Goggan, avocado plants and Stockholmskosher : Doing Jewishness in contemporary Sweden

Sammanfattning: This study seeks to understand how young Swedish Jews experience their Jewishness in contemporary Sweden. Many have tried to understand Jewishness through surveys. However, this study uses a qualitative approach as well as the lens of lived religion and theories of practice to move focus to how people do their Jewishness. This means focusing on how young people make sense of their Jewishness by what they do and how it feels for them. Through ethnographic interviews, shared experiences and by using the insider/researcher position as a tool, the ambiguous ways in which young Swedish Jews do their Jewishness becomes visible. As the results show, young Swedish Jews carry out both individual and communal Jewish practices. Doing Jewishness on your own can mean doing “weird things”; to carry out unconventional, self-created, Jewish practices. It can also be about carrying on tradition; meaning reproducing more traditional Jewish practices, but with a high level of agency. When doing Jewishness together a “magical feeling of togetherness” and feelings of belonging showed to be important aspects. Ultimately, all these Jewish practices are formed by ambiguous elements such as creativity, temporality, agency, and negotiation. When doing Jewishness, regardless of whether it is about going to synagogue: “goggan”, planting avocado seeds, or creating your own interpretation of kosher, the young Swedish Jews negotiate between what is meaningful for them and what is possible in the context of the majority society. In sum, this alternative approach to Jewish experience, where its meaning is not predetermined by researchers or Jewish institutions, can challenge our understanding of what it means to be a young Jew in Sweden today.