The Genesis of Confessional Choice
The Genesis of Confessional Choice
Chapter 1 charts the institutionalization of confessional difference in the Russian Empire, from Tsar Alexander I and the genesis of confessional choice for Jews in 1817, to freedom of conscience measures instituted by Tsar Nicholas II in the wake of the 1905 revolution, which allowed Jewish converts to all tolerated confessions to legally reclaim their ancestral faith. The chapter uses the 1820 conversion to Catholicism of Moshe Schneerson, scion to the Chabad Hasidic dynasty, to illustrate the conditions in pre-reform imperial Russia (1817-1855) that shaped the conversion landscape for Jews. The tsarist state’s missionary impulse was tempered by religious toleration and the empire’s increasing patronage and sponsorship of a variety of Christian and non-Christian religions. The Schneerson case also highlights how contemporary Jews actively engaged with the problem of Jewish conversion and leveraged their confessional status to vie with the state for control over apostasy and communal belonging.
Keywords: Moshe Schneerson, confessional state, religious toleration, mission, empire, apostasy, communal contestation
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