Anca Filipovici Alternative identities at the periphery of a national state. Hashomer Hatzair and the Zionist youth from Romania Introduction Since the settlement of their first communities on Romanian lands during the mid- dle ages and pre-modern era, Jews have been subject to unstable policies and at- titudes varying between hostile tolerance, assimilation and rejection. This situation was also reflected by the late collective emancipation of the Jewish population in Romania that took place only after World War I. In the new post-war geopolitical context, Romania became a national unitary state joined by new provinces (Buko- vina, Bessarabia and Transylvania) that added diverse multicultural populations to the Romanian majority. With most of its population spread across rural areas (75 %), facing a low literacy rate (57 % literate population in the whole country)¹ and lacking an autochthonous middle class, the Romanian state engaged in a com- pensation process against those national minorities more educated and urbanized, like the Jews.² Moreover, struggling to consolidate the unification process, the state transformed public education and instruction of the future generation into one of its main national policies.³ But despite the nationalist tendencies of the state, social mobility through education was embraced by many youngsters, especially from ac- culturated families, once Romanian citizenship was finally granted to all Jewish in- habitants by the 1923 Constitution. Even a part of the young generation from more segregated communities broke with the tradition and attended non-denomination- al secondary schools. In the Romanian multicultural state, the Jewish population was not homoge- nous. Sephardic communities lived in the Old Kingdom (Regat)⁴, but the region 1 Data from Recensământul general al populației României din 1930, vol. II, București, Imprimeria Națională, 1938. 2 Though reaching only 4% of the total population, Jews represented a large ethnic group in urban areas (14%), with many working in liberal professions, finance and education. 3 See Livezeanu, Irina: Cultural politics in greater Romania: Regionalism, nation building, and eth- nic struggle, 1918–1930. Ithaca 1995. 4 Regat (the Kingdom), also called the Old Kingdom, designated the Romanian territory (Moldavia and Wallachia regions) before the 1918 union with the other provinces. Open Access. © 2024 bei den Autorinnen und Autoren, publiziert von De Gruyter. Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung – Nicht kommerziell – Keine Bearbeitung 4.0 International Lizenz. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110774702-010