TY  - JOUR
A1  - Czimbalmos, Mercédesz Viktória
A1  - Tuori, Riikka
T1  - Chabad on ice: Jewish encounters with fundamentalism in Finland
T2  - Approaching religion
N2  - The article examines the Finnish branch of Chabad Lubavitch as a fundamentalist and charismatic movement that differs from other branches of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in its approaches to outreach to non-observant Jews. Whilst introducing the history of Chabad Lubavitch in Finland and drawing on historical and archival sources, the authors locate the movement in a contemporary context and draw on 101 semi-structured qualitative interviews of members of the Finnish Jewish communities, who either directly or indirectly have been in contact with representatives of Chabad Finland. The material is examined through the theoretical concept of ‘vicarious religion’. As the results of the article show, whilst Chabad very much adheres to certain fundamentalist approaches in Jewish religious practice, in Finland they follow a somewhat different approach. They strongly rely on people’s sense of Jewish identification and Jewish identity. Individuals in the community ‘consume’ Chabad’s activities vicariously, ‘belong without believing’ or ‘believe in belonging’ but do not feel the need to apply stricter religious observance. Whilst many of them are critical of Chabad and their activities, they do acknowledge that Chabad fills the ‘gaps’ in and outside the Jewish Community of Helsinki, predominantly by creating new activities for some of its members.
KW  - Chabad Lubavitch
KW  - Jewish studies
KW  - Finnish Jewry
KW  - fundamentalism
KW  - vicarious religion
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/62889
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-628894
SN  - 1799-3121
VL  - 12
IS  - 2
SP  - 38
EP  - 58
PB  - [Verlag nicht ermittelbar]
CY  - Åbo
ER  -