De Gruyter has published the inaugural volume of its series on post-Soviet Jewry

The prestigious German academic publisher De Gruyter has released the first volume in the series "Post-Soviet Jewry in Transition", developed jointly with the Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies (IEAJS).

The first volume, published in late November, is based on an extensive study of the Jewish population in five former Soviet countries. The study was conducted by the EAJC in 2019-2020 to analyze Jewish identity, Jewish community development trends, and the integration of individuals of non-Jewish and mixed descent. It also examined migration dynamics, the socioeconomic status of different Jewish groups, their attitudes toward Israel, and the role of the Jewish state in the cultural, value-based, and behavioral framework of these groups.

Commenting on the release of the series, Dr. Michael Mirilashvili, President of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, stated:

"Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, more than two million Jews emigrated to the United States, Israel, Central Europe, Canada, Australia, and other regions worldwide. At the same time, approximately 900,000 Jews and their family members still reside in the post-Soviet states, despite various demographic shifts. The mission of the institute we founded is to analyze trends within these groups, identify key challenges, and formulate recommendations to address them."

In turn, Dr. Haim Ben Yakov, Director General of the EAJC, pointed out that "Russian-speaking Jews worldwide maintain a unique identity, worldview, and social networks, shaping their own cultural and communal reality." "They constitute a new, transnational sub-ethnic group of the Jewish people—the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora—whose collective identity is forming amid the gradual dissolution of the former Soviet Jewish identity. We observe that, regardless of where they live, most Russian-speaking Jews do not readily assimilate into their host societies, choosing instead to establish distinct communities. The series 'Post-Soviet Jewry in Transition' sheds light on post-Soviet Jewry globally, representing a new type of modern Jewish diaspora in transition," he added.

The Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies (IEAJS) operates under the auspices of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) as a think-tank and platform for academic and professional collaboration among leading experts on Jewish communities in the former USSR, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Western, Central, and Eastern Asia. Established in 2018, the project's development and co-editing were led by Professor Ze'ev Khanin, Academic Director of the IEAJS.