Per Hammarström: Mid Sweden University Campus Härnösand
2009-2014

The overall aim of this project was to describe and analyze Jewish assimilation and integration processes in Sweden during the period 1782-1870 with a particularly focus on the conversion of Jewish persons to Christianity. The research is linked to a wide international field of research on the Jewish minority in Europe during the 1800s and Jewish-Christian relations.

From this point of departure, I conducted a demographic survey of Jews in Stockholm who converted to Christianity during the aforementioned period. The survey included their family background, socioeconomic positions and social networks. I also investigated the Jewish community's attitudes and the way they dealt with the conversions and the majority society's views on the converts.

As the project has generated new questions, I have devoted some time to issues concerning Lutheran Low Church missionary activity among Jews and the religiously motivated conversions within this environment. The autobiographies used were written by Jews who were baptized and in many cases engaged as missionaries, and I have used them in an analysis of the motives of the converts and the view of Jews and Judaism that formed the basis for the 1800s Low and Evangelicals' interest for the Jewish mission. I have examined the earliest attempts at missionary work among the Jews, but especially the work done by Svensaka Israelsmissionen, an association for Christian missionary activity among the Jews that was founded in 1874. It has close ties to Evangeliska fosterlandsstiftelsen, an Evangelical movement within the Swedish Lutheran Church. I have also studied the view of Jews as reflected in the society's journals.

Several important contributions have been made to the history of the Swedish Jewry regarding assimilation, conversion and traditional Christian hostile views on Jews and Judaism. The first result I want to raise concerns the relatively large proportion of socially and economically advanced members of the Jewish community in Stockholm during the first half of the 1800s. Despite their new-found participation and status, many chose to either let their children be baptized or became Christians themselves; a step that simultaneously gave the convert civic equality with the Christian population.

The more the society opened up and the more the restrictions were removed, the more Jews that were converted. A reduction in the number of baptisms, however, can be linked to a more conscious and public struggle on the Jewish community's behalf to preserve Jewish identity during the 1840s. It is seldom the case that religious belief is the cause of the baptisms, rather career or romance, i.e. the possibility to practice a profession or to marry a Christian. Several such cases can be detected, but there are also cultural and national reasons. Prominent Jews saw a Christian identity as an important step to becoming Swedish or a part of the Christian civilization.

The second result I want to raise relates to the less wealthy Jews who immigrated to Sweden in the late 1800s. They were often denied Swedish citizenship and regarded with suspicion by the established Jewish community. This category was the object of interest of the Low Church Christian mission among the Jews. My research shows that the mission was rather unsuccessful in converting Jews to Christianity. Some of the Jews who were baptized wrote och published interesting autobiographies that reflect their marginalized position and attempts to find affiliation. The material reflects the idea that Christian preaching, pastoral care and fellowship attracted the Jews and provided a way of explaining and understanding the existential crises that converts describe: a difficult childhood, family conflicts, loss of security, break-ups and marginalization. Each difficulty they experienced was, for them, a step closer to conversion.

The autobiographies also reflect a deep ambivalence in relation to the authors' own Jewish background. The converts emphasize the Jewish roots of Christianity and even construct Jewish piety as something positive. Meanwhile, the texts are imbued with a traditional Christian contempt for Judaism and Jews. The autobiographical texts I have examined reflect a comprehensive Christian anti-Judaism, for instance Talmudic Judaism as something negative, supposed Jewish self-righteousness, arrogance, self-righteousness and obsession with money. The mission for Jews gladly saw themselves as the friends and patrons of the Jewish people, but still their expressions were anti-Jewish and they even supported the contemporary political anti-Semitism, whose myths readily could be harmonized with traditional anti-Judaism.

In this context I have also examined the role of apocalyptic thought, which is this project's third result I want to share. The Jewish people were portrayed as part of forces that were hostile towards God and a threat to Christianity and the Christians society, but in the last days all Jews will turn to Christ, and that will be the beginning of a new order and the perfection of mankind. This mind-set is similar to what Saul Freidländer calls redemptive Anti-Semitism: The Jewish people as the key to human perfection.

Several new research questions have arisen during the project, and this is very evident from the different paths that the project has taken. Interesting research could be carried out on conversion and gender, Jewish strategies to counter assimilation or questions linked to modernization processes in national homogenization.

One area that appears to be fruitful would be a comparative study on the perception of Muslims, a group that often had to play the role of a negative counterpart, albeit in a significantly different way to the Jews. Another idea for a comparative study would be the pictures and ideas about the Orient, Muslims and Islam that was found in the material from the missionary associations.

The questions of Jewish conversion in Sweden have not been studied before. However the area is well established internationally, and it is a vital research field that investigations of the unique Swedish conditions could make a substantial contribution. There was a relatively small Jewish minority in Sweden who were well integrated and in the struggle for survival. At the same time there was a broad Low Church revival that you could say was a part of the modern project and thus contributed to the shaping of collective and national identities, dichotomies, categorizations and worldviews.

My results have been presented on several occasions at my home institution, and at the History and Theology departments at Uppsala University (2010), at the so-called Historian Meeting in Gothenburg (2011) and Stockholm (2014), at the Symposium "Northern Sweden church history in a comparative perspective" (2012) and at a symposium in Uppsala (2010), arranged by the Research network The Jews of Sweden - a minority history. The results have been integrated into department courses that I have developed and taught. Besides being presented within the scientific community, the project has been presented at popular science lectures.

The project's main publications are two anthology contributions: "Omvändelseberättelser, judemission och svensk lågkyrklighet runt sekelskiftet 1900" ("Repentance, Christian mission to Jews and Swedish evangelicalism around 1900"), in Från legofolk till stadsfolk, Festskrift till Börje Harnesk, Red. Erik Nydahl och Magnus Perlestam, where I introduce my study of Jewish converts in the late 1800s and their autobiographies, and "I sällskap med judar: Association, assimilation och konversion i Stockholm 1809-1838" ("In the company with Jews: Association, assimilation and conversion in Stockholm 1809-1838"), in Nationen så in i Norden: en festskrift till Torkel Jansson, Red. Henrik Edgren, where I describe how Jewish conversions became a strategy for social and national participation. The articles are available in full text on Internet.

A peer reviewed article is forthcoming: "Antijudiskhet och antisemitism i Missionstidning för Israel 1874-1885" (Anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in Mission Magazine for Israel 1874-1885), in Skrifter från Institutionen för humaniora, Red. Stefan Dalin.

The project's principal accounting, however, will be through the monograph that is being compiled for publication. The issue of this book will be the Christian mission among the Jews and religiously motivated conversions in a wide European research context. My investigation will focus on the Svenska Israelsmissionen, and the Jews in this environment who converted, and who were after baptism often employed as missionaries for Jews.

Publications

”Omvändelseberättelser, judemission och svensk lågkyrklighet runt sekelskiftet 1900” i Från legofolk till stadsfolk, Festskrift till Börje Harnesk, Red. Erik Nydahl och Magnus Perlestam, Skrifter från Institutionen för Humaniora, nr 1, Mittuniversitetet 2012.
Fulltext: http://miun.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:510886/FULLTEXT02.pdf

”I sällskap med judar. Association, assimilation och konversion i Stockholm 1809–1838” i Nationen så in i Norden: en festskrift till Torkel Jansson Red. Henrik Edgren; med stöd av Lars M Andersson, Urban Claesson, Bo G. Hall, Artos & Norma, 2013.
Fulltext: http://miun.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:655231/FULLTEXT03.pdf

”Antijudiskhet och antisemitism i Missionstidning för Israel 1874–1885”, i antologi, Skrifter från Institutionen för humaniora, Red. Stefan Dahlin, under utgivning.

”Det af Moritz bedrifne ofog”. Om tidig judemission i Sverige och judiska motreaktioner, Konferenspaper, Historikermötet Stockholm 2014.