires Jews faced discrimination while applying to higher education as well as later in their professional trajectories. Many families had to adapt to this discrimination and to find ways to get access to higher education. Statistics is not enough to research this problem as level of education for Jews remained high despite discrimination. That is why we decide to explore memoires as a source for study of these discrimination barriers and recourses that helped people to cope with them. We chose cases from web site with Jewish memoires (http://berkovich-zametki.com) and in this paper we provide first results of analysis and hypothesis for further investigation. We found out that memoires are more likely to be written by those who managed to cope with difficulties and achieved success. Also we see that memoires are written in certain genres such as «rise of national consciousness» or «struggle for justice». Resources that helped to cope with discrimination mentioned in memoires are social and cultural capital (in terms in Bourdieu) and being ready to use them. We conclude that drawbacks of memoires for our study is that we cannot isolate barriers in access to education from further barriers in carrier pathways, and memoires are not sufficient to understand the resources which helped to cope with discrimination.

The paper considers is the transformation of the image of the Ottoman Empire in the publicistic texts by Ephraim Deinard, outstand ing Jewish writer and journalist of the turn of the 19th and 20th centu ries. The research was based on two Deinard's works, "Atidot Israel" ("The Future of Israel", 1892) and "Tzion be'ad mi?" ("Zion for Whom?", 1918), which deal with a variety of topics, including Deinard's opinion on the Ottoman Empire. In particular, the radical change of his position from the statements in "Atidot Israel" to those in "Tzion be'ad mi?" is observed. Deinard discusses the following three aspects, each case being a vivid example of this controversy: 1. The Ottoman government's attitude towards Jews and the pros pects of the collaboration of the Jewish community with the government; 2. The economic situation in the Ottoman Empire and its foreign policy; 3. The culture and cultural policy in the Ottoman Empire. Deinard's interest in Turkey was initially caused by his Zionist views, as the Land of Israel was part of the Ottoman Empire. Later, after World War I and especially after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the Zionists placed their expectations on Britain, while Turkey, after losing the war and the territory so important for Jews, could no more be praised by Dei nard. In addition, Deinard had lived in the USA for more than 30 years by 1918, and it is merely logical that his publicistic works were aimed against the USA's enemy in World War I. This shift looks especially interesting when looked at through the context of the history of the Russian Jewish Enlightenment. A very simi lar process occurred in the ideology of the Russian maskilim in the 19th century. Throughout the 19th century, they believed that the Jews should be integrated in the Russian society and viewed the Russian government as their ally. The Russian authorities, correspondingly, tried to assimilate the Jews and to make them an integral part of the society. However, af ter the pogroms of 1880s, the authorities' attitude towards Jews changed dramatically, and so did that of the maskilim towards the government. Laws regarding Jews were tightened and became openly anti-Semitic, and the maskilim started to criticize the state instead of hoping for col laboration with it. Deinard's works used for this research date to a later period. More over, the aforementioned events influenced his positive attitude towards the Ottoman Empire: concerning the status of Jews in the both countries, Deinard opposed Turkey to Russia. Eventually, however, Turkey took the same place for Deinard as Russia did for his predecessors, the maskilim. His hopes for collaboration with the state were just as replaced by disap pointment and criticism. To conclude, the above similarity may suggest that the shift in Dein ard's views might have correlated with the change in the ideology of the Russian maskilim.

In the revolutionary year 1905, Odessa became an area of violence in the tension of social, religious and cultural upheaval. In this year there were strikes, escalations of revolutional mood, a fire in the port after the arrival of the battleship «Knjaz´ Potemkin-Tavričeskij» («Potemkin») in the night of June 14-15. Arrival of the rebellious battleship was a significant event not only for the city of Odessa and the Russian revolution, but also for the history of the fate of Jews of the early 20th century. This was the first armed insurrection in the course of the revolution, which moved Odessa and its social, geographical and semiotic city spaces. The «Potemkin days» entered the history of the city of Odessa mainly through the periodicals of that time but also through the Russian-Jewish literature such as Lazar Karmen's story «Potemkin Days» (1907), Korney Chukovsky's essay «1905, June» (1958) and Vladimir Jabotinsky's novel «The Five» (1936). These works depict not only the resulting collective violence but also its semiotic and social spaces in the city. Up until now, this field has not been investigated in any historical, cultural or literary research. The focus of this paper is to analyse geographical, social and symbolic city spaces in Odessa with the help of the space theories by Jury Lotman and Michel de Certeau. Both scholars work with the definitions of the city, the place and the space, which are significant for the selected literate works about Odessa in 1905. The analysis will show not only the ambivalence, mobility and variability of city spaces, but also the narrators expectations and thus the fate of Jews in Odessa and the perspectives in the historical processes for them — assimilation or emigration.

Identity in modern sociocultural discourse is one of the most actual issues that affects at epistemological, cultural and social processes. Variability, pluralism and the changing nature of the conditions in which the individual acts create certain models for choice. The problem of selfdetermination of an individual in such ambiguous discourse is put forward on one of the first plans of philosophical themes of the present day. The analysis of identity allows defining and explaining the changes in the social and personal aspects of self-determination of a person. Religion is the main factor of the individual's identity, which creates the feeling that the world really is what it seems. Representatives of a religious minority have an additional element of solidarity based on isolation from representatives of the titular denomination of a certain region. In this article, an attempt has been made to comprehend the mechanisms for constructing the identity of representatives of progressive Judaism in Russia (on the example of the community of Le-dor Va-dor in Moscow). Analysis of the design of the identity of representatives of progressive Judaism allows us to identify the most significant constants in the ways of identifying a person in a multi-confessional modern society. The mere fact of the existence in Russia of progressive Judaism gives rise to the formation of specifically separate relationships between representatives of different currents of Judaism. In the religious space of the city of Moscow, the progressive community of Judaism occupies a significant place among the Jewish population, which, due to the processes of globalization, increasingly turns to religion as a factor of referring itself to a certain community. The strategy of building an identity by the progressive community of Judaism in Moscow shows that the community as a public institution based on the reproduction of established traditions takes its own specific features. The mechanisms of constructing religious identity within the framework of the community under consideration became the basis for group consolidation and acquired the status of significant for each individual within this community. This local version of progressive Judaism is largely different from the Western version and has its own specific features.