Much of Europe’s political toolbox for facilitating multicultural policies is rusting. One of its biggest and strongest remaining tools, call it the hammer, is the Council of Europe (CoE). This hammer is trying to nail down a web of legislation working towards more recognition for Europe’s diverse cultural heritage.
Expanding on the tool metaphor, the health of Europe’s Jewish minority can be seen as hinges in the door to a welcoming Europe. In the same way that hinges hold two parts together, European Jews have dual identities, and, if oiled well, help open the door for others. The Jews of Sweden provide an excellent example of how this works in practice.
Today, Sweden boasts approximately 15,000 to 20,000 Jews. Sweden is unique in that its Jewry has doubled in size since the pre-war period, most likely due to the influx of Jewish refugees during and after World War II. Indeed, Sweden today has approximately twice as many Jews as the rest of Scandinavia combined (Denmark: 7,000, Finland: 1,100, Norway: 1,200).
One way Sweden has chosen to support its Jewish minority/heritage is through the CoE’s European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (ECRML). In 2000, Yiddish was declared an official minority language of Sweden. Roughly 1,500 Swedish Jews speak Yiddish, though none currently teach it as a mother tongue at home. Yet in declaring Yiddish a cultural Jewish language, the government has deemed it appropriate to invest Swedish time, money, and federal resources into.
The first authority to have a say in this case was the Council of Europe (CoE) itself. The CoE defined regional and minority languages as those “traditionally used… by nationals of that state who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the state’s population.” Thus, Yiddish was, and still is, technically eligible in Sweden. However, there had to be a push in the community to bring this to fruition.
The Swedish government, the second party with authority concerning the ECRML, was lobbied intensely by one or two leaders within the Yiddish speaking community, though it helped that the government was also dealing with certain favorable political underpinnings at the time. Göran Persson, the Swedish Prime Minister from 1996 to 2006, worked extensively with Holocaust education in Sweden, creating the “Living History” project (a national campaign to educate people about the Holocaust) and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance with 31 member states. Consequently, the political environment was ripe for Jewish inclusion in a multiculturalist policy.
The final authority that helped shape the ECRML in Sweden was the Swedish Jewish minority itself. Here it gets a bit complicated as this question dives deeply into issues of cultural ownership and “inclusion” – minorities self-labeling and demarcating themselves as different, unique, and proud. The beauty of spotlighting Yiddish in Sweden is how it proves that even within a group, identity politics is messy.
One year of personal interviews within the Swedish Jewish community has revealed a more complicated, controversial, and emotional debate than expected. On one hand, there is the 60-year-old Swedish Jewish man, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, who grew up in a Yiddish speaking household, but finds the policy “absurd” and ”ridiculous.” He cites his memories of being embarrassed of his parents’ broken Swedish, their accents, and overall foreignness in explanation. Accordingly, he displays a personal increased sensitivity to the Swedish pressure of assimilation and a fear of being demarcated as an “other.” He is pessimistic concerning the future of the Swedish Jewish minority, and of Jews in Europe in general in the face of what he sees as increasing xenophobia.
On the other hand, there is the 20-year-old Swedish Jewish girl who has only been exposed to Yiddish through her Yiddish singing choir and deems the policy “valuable” and “wonderful,” noting how, in her generation, many have grandparents somewhat connected to the language. She finds this shared cultural heritage meaningful, feeling it has shaped her place in Swedish society. Essentially, she says the policy makes her feel distinct while also “more part of the [Swedish] community.”
Furthering the complexity of the situation is how Sweden allocates its federal funding for Yiddish (which totalled $73,910 USD in 2011 and $59,380 USD in 2012). Some projects funded by the Swedish Ministry for Language and Folklore include: 2015’s grant for a three-year project called “Vayter – a young generation of Yiddish speakers in Sweden revitalize their language and cultural heritage”, 2014’s selected grant for Yiddish vaudeville theater, and 2013’s that took the Stockholm Jewish community on an organized trip to a klezmer event in New York.
While it is debated within the Swedish Jewish community whether or not the funding is spent in the best way, ultimately, the community is receiving extra financial support. Indeed, this money is significant at a time of membership declines and a severe drought in public fundraising. As such, there is pressure within the community to not express dissent for the status of Yiddish in Sweden, even if many fail to see a sustainable future for the language.
This case study highlights the multiple questions such policies provoke: Who gets to decide which minorities to recognize? How do we delineate which part of a culture to promote? Are we allowing for multiple voices to be heard within minority communities or are minority communities forced to present a singular, uniform opinion?
In my view, Sweden’s multiculturalist policies do indeed hold the key to a Jewish future in Europe because they allow us to recognize and attempt to answer the questions above. As minorities who have a right to demand political, social, and economic inclusion from our domestic governments, it is our duty to first understand ourselves as multi-faceted, pluralistic, and diverse. We must present ourselves as such and not be afraid of losing our unity because we recognize our differences. Ultimately, it is this principle that we are trying to bestow upon our respective nations and it bears repeating– let us not be afraid of losing our unity because we recognize our differences.
Doreen El-Roeiy is a Fulbright Scholar studying at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University, Sweden.
