Hello, goodbye – Farewell Ceremonies as Part of Organized Jewish Emigration from Yugoslavia to Israel (1948–1952)
Hello, goodbye – Farewell Ceremonies as Part of Organized Jewish Emigration from Yugoslavia to Israel (1948–1952)

Summary/Abstract: The successful completion of every wave of organized Jewish emigration leaving Yugoslavia for Israel between 1948 and 1952 was accompanied by a farewell ceremony. This was after the leading men of the Federation of Jewish religious communities of Yugoslavia had insisted on the migrants’ departure being celebrated in an appropriate manner. The ceremonies themselves turned into the ideal opportunity for once again insisting on specific ideas, which had defined the organized migration movement up to that point. In addition, as the migration was a kind of rite of passage, the ceremonies can be considered a festive end to the separation phase. Different expectations of the organized emigration on it’s part of local Jews and the Yugoslav government lead, however, to different perceptions of it as a being rite of passage. This set of circumstances lead to the farewell ceremonies being a phenomenon far more complex than originally intended. This paper sets out on defining the way in which the all encompassing context of the migration reflected on the farewell ceremonies, with special attention paid to ideological parallelism and the way in which the process was defined as a rite of passage. The paper is, for the most part, based on documents held at the Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum.

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