THE “ JUDISK KRÖNIKA ” AND THE FINNISH JEWISH IDENTITY-BUILDING , 1918 – 1920

The article discusses how the short-lived Finnish Jewish journal Judisk Krönika (The Jewish Chronicle), 1918–1920, attempted to reshape Jewish identity in Finland. Before the Finnish independence in 1917, Jews were regulated by special statutes, which made them second-class citizens. In 1918, they formally got full civil rights. At the same time, due to the changes in Palestine, they were faced with an opportunity to become citizens of a Jewish state, promised by the Balfour Declaration in 1917. In principle, the Judisk Krönika was open to all kinds of discussion of Jewish culture and Jewish societal interests. In fact, however, in most articles it provided material for discussion, how Jews in Finland could be, or decide between being, loyal Finnish citizens and true members of the Jewish nation. The journal suggested that in considering this ‘double identity’ the Jews had to take into account two things. On the one hand, they had to consider the risks of the rising anti-Semitism and pogroms connected to armed conflicts, above all in the territories of the former Russian Empire. On the other hand, they had the option to join Zionist Movement and its aspirations to turn Palestine again into the Jewish homeland. The journal seemed to be on the side of Zionism and active creation of a Jewish national identity, but did not decline the emancipation of Jews. Both Jewish and Finnish Jewish identities were suggested as equally valid.


THE "JUDISK KRÖNIKA" AND THE FINNISH JEWISH IDENTITY-BUILDING, 1918-1920
Teuvo Laitila | University of Eastern Finland, School of Theology P.O.Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland Email: teuvo.laitila@uef.fi The article discusses how the short-lived Finnish Jewish journal Judisk Krönika (The Jewish Chronicle), 1918-1920, attempted to reshape Jewish identity in Finland.Before the Finnish independence in 1917, Jews were regulated by special statutes, which made them second-class citizens.In 1918, they formally got full civil rights.At the same time, due to the changes in Palestine, they were faced with an opportunity to become citizens of a Jewish state, promised by the Balfour Declaration in 1917.In principle, the Judisk Krönika was open to all kinds of discussion of Jewish culture and Jewish societal interests.In fact, however, in most articles it provided material for discussion, how Jews in Finland could be, or decide between being, loyal Finnish citizens and true members of the Jewish nation.The journal suggested that in considering this 'double identity' the Jews had to take into account two things.On the one hand, they had to consider the risks of the rising anti-Semitism and pogroms connected to armed conflicts, above all in the territories of the former Russian Empire.On the other hand, they had the option to join Zionist Movement and its aspirations to turn Palestine again into the Jewish homeland.The journal seemed to be on the side of Zionism and active creation of a Jewish national identity, but did not decline the emancipation of Jews.Both Jewish and Finnish Jewish identities were suggested as equally valid.

INTRODUCTION: JEWS IN FINLAND BEFORE 1918
From ca. midtwelfth century until 1809, Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden.Jews were officially allowed to the country quite late, dur ing the later part of the seventeenth century, and only on the territories of the presentday Sweden.Tolerance of Jews was limited to welltodo merchants who the King expected to revitalise the Swedish trade.In 1782, King Gustav III promul gated a statute called the Judereglement, or the Jewish Regulation, which gave the pioneer of Jewish rights in Finland, the politician and newspaperman Santeri Ja cobson.The journal, which was discontinued after five issues, was explicitly politi cal, fighting for Jewish civil rights.Its contributors included the first Jewish doc toral graduate (in medicine) from the University of Helsinki, Isak Pergament, and the teacher of the Jewish parish in Helsinki cheder or elementary school, Israel Sch ur. 4 The latter was also the editor of the next Finnish Jewish journal Judisk Krönika (The Jewish Chronicle, hereafter JK), which started to appear in November 1918.It came out twice a month until December 1920, when it was discontinued due to financial problems.A few additional issues appeared in 1925.
According to the subtitle, the Chronicle was a 'journal for the Jewish national culture and societal interests'. 5Thus, the journal had a political agenda not much differing from that of The Finnish Jew.Schur determined the tone, although, since January 1920, the journal also had an advisory board consisting of five prominent Finnish Jews, among them the abovementioned Pergament, and occasional con tributors who followed what domestic and foreign newspapers wrote on Jews. 6hronicling worldwide news on Jews and Judaism made up one to three pages of each individual issue, which in 1918 and 1919 consisted of 12 and in 1920 of 8 pages 7 in roughly folio size.In the unsigned editorial of the first issue, entitled "Our program", Schur stated that the journal aimed at strengthening the Finnish Jews both as citizens of Finland and as members of the Jewish nation. 8In other words, following Theodor Herzl he wanted to suggest the Jews in Finland a 'double' iden tity 9 suitable for the new conditions of the evolving Finnish national state.In what follows I discuss how the main topics of the journal, Zionism and Palestine on the one hand, and antiSemitism and pogroms (as issues of Jewish human rights) on the other, contributed to this identitymaking project. 10Methodologically I thus join the mainline media analysis by assuming that reiteration of particular themes, also called codes, implicates the objective of the journal in question.Furthermore, I presume that, because of the general context in which the codes were produced, their intention was to create a web of meanings, a new identity in a situation where the Jews were expected to assimilate or integrate into other nations, whereas they for centuries had been excluded from the rest of the society because of their 'alien' religion. 11This web, in turn, was weaved by emphasising a few points crucial to Jewish identity; that the world is hostile to them (antiSemitism, pogroms), that the protector of Jews, and mediator between them, is the Zionist Movement, and that the Jewish national state in Palestine, as explicated by Zionists, could solve identity problems and end attacks against Jews.
All articles were published in Swedish.One reason for this could be the fact that Schur did not know Finnish, but one is tempted to speculate that the language policy also indicated the journal's association with the largest minority in Finland, the Swedishspeaking Finnish citizens, who were generally considered more liberal and international than the Finnishspeakers.Perhaps Schur also wanted to speak to the Jewish, and perhaps other audiences in Scandinavia, who could understand Swedish, but not Finnish.
It is hard to say how effective or influential the journal was.Eric Olsoni (1893-1973), a Swedishspeaking Finnish gentile author and bookhandler, who now and then contributed to the JK, provides one clue.In October 1919 he regretted that 'members of [the Finnish Jewish] congregations have shown very low interest to wards both the various important societal matters and the journal and its endeav our'. 12This may be an exaggeration, but there seems to be no reason to assume that the journal had any larger circulation.

9
In his The Jewish State, Herzl suggested that Jews were loyal to both a Jewish homeland and to the state they were living in Europe.10 I have determined the main themes by counting articles.The division into different categories is far from clear-cut, but the following numbers give a rough overview.Nota bene that short news and the chronicle section of the JK are excluded.Thus, from November 1918 to December 1920, the JK contained ca.twenty-five articles on Zionism, mainly reports on Zionist conferences or conference proclamations.About the same number focused, on the one hand, on Palestine, most of which dealt with Jewish daily life, and the other, dealt with pogroms, usually in Poland or Ukraine.Roughly twenty-four articles singled out anti-Semitism in Finland, some half of them criticising the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Finland; and around forty-five articles discussed anti-Semitism in general, in most cased portraying the hard situation of Jews in the regions of the former Russian Empire.In addition, Schur published fifteen "Letters to a Friend" (Brev till en vän), in which he presented the early history of anti-Semitism.Except articles on Zionism, which slightly centred on the year 1919, all texts were quite evenly scattered throughout the whole period under study.Together, if we leave out the chronicle section, these texts cover something between half and three quarters of the journal.11 On codes as a web of meanings, see

ZIONISM
According to its founding father, Theodor Herzl, Zionism can be sum marised as a claim that the Jews make up a single nation, which needs a national state of its own.This 'national identity' contradicted both the 'citizen identity' cre ated by emancipation, which was well advanced among Western European Jews, and the religious identitymaking common among Eastern European Jews.Zion ists, among whom secular 'Easterners' were a majority, had diverse opinions on the role of emancipation and religion in the development of Jewish identity, resulting in several branches of Zionism, such as bourgeois liberals, socialists and revision ists. 13The JK did not differentiate among these multiple Zionisms and their rep resentatives.Its main criteria to select the published material seems to have been their suitability to promote the discussion on Jewish identity in general.Most of the borrowed material was taken from Scandinavian and Central European news papers and news organisations, Zionists or otherwise. 14ight from the beginning, the JK advocated the spreading of Zionist ideas in Finland.For example, in December 1918 the journal published a note by Abraham Nemeschansky, a young Turkuborn Finnish Jew, who apprised that young Jews of Turku had established a Zionist association Zeire Zion (The Youth of Zion) to pro mote the building of a national state.The author expressed the wish that the youth in Helsinki and Vyborg would follow the lead. 15Next month, anticipating the Peace Conference in Versailles, Schur discussed the position of Jews (in Europe) between assimilation and Zionism, evidently expecting that the conference would establish 'a Jewish territorial centre' in Palestine, thus solving the ' Jewish question'. 16owever, Schur did not expect that every Finnish Jew would immigrate to Pal estine.In the beginning of February 1919, he wrote that 'the history of the Finn ish nation shows best the great importance [that] collaboration between different peoples has for the country's future cultural development'. 17In the next issue, he clarified the matter by stating that Zionism is not only about Jewish nationalism, it is also about ameliorating the Jewish condition in the countries where they live. 18vidently, the journal saw the ongoing Versailles peace negotiations crucial to the Jewish future, because it quoted approvingly views of both Martin Buber (1878-1965) and Henri Nathansen 19 (1868-1944) to the effect that what was going on was the regeneration and the liberation of the Jews.Eric Olsoni, who wrote on Buber, ended his article by stating that the 'true Zion is the mission of the Jewish folk soul, the outline of Messianic humanity'. 20This, in fact, summed up Buber's religiously coloured Zionism, but ignored that he advocated a binational Palestine. 21he Versailles Peace Treaty on 28 June 1919 turned Palestine into a British mandate under the League of Nations.The mandate materialised next year, but already before that a contributor to the JK argued that the Jews should be active in their own affairs and to show, if they really have 'sense for the concrete and practical, which is so much [both] hailed and denied by the nonJewish world'. 22he author evidently wanted to accelerate the Jewish immigration to Palestine.He (or she) was seconded by Eric Olsoni, who in November 1919 claimed, in an article on the history of Zionism, that although the Peace Treaty had failed to fulfil the Zionists' wishes of their own country, they would not give up their dream of a Jewish Palestine.Olsoni also assured that 'Zionism symbolises the freedom of the [Jewish] people'. 23Thus, in a very Herzlian way the JK represented Zionism as a means for Jews to become a united nation and supported a kind of 'general' Zionism, which emphasised the immigration as a way to establish a Jewish state. 24

PALESTINE
The JK published many short notices, pieces of news, and pictures on Palestine, taken from foreign press or from the Copenhagen Zionist News Bu reau. 25For example, in December 1918 the journal quoted the editorial of the Eng lish Economist, arguing that Palestine's economic potential was not fully under stood by general public and that the land needs 'such a political organisation that enables its economic development'. 26he 1 February 1919 issue contained a long, bright and optimistic view on Jewish life in Palestine. 27The lack of comments and explanations indicate that the JK expected the article to speak for itself.The construction of a positive view on Palestine continued in April, when the journal published a text by an outstanding German ideologist of Zionism, Richard Lichtheim (1885-1963) on the 'colonisa tion of Palestine', originally addressed to the participants of the fifteenth con gress of the Zionist Association for Germany.He emphasised the 'moral duty' of immigrants to 'establish a Hebrew Palestine for them and their children'. 28To illustrate the progress the immigrants were making, the JK also published pho tos representing the grape and winebased affluence of a new 'colony', Rishon LeZion, which is the secondoldest kibbutz in Palestine close to modern Tel Aviv. 29n August 1919, the JK started a series of reports describing the employment prospects of various craftsmen in Palestine. 30All this suggests a strong support for immigration to Palestine.
In the last issues of the year 1919, and during the early 1920, the journal opened its pages to views on the future of the (expected) Jewish state.It quoted the Swedish newspaper Svenska Morgonbladet, citing American Zionists, assuring their belief in the foundation of the Palestinian Republic, a politically and econom ically democratic country, and the reincarnation of the Jewish nation. 31In April 1920, the JK reproduced a text from Mitteilungen des DanielsBundes, a newly founded German organisation for the unification and ethical revitalising of the Jews.Written by a Jewish judge, Alfred Freimann, the article "Die Behandlung von Volksfremden im jüdischen Staate" argued, with copious references to what the Christians call the Old Testament, that foreigners coming to the Jewish state who did not want to assimilate nevertheless had the same rights as the Jews. 32here seems to be no doubt that the author, and the journal, wanted to dispel the suspicion, voiced by Palestinian Arabs, who similarly demanded independence, that Arabs and Jews could not peacefully live side by side. 33An article on 2 May 1920 quoted the New Yorkbased Jewish paper, Haibri, stating that the Zionist organizations have to strive for mutual understanding between Jews and Arabs. 34his was in line with the Balfour Declaration's implication of Jewish national rights and the Arabs' individual rights, a view emphasised by several Jewish authorities as late as after the foundation of the state of Israel (in 1948). 35The policy implied legallybased protection, but not total equality, of the other.
In place of editorial, the 2 May 1920 issue also quoted a special telegram sent by the Zionist Executive Committee to the 'Zionist Federation [in] Helsinki' 36 .It stated that the San Remo Peace Conference 37 had decided to incorporate 'the Bal four declaration in the treaty of peace with Turkey which provides that Palestine will be the National Home of the Jews'. 38In fact, the treaty assigned the mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations solely to the British.However, quoting the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, the JK spoke of the foundation of the new ' Jew ish homeland' as a fact and declared that it will be created on the bedrock of social justice and charity. 39To bolster the argument, the journal's tenth issue in 1920 summarised an interview of Max Nordau 40 (1849-1923), originally published in The Observer, to the effect that it is possible to turn Palestine into a Jewish state. 41he next issue contained the former part of a long reportage on the situation in Palestine, written by the German Jewish historian and Zionist protagonist of women's rights, Helene Hanna Cohn 42 .Under the title "On Our Everyday Life", she stated that the Jewish people were living in a turning point of their destiny. 43She described in details the Jewish daily life in Palestine, warned that the creation of a Jewish state would take much time and effort and, above all, love of both Eretz Israel and all who work for its realisation.any instructions how these ideals could be materialised.Nor did she linger on the very difficult living conditions the immigrants in reality faced. 44he journal shared Cohn's idealism, related to Buber's views.In September 1920, it published a summary of an interview of the new High Commissar (until 1925) of Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, himself a Jew.According to the JK, Samuel had said to the English Press that the British would initiate the building of the Jew ish national homeland in Palestine. 45To support this view, the journal published, in October 1920, a "Manifesto of the Executive Committee for the Zionist Organi zation", which expressed a strong belief in the reestablishment of Jewish land in Palestine.The manifest was dated Tishri 5681 (September 1920) and signed by the then President of the Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), and four other wellknown Zionist leaders. 46I have been unable to track the original version of this document.
Neither the Manifesto nor the JK took seriously the growing tensions between immigrating Jews and local Arabs, which later led the British authorities to limit the number of immigrants. 47Nor did they discuss the larger political struggle on power in the Near East between Britain (occupying Palestine) and France (having control over Lebanon, where part of Jews were settled).Political realities were still seen in the light of Herzl's utopian novel Altneuland (Old New Land), published in 1902, which portrayed ' Jews and Arabs liv[ing] together in peace and harmony'. 48long the same lines, the JK suggested that the Arabs in fact accepted the Jewish presence, if not supremacy. 49This view is understandable, taking into account the journal's philosophical, even religious nature, rather than political emphasis in the creation of a Jewish national identity.

ANTI-SEMITISM
After the Finnish independence, Schur complained the Finnish gov ernment's decision to grant the Jews in Finland civil rights only after a special ap plication.In February 1920, he and some other members of the Helsinki Jewish congregation had an audience with the President of Finland, K. J. Ståhlberg, stat ing that such a procedure kept Jews as secondrate citizens.However, nothing was changed. 50Another right issue the journal addressed was the women's right to vote in the congregation ballot.In the wake of Herzl's ideal, the JK stated that all con gregation members of age (in Finland, 21 years old or elder) had the right to vote. 51owever, the most important issue concerning rights was antiSemitism.Here, too, Schur followed Theodor Herzl, who criticised racially informed antiSemi tism of branding Jews as an inferior nation, to convince both Jewish and gentile au diences of the necessity to protect the Jews by creating a Jewish state. 52Until the summer of 1920, the JK paid close attention to both domestic and foreign antiJewish actions and propaganda.For example, when during and right after the Finnish Civil War in early 1918 the local newspaper in Vyborg, Karjala, ac cused some Jewish merchants on speculation, Isak Pergament wrote, in an article entitled "Hostile Agitation towards Jews" that Finnish 'quasipatriots' wanted to incite nationalism by branding the Jews a national risk. 53n the spring of 1919, Schur tackled the question: Where and how did the hate of the Jews begin?He claimed that, unlike the antiSemites argued, ancient peo ples, such as Egyptians or Assyrians, did not really hate the Jews. 54He admitted that the Egyptians, for example, hated Jews but argued, like many scholars today, that this hate was not antiSemitic, because it was not based on religion or the con cept of race. 55However, he did not specify the reasons for the Egyptians' hate.In a latter piece, he suggested that the origins of modern antiSemitism could be traced back to the Hellenistic Greeks, who, when subordinating various tribes in the Near and Middle East, came across with a superior Jewishrelated notion of godbased morality.According to Schur, they could not tolerate that, because they considered those tribes barbarians.Hence, they declared war to Jewish morality, and that was the ground for their hate of Jews. 56 do not argue about the veracity of this claim.What I find important is that Schur regarded antiSemitism an abstract ideology more than a social phenomenon based on social, political or economic reasons.Accordingly, his argument seems to be that antiSemitic ideology is the root of concrete discrimination of Jews and therefore more important to fight against than its individual manifestations in social life. 57t the same time, Schur wrote what to my knowledge is the first Finnish cri tique of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.He did not name the work, the translator or the publisher, 58 but spoke about 'a brochure cooked up by a Russian [i.e., Sergeĭ Nilus, 1862-1929]', in which ' Jews are accused of everything evil that has hap pened and happens to the Russian people'.Schur refuted the main allegations, for example, the argued negative influence of Jews upon Christians, and concluded that from a nation (i.e., the Russians) whose religiosity is forced and who in fact hates its religious leaders one can wait merely for accusation of the other, because that nation is incapable of understanding its own errors. 59n 1 April 1920, the JK published, without comments, a translation of nom de plum Miettinen's originally Finnishlanguage critique of the Protocols' Swedish language version.Miettinen identified the work as an example of the worst kind of Russian pogrom literature. 60In the same issue there appeared rabbi Salomon Poliakof's 61 critique of an open letter, published in The Times, advocating the au thenticity of the Protocols. 62wo weeks later, the editor tackled anew the Protocols' Swedishlanguage translation, called it pogromliterature and a provocation against the Jews, and wondered why the Swedishspeaking intellectuals did not criticise its publica tion. 63In May, the journal published two other pieces of critique, one by a Finn ish artist, Sigurd WettenhoviAspa (1870-1946), wellknown for his eccentric interpretations of the Finnish history, and the other by the first female professor in Finland, Alma Söderhjelm (1870-1949), a specialist in French history. 64Both condemned the Protocols' publication.On 1 June 1920, the editor continued the fulmination by comparing the Swedishlanguage translation to the original Rus sian text by Nilus.Schur's main point was that the translator has 'forgotten' to re produce 52 pages from the Introduction and the second part, 54 pages, of Nilus's work, because, Schur said, these contain material not supporting the translator's point on global Jewish conspiracy. 65Thus, it is clear that Schur considered the publication of Protocols in Swedish a major issue for Jews in Finland, evidently because he rightly understood that it could support a chauvinist, xenophobic Finnish nationalism.
However, Schur did not neglect other similar issues, either.In January 1920, he commented an article published in Iltalehti, 66 written by a certain A.L., and entitled "The Rights and Duties of Our Jews".According to the JK, the author demanded the Jews in Finland to be grateful for the 'gift' they had gotten (i.e., civil rights).The editor retorted that civil rights are not a gift; granting them is the duty of every civilized nation.Hence, A.L. cannot require a return gift, the less so because the civil rights were not granted unconditionally (see above, "Introduction").A.L. also blamed the Finnish Jews for not contributing the establishing of the Finnish language university in Turku (opened in 1921), although they lavishly supported their coreligionists abroad.The JK remarked that the Jews do not take part in nationalisticinformed conflicts between Finnish and Swedishspeaking Finns (this was the main reason for founding a new university), because they seek after the benefit of all Finnish citizens and have contributed much to this goal, although A.L. and many others seem not be conscious of that.Regarding the Jews abroad, the editor wondered what A.L. would have done in similar position; had he refused of helping his suffering copatriots. 67he nationalistic issue was tackled again in June 1920, when both Schur in his editorial and the pseudonym Ulf criticised the Finns who argued that to defend itself Finland had to get rid of the Jews, who 'destroy the land'. 68In the next issue, the editorial accused 'the socalled intelligentsia' of maintaining antiSemitism by arguing that ' Jewish crowd' would invade the land from the east, i.e., from Russia.In other words, he blamed 'the intelligentsia' of cultural arrogance, of regarding Jews automatically Russians (at that time portrayed as archenemies of the Finns) and, therefore, uncivilised or barbarous, incapable of being Finnish citizens. 69he editorial was evidently related to the growing aggressive nationalism in Europe and its hostility to Jews.For example, in October 1920, an article on gen eral elections in Germany expressed the worry on the growing antiSemitism in nationalistic argumentation. 70On 1 November, the editorial pointed out the an tiJudaic consequences of the Hungarian intention to turn the country a 'purely Christian' state; 71 and the pseudonym "One of the Shameless" listed a multitude of accusations from various foreign newspapers, which all portrayed Jews as the most shameless people in the world. 72Particularly worried the JK was about the situation in Poland. 73ntiSemitic nationalism was also tackled in a more fictitious, and partly ironiz ing, way.Examples are columns by the pen name Humoricus.In a text "Without Jews: From the Diary of an AntiSemite", the author traced the origins of the pres ent antiSemitism to the Great War, reiterating the accusations typical for the German antiSemites that Germany had lost the war because of Jewish treachery.After the end of the war, there were no more Jews, he said, but problems caused by the war did not disappear.Humoricus's antiSemite is confused: Without Jews, what is the cause for our misery? 74n a subsequent issue, Humoricus ironized Finnish entrepreneurs who refused to accept the Jewish concurrence; they were 'Polish magnates' wishing to limit the Jewish activities to a few occupations, 75 although Jews now had full economic freedom in Finland.Similarly, he satirised the fear of the chief of a border guard detachment next to Vyborg, who argued that if the border were not closed imme diately, countless number of Jews will deluge Finland because of the messy situa tion in Russia. 76In fact, this fear was ungrounded.Instead, at that time there was a flood of immigrants (Karelians, White Russians, etc.) fleeing the Russian civil war to Finland.

S T R A I P S N I
Yet another, although related, issue was Bolshevism and the Jews.The matter had become a hot topic in Western Europe after the White Russian military set backs in late 1919, when the Whites' antiSemitic propaganda introduced a new libel; the claim of a 'massive' Jewish representation among the Bolsheviks, particu larly on the higher echelon. 77Even the usually liberal Swedishlanguage Hufvudstadsbladet published an article accusing Jews of blood libel 78 of a certain cavalry captain, Viktor Stjerncreutz. 79he readers of the article evidently were expected to know that Stjerncreutz was a Finnish officer serving in the White Russian armies, and his killers purport edly were Bolsheviks or their allies, implicated to be Jews.Schur dismissed blood libel as superstition not worth of civilized people, but the unstated main point of the text most likely was the implied connection of Bolsheviks and Jews.
In addition to the news on Sjerncreutz, the JK commented the accusations on Jewish Bolshevism in several other articles.In January 1920, it published statis tics, taken from the Parisianbased Obsheye delo 80 , claiming that the major nation alities among the Bolsheviks were, in this order, Russians, Latvians, and Poles; the Jewish representation compared to the number of Jews on the Bolshevikheld ter ritories, was negligible. 81This is not quite correct.Although Stalin later eliminated several leading Jewish Bolsheviks, in the early years 14 of the leading 93 Bolshe viks, or 15 per cent, were of Jewish origins.The Jews made then four per cent of the total population of the Russian Empire. 82This, however, does not tell much about the connections between Bolsheviks and Judaism; it only indicates that Rus sian Jews had good reasons to side with those wishing to end the tsarist rule.
A subsequent issue contained Max Nordau's article "Bolshevism and Judaism".Nordau stated that 'many Bolsheviks were of Jewish origins', but not in terms of religion.Therefore, the antiSemites shoot a line when claiming that the most of Jews are Bolsheviks. 83In other words, the article emphasised religion as the prima ry marker of Jewish identity and let the reader infer that secularised Jews were in fact not Jews.This interpretation differed from the general Zionist views, but may be understood as the JK's means of emphasising, in the manner of emancipated Jews, that the Jews were loyal to nationalistic state and diverged the other citizens merely in terms of their religion.

POGROMS
In its world news, the journal covered especially the former Russian Empire, where ancestors to Schur and several other Finnish Jews originated (Schur's father was born in the present Belorussia).Besides antiSemitism, pogroms domi nated this part of the JK.For example, the 15 December 1918 issue contained an eyewitness's story on recent pogroms in Lwow (former Lemberg, today L'viv), a long report on a protest against them in Copenhagen, and their objection by the Jewish congregation in Vyborg. 84The next JK printed a report published in The Times in February 1919 on Lwow pogroms, and yet another story by an eyewitness. 85ater in 1919, the JK focused on the vicissitudes of Jews in the Russian civil war, which was partly fought on the present Polish and the westernmost Ukrai nian territories, and the accusations levelled against the Jews as 'tsar's henchmen and obedient slaves of Bolshevism', as the editorial for the 15 May issue put it. 86he reason to cover the pogroms was indicated in the next editorial, where Schur asked, whether the European nations will finally carry out their promise expressed in the Balfour Declaration to end antiSemitism and to set the Jews free (by giving them a national state). 87n July 1919, in place of editorial the JK published a report by the Jewish his torian Mark Wischnitzer 88 (1882-1955), who alerted the readers to the killing of Vilnius Jews by Polish military in previous April and claimed that the 'Lithuanian Jerusalem' was irrevocably lost. 89A few months later the journal acknowledged that Lithuania and Ukraine had recognised the rights of Jewish (and other reli gious) minorities, while Poland stubbornly refused to do so. 90eanwhile, the Russian civil war continued, and the Jewish rights were repeat edly transgressed, as the JK with horror noticed. 91In November 1919, due to lat est pogroms in 'Southern Russia', i.e., in Ukraine, the journal labelled the White Russian general Anton Denikin butcherer of the Jews. 92The editorial of the next issue continued the critique, 93 and in December the subtitle to an article asked, if the Russian Jews will be completely exterminated. 94Briefly, when writing about the pogroms the JK emphasised the present horrible sufferings of the Jews as a justification for a Jewish national state, and, by implication, a reason for opting for a conscious Jewish national identity.

Conclusions
After the Finnish independence, the Jews in Finland faced a new situ ation.Earlier legislation had forced them a separate, secondclass identity.The new Finnish legislation acknowledged them as citizens, although they had to apply the citizenship, and thus allowed them a full Finnish identity.However, in popular view they were far from equal to Finns.Old and new stereotypes abounded, from 'treacherous' and 'antiChristian' to ' Jews as Bolsheviks' or 'members of an alien or inferior race'.The situation of Finnish Jews thus was comparable to that of Jews in almost every European country: political changes had created new identity struc tures, but prevailing prejudices and the building of 'homogenous' national states prevented the Jews from making full use of them.Zionism offered a solution to this dilemma, the Jewish national state.For Finnish Jews, the Judisk Krönika was a Zionistinformed means to discuss the conundrum.
In a way reminiscent of Theodor Herzl, the journal suggested that local and global situations of the Jews made it indispensable to recreate their identities both as citizens of the countries they lived (to be able to stay) and as members of the Jewish nation (to be ready to travel to their old national state, Israel).By advocat ing the Zionist option of immigration to Palestine, and by emphasising the rise of aggressive antiSemitism (in the form of the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as well as the exclusive nationalism) the journal suggested that the Jews in Finland should seriously consider the Zionist aspirations.On the other hand, the JK urged the Jews in Finland to fight for their full civil rights by oppos ing all kinds of discrimination, particularly antiSemitism and its physical mani festation, pogroms.
From November 1918 to December 1919, the journal used running pagination and volume numbering.Thus the first issue in 1919 started on page 49 and bore the number four.In 1920, the pagination and numbering started anew from one.
Unpublished MA thesis in Finnish History.University of Helsinki: Department of History, 1997.