Folk Practices concerning Various Religious Taboos among the Soviet Jews of Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and Russia (Research Findings, 2004–2016)

The present project is based upon field interviews recorded during research trips between 2004 and 2016 to Bukovina (Chernovits), Bessarabia (Kishinev, Soroca, Beltsy, Brichany, Khotyn and Novoselytsia), Belarus (Klimovichi) and Russia (Briansk, Unecha, Surazh, Smolensk, Roslavl, Pochinok). The expeditions were conducted by the center of Biblical and Jewish Studies of Russian State University for Humanities and the center Sefer (Moscow). Jews’ relationship to religion underwent very serious changes. This research lays out several principal mechanisms of the development of Jewish “folk” religious practices: these include the transformation of existing halakhic prescriptions with the aid of ritual deception; alteration in the status of an object; and the application of traditional laws of ritual purity to an object known to be unclean.