Marshall Sklare Research Articles

Present Trends Discontinued: A Response to Bethamie Horowitz’s 2023 Marshall Sklare Award Address

Bethamie Horowitz was a leader of the social–psychological turn in the social scientific study of American Jewry. The 1990s were ripe for such a turn. Structural stability enabled analysts to assume “present trends continued.” Today, unsettled times are drawing attention back to the macro-level structural forces shaping the contexts in which Jews live.

Territory Continues to Matter: Response to Sheskin’s Marshall Sklare Award Address 2023

Territory Continues to Matter: Response to Sheskin’s Marshall Sklare Award Address 2023

Reflections on Secularization and Diversity: The Marshall Sklare Award 2021 to Ariela Keysar and Barry Kosmin

Reflections on Secularization and Diversity: The Marshall Sklare Award 2021 to Ariela Keysar and Barry Kosmin

Reflections on 50 Years of the Sociological Study of American Jewry: Statics and Dynamics 2020 Marshall Sklare Award Address.

This article looks at the first 50 years of the Association for the Sociological Study of Jewry and finds that much of its subject matter remained constant. However, there have been significant changes in perspectives. Two cases in point are the perspectives on the impact of intermarriage and on the relationship of American Jewry with Israel. A number of the reasons for the changes in perspectives are suggested.

Family and Identity: Marshall Sklare, the Social Scientific Study of America’s Jews, and Jewish Communal Policy

The contents of Contemporary Jewry, the journal of Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ), are examined in an effort to evaluate arguments of overemphasis on the issues of intermarriage, fertility, and continuity. The findings do not indicate such an overemphasis. A socio-historical account of the field of the social scientific study of American Jewry, including an analysis of the perspectives of the new discipline’s pioneer, Marshall Sklare, is then presented in an effort to explain how and why the issues of intermarriage and birth rates became central to the research of some of the major figures in ASSJ and the field in general.

Boomers, Millennials and the Shape of American Judaism

Fall 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of Max Weber’s essay, “Science as a Vocation,” which has greatly influenced the way a host of scholars, including me, have approached the study of religion in the modern West. One cannot imagine the work of Peter Berger, Talcott Parsons, or Marshall Sklare, without Weber’s notions of disenchantment, charisma, or religious virtuosos. It is also impossible, a century after Weber confidently declaimed on these matters, not to notice how wrong he was in key respects. My own work has been less interested in the processes of modernization and secularization that have shaped Jews in the modern period than in the ways Jews have responded to those challenges with new modes of thought and observance; for that reason and others, I find quantitative evidence less useful than qualitative reports and observation. The question facing those of us committed to the study and the practice of Judaism in 2018, I believe, is whether those patterns of thought and observance, honed over two centuries of encounter with modernity, will require further adjustment in coming years. Will the “solutions” arrived at my baby boomers like me—who grew up in, and responded to, the sociological situation Sklare described so perceptively—“work” for millennials and the cohorts that follow? The essay that follows suggests that both continuity and change are likely to prove decisive.

Response to Marshall Sklare Award Lecture, “Beyond Policy: New Directions for Jewish Demography”

Response to Marshall Sklare Award Lecture, “Beyond Policy: New Directions for Jewish Demography”

Correction to: Marshall Sklare Award Lecture, 2016: Beyond Policy: New Directions for Jewish Demography

Unfortunately, in the original publication of the article, the year of 2017 in the article title for the Sklare Memorial Award Lecture is incorrect. The correct title is “Marshall Sklare Award Lecture, 2016: Beyond Policy: New Directions for Jewish Demography.”

Marshall Sklare Award Lecture, 2017: Beyond Policy: New Directions for Jewish Demography

The era of national Jewish demographic studies appears to have ended. The 2013 Pew Portrait of Jewish Americans study is an excellent substitute, but it is an opinion survey and lacks demographic questions important for studying intermarriage. The American Jewish Population Project of the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University is an innovative alternative utilizing meta-analyses of national surveys that include Jews, but these surveys usually include only Jews by religion and do not include questions about Jewish identification and practice. Local Jewish population surveys, once the main source for quantitative research on American Jews, remain a viable alternative, but have become more descriptive and policy-driven than theoretical because the 1990 and 2000-01 National Jewish Population Surveys rendered them redundant for this purpose. Even so, local Jewish population surveys can once again be a fruitful resource for Jewish social research when used to study theoretical questions such as spatiality, suburbanization, and the individual community as a predictive variable in comparative analyses. Some studies have included theoretical topics such as spirituality that have not been utilized for secondary analysis. More theoretical questions (which are nonetheless policy relevant) could be added to future studies, but this will require a culture change on the part of the Jewish communities that sponsor them. In the meantime, we should look to qualitative research to break new ground and develop new perspectives that will become so compelling that they will be examined quantitatively in future local studies.

On the Origins and Persistence of the Jewish Identity Industry in Jewish Education

ABSTRACT“Jewish identity,” which emerged as an analytical term in the 1950s, appealed to a set of needs that American Jews felt in the postwar period, which accounted for its popularity. Identity was the quintessential conundrum for a community on the threshold of acceptance. The work of Kurt Lewin, Erik Erikson, Will Herberg, Marshall Sklare, and others helped to shape the communal conversation. The reframing of that discourse from one that was essentially psychosocial and therapeutic to one that was sociological and survivalist reflected the community’s growing sense of physical and socioeconomic security in the 1950s and early 1960s. The American Jewish Committee and its Division of Scientific Research offers an enlightening case study of this phenomenon. Jewish educators seized on identity formation, making it the raison d’être of their endeavor. But the ascent of identity discourse also introduced a number of challenges for the Jewish educator—conceptual, methodological, political, and even existential.

2015 Marshall Sklare Award Lecture—An Ethnographer in the Museum: Reflections from POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

2015 Marshall Sklare Award Lecture—An Ethnographer in the Museum: Reflections from POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

If Canada and Israel are at War, Who Gets My Support? Challenges of Competing Diaspora Loyalties: Marshall Sklare Award Lecture

This paper seeks to examine the issue of competing loyalties for diaspora Jews, using Canadian Jews as a case study. The Jewish case has become marginal in the study of diasporas and transnational ties. This is particularly the case where we find real or perceived political conflict, which Jews have encountered historically as the charge of dual loyalty. The history of anti-Semitism, notably after the Enlightenment, and debates about Zionism were precursors of this current dilemma for Jews, and indeed other diasporic minorities. Interviews with Canadian Jewish leaders, and a review of the case of a prominent Canadian Jewish politician, illustrate that the tensions of status insecurity continue to be found even in a highly successful and integrated Jewish community such as that in Canada.

From the Ends of the West: My Jewish Demographic Narrative

Having grown up on the West Coast in a largely unobservant family, I have been interested in some of the more marginal Jewish populations, including Jews in the West. My outlook on Jewish sociology was heavily influenced by my teacher Marshall Sklare but continues to unfold in new directions, including historical demography and qualitative research.

“Good For The Jews:” Response to the Sklare Lecture

Amidst Marshall Sklare’s papers in the Brandeis University Archives & Special Collections Department is a box containing reel-to-reel tape recordings of a 1979 ‘‘Planning Conference for a Center for Modern Jewish Studies.’’ One of the tapes contains Sklare’s extemporaneous ‘‘Remarks on the Preparation of a Sociology of American Jewry.’’ In these remarks, Sklare said that one of the Cohen Center’s first tasks should be to write a definitive, scholarly sociology of American Jewry, a work of ‘‘synthesis and interpretation.’’ This was important to Sklare because he saw his fellow social scientists in the field of contemporary Jewry publishing basic research, while leaving the tasks of synthesis and interpretation to popular writers of whom Sklare had a particularly low opinion (e.g., Kahn 1968; Yaffe 1968). Sklare listed five challenges facing the person who would tackle this scholarly sociology. One of them he called the question of ‘‘self-censorship.’’ He said that there were some ‘‘sensitive’’ areas of research that were better left unexplored: the full range of American Jewish activities in support of Israel, Jewish involvement with American Communism, American Jewish youth and the campus revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and American Jewish action in support of the right of emigration of Soviet Jews. Essentially, Sklare argued that scholars of American Jewry should think carefully about what was Good For The Jews before embarking on a program of research. Sklare’s remarks raise the same questions of scholarly motivations and biases that are at the heart of Leonard Saxe’s Sklare Award Lecture. Of course, most scholars who dedicate themselves to the study of contemporary Jewry are motivated by a deep, abiding commitment to the survival and wellbeing of Jews and Judaism. The key question is how to control the biases that arise from these commitments. Postmodern thinkers call on researchers to engage in ‘‘reflexivity,’’ questioning how their own commitments and life experiences shape their research (Lincoln and

Shaping Demographic Research on American Jewry

I very much appreciate the recognition given me by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry for my contribution to American Jewish demography. The remarks that follow are in response to an invitation extended by Leonard Saxe to share some thoughts about the evolution of Jewish demography and its present state. Let me stress first that my own efforts, in fact, represent a collaborative endeavor: I am only one among many, all of whom deserve acknowledgment. To mention only a few: Roberto Bachi and his colleague at the Hebrew University, Oscar Schmelz, both of blessed memory; Marshall Sklare and Bernard Reisman, z’l, both of Brandeis, for their inspiration and useful contributions; Bill Berman for his general support of demographic research, for his insightful questions, and for the establishment of the North American Jewish Data Bank (NAJDB); my current Israeli colleagues, Sergio DellaPergola and Uzi Rebhun, who have been and are constant sources of inspiration and stimulation; my close colleagues, Barry Kosmin, Frank Mott, and the late Egon Mayer and Viv Klaff for their continuing support at NTAC; and my lifelong collaborator, Alice. Trained as a sociologist/demographer, when I completed my PhD, I had no expectations of specializing in Jewish demography. I saw myself as a general demographer who happened to have a strong personal sense of Jewish identity and a strong commitment to the vitality of the American Jewish community and Judaism worldwide. In fact, I was early encouraged by my PhD advisor to change my name to one less Jewish and thus help expedite my professional advancement. Only in

Boundaries, Margins, and Norms: The Intellectual Stakes in the Study of American Jewish Culture(s)

This paper lays out two research approaches to the study of American Jewry in order to examine the intellectual foundations of each approach. In the contrast between research focused on behavior and boundaries and research focused on subjectivity and sentiment, two different understandings of identity and culture are evident. The latter approach developed out of an interest in Jewish practices that can be traced to Marshall Sklare, Herbert Gans, and Charles Liebman. Equally important to this work is the “decentering” of social science categories that emerged in the 1970s. As important as this rethinking of Jewish life has been for its greater focus on gender and sexuality as part of a dynamic view of identity and culture, it raises other issues. What is the place of boundaries in the study of American Jewish life, and what are the most effective ways to study the reproduction of Judaism and Jewishness across generations?

Response to Steven M. Cohen’s Marshall Sklare Award Address

Response to Steven M. Cohen’s Marshall Sklare Award Address

Comment on Kadushin, Social Networks and Jews

I was honored to be asked by Professor Kadushin to comment on his Marshall Sklare Memorial Lecture. He has unique contributions to make to the socialscientific study of Jewry, and I’m glad to be brought into the conversation. Jews love to play ‘‘Jewish geography.’’ It’s fun for two Jews from opposite sides of the country, meeting for the first time, to discover that they have acquaintances in common. Sometimes the connections are through family, but most often they’re through organizations—one of the new acquaintances met the other’s sister at a Jewish camp, or met a good friend of the other at an AIPAC or Hadassah convention, or their children both go to Hillel at a particular university. But Jewish geography is not only fun. Indeed, it manifests—at least in my reading of ‘‘Social Networks and Jews’’—two profoundly important aspects of Jewish life in the diaspora. First, social networks sustain Jewish communal life; they were, writes Professor Kadushin, ‘‘the main sources of social organization and control of Jewish life’’ until the contemporary State of Israel came into being and remain extremely important today. Second, networks ‘‘cannot exist in thin air;’’ they are created and maintained where people meet regularly, most often in organizational contexts. At some level, everyone knows this. It’s impossible to imagine a viable Jewish community without the social networks that make Jewish geography possible or the many organizations that create and sustain the networks and enable communal action. Yet that knowledge has had surprisingly little impact on our research. Scholars appreciate the idea of networks, as Professor Kadushin points out, but their use of the term is nearly always metaphorical. The staples of social-scientific research on Jews—surveys of various Jewish populations, ethnographies of local communities,

What’s in a Name? A Response to Barry Chiswick

Let me begin by congratulating Professor Chiswick on receiving the distinguished Marshall Sklare Award. Like the late Professor Sklare, Chiswick is something of a lone wolf in the field. Only a handful of scholars today—none more important than Chiswick—study the economics of the American Jewish community. In many respects, we know less about the economic structure of the American Jewish community today than we did back in the 1950s. Today, for example, we know almost nothing about the annual budget of the American Jewish community: how much money comes in, how much is distributed, and how that distribution has changed over time. For almost three decades, from 1951 to 1980, Arnold Gurin and then S. P. Goldberg collected and published a good deal of these data in the American Jewish Year Book section devoted to "Jewish Communal Services: Programs and Finances." Today, so far as I know, nobody publishes these data— and we are all the poorer for that omission (Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds 1951; Gurin 1955; Goldberg 1956).1 We also, today, know all-too-little about the economic structure of the American Jewish community: the income level of Jews, their occupational structure, and the like. Simon Kuznets, Arcadius Kahan, Jacob Lestschinsky, and others once published luminous and widely read articles covering these subjects (Kuznets 1960, 1972; Lestschinsky 1946; Kahan 1986, pp. 101-148; Goldberg 1947; Reich 1972; Ginzberg 1978). Today, in contrast, Professor Chiswick and his wife, Carmel, stand almost alone in the academy in promoting the importance of economics to the social

The Marshall Sklare award of the association for the social scientific study of Jewry

The Marshall Sklare award of the association for the social scientific study of Jewry