Estovnian Jews

Estovnian Jews

Total population
~688,000
Regions with significant populations
Template:Country data Estovnia	598,900 (2015)
Belhavia	89,765 (2015) (Largely in Raffen)
Languages
Svodish Yiddish Hebrew
Religion
Judaism

Estovnian Jews, also referred to as Jewish Estovnians, are Estovnian citizens or their foreign descendants who are Jews, either by religion, ancestry, or both. Estovnian Jews, by their namesake, are Jews who live in, or are descendant from persons who did live in, Estovnia.

Historians are unsure when Jews arrived in Estovnia on a permanent basis, but by the 1450s records from the Grand Duchy of Provisa indicates a population of Jews established themselves in Niva. Because of the constant Esto-Belhavian tensions and wars during the late Middle Ages and early modern era, Jews in Belhavia and in Estovnia had little contact despite relative geographic nearness, resulting in the evolution of a localized Jewish culture and set of religious rites and customs.

In the 19th century, Estovnian Jews were particularly attracted to the Haskalah and underwent a relatively swift trend of secularization, assimiliation, and intermarriage; by 1900, one Imperial Provisa University study suggested that as many as 78% of Jews in Estovnia were Jewish strictly by ethnicity alone and had completely abandoned religious and cultural customs and practices.

In the early 20th century, many leading secular "Jewish Estovnians" joined the ranks of the Estovnian radical left, especially the anti-monarchist and populist-socialist Solidarity Front. During the 1948 Revolution, most Estovnian Jews supported and fought hard for the revolutionary socialist cause, gaining respect and equality by Catholic, secular, and other non-Jewish Estovnians in the late 1940s and 1950s. The Revolution also created a small community of Estovnian Jews, including the religious, royalists, and industrialists, who made aliya to Belhavia after the royalist cause was all but lost by early 1948.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the Estovnian Jewish population was and remains in decline, most notably due to high-death, low-birth rates believed by analysts to have come about because of increasingly intermarriage, secularization, and lost ethno-cultural Jewish identity. Due to their rapid attrition through deaths, failure to replace the population with less than 2.1 births per family, and a general "bleeding away" of members from their ethno-sociocultural communities, the Jewish population in Estovnia dropped from nearly 1.2 million in the 1950 Estovnian Census to just under 600,000 by 2015.

Estovian Jews constitute approximately 1.1% (688,000) of the worldwide Jewish population, which is estimated to be 172.95 million as of 2015.

The only significant expatriate Estovnian Jewish population exists in Belhavia, where it is composed of the White émigrés from the 1948 Estovnian Revolution who largely settled near the Estovnian border in the Raffen province.

History

Modern age

1948 Estovnian Revolution

Main article: Estovnian Revolution

Religion

Religious beliefs

Estovnian Jews overwhelmingly describe themselves as "secular, secularized, agnostic, or atheist" by over 9-1 margins since the 1950s.

Notable Estovnian Jews

• Sævaldur Dansson (1894 - 1960): A leading Estovnian trade unionist and labor activist, Dansson became a high-ranking Solidarity Front leader by the 1930s and galvanized Jewish support for the populist-socialist cause. He promoted Jewish secularism to raise support for radical leftist politics among secularized but still-traditional leaning Jewish communities. He was excommunicated by the Chief Rabbi of Niva in 1935 for "corrupting our [Jewish] youths in this goyishe anti-Torah crusade." He fought in several high-profile battles during the Revolution, and took a bullet wound to the leg in battle in late 1947 as the civil war drew to a close. He was a senior Solidarity Front politician in the 1950s, and was believed to be forcefully retired in 1958 after his internal faction lost power.
• Jacob Marcus (1920 - 2004): The eldest son of the wealthy Marcus family of Niva, Marcus was a prominent White émigré leader among Estovnian Jewish refugees who resettled in Belhavia between 1947 and 1950. A prominent royalist and industrialist, he funded the lingering post-1948 anticommunist insurgency in southwest Estovnia and lobbied the Imperial Belhavian government to maintain strict pressure on, and non-recognition of, the socialist regime during the Cold War, a policy which was by and large successful.

See also

• Belhavian Jews
• Rodarian Jews
• Basilerian Jews
• Western Jews
• Law of Return