Abstract

Blau-Weiss in Stockholm was a youth group the major goal of which was to keep the children of immigrants Jewish. The faith in a national ideal was a means to achieve this goal. Blau-Weiss was a Zionist youth group and advocated in its educational work the “national idea”. This contradicted the “liberal” teaching, then dominant in the Stockholm community, that Jews were not a people not a nationality but only believers in the Jewish faith. The “nationalization” of the Blau-Weiss by-laws was most likely a response to the formation of a Jewish youth organization by the more assimilated, native born Jewish elite closely affiliated with the community. In 1918 more than a year after the founding of Vandrareföreningen BlauWeiss which had until then been the only Jewish youth group in Stockholm, the Judiska Akademiska Klubben came into existence to strengthen the feeling of Jewish belonging and to work for “increased interest in Jewish cultural matters”. This goal would be achieved by lectures, discussions and studies about Jewish subjects.