Jewish Identity and Community Participation in the Era of Croatian Neoliberalism

Abstract

This paper explores Jewish identity and community life in Croatia in the new millennium. Examining the interconnectedness of neoliberalism and the politics of rewriting and suppressing historical narratives, I consider Jewish identity negotiation and community participation in a post-socialist capitalist system. With Croatia’s unsettling history and changing political economy as the backdrop, I examine how the expansion of neoliberal cultural values has made room for multiple views of Croatian history: I argue that the sociocultural climate has produced an essentialized view of Jews and the Jewish community, whose survival is not aided by populist historical revisionism. In line with the changing political economy, Jewish community leadership has adopted a more restricted understanding of the survival of Jewish identity and community participation. I suggest that the perceived monocausal disappearance of the Croatian Jews and the one-size-fits-all solution is problematic given the particular sociocultural context of Croatian Jewry. I further suggest that the promotion of individualism over collectivism, popularized through the neoliberalization of Croatian society, has negatively affected the Jewish communities in Croatia.