Section archive - Trends in Jewish Education

This paper describes and analyzes the multiple ethnic identities and identifications among first-generation Jewish Israeli immigrants in Europe, and specifically in London and Paris, by means of closed-end questionnaires (N=114) and in-depth semi-structured interviews (N=23).

This paper addresses the relation between various elements of Jewish religious identity, in the sense of the narratives Jews create about their religiosity, and stances they hold towards those whom they consider “others”. These stances range from prejudice, via tolerance, to pluralism. The first part of the paper lays the theoretical foundations for the claim that multiple identities might foster open-mindedness among religious individuals. This is done first by describing the empirical link between prejudice and religious identity and reflecting on some of its causes; then by questioning the ubiquity of that link by demonstrating the connection between openness to others and religiosity in other studies, and offering some explanations for the contextual differences between the two sets of findings.

Oriented predominantly by a particular master narrative, knowledge produced by the social scientific study of Jewish identity formation tends to ask some questions but not others. Engaging in a study comprised of a select but key cross-section of the last half-century’s leading contributors to scholarship about American Jewish identity formation, the article exposes this narrative with the allegorical aid of the poem, “Humpty Dumpty.” Applied to the field of Jewish identity formation research, the rhyme about this ill-fated character depicts an allegory of the Jewish people as having fallen down to America from some high place; namely, pre-America, pre-Holocaust, and sometimes also a pre-Enlightenment, pre-emancipation Europe. The story then concludes on a tragic note, with all the Jewish professionals and leaders failing to put the Jews together again in accordance with their allegedly whole state that had existed previously in Europe. Elucidating the “wall,” “fall,” and the failure to “repair,” the article demonstrates how social scientists of Jewish identity formation have, until quite recently, tended to default to one or another version of this same story of decline.

The Joint Initiative Between the Government of Israel and World Jewry, organized by the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs in partnership with The Jewish Agency, is a historic joint effort to develop practical solutions to the greatest challenges facing world Jewry, with a primary emphasis on strengthening Jewish identity amongst Jews and connecting world Jewry to Israel. The online jam session expanded the conversation and enabled every individual, community, or organization to contribute their perspectives to the 'collective wisdom' of the Jewish people. More than 2,000 individuals took part in the online conversation, with participants hailing from all around the world. A group of professionals have analyzed the insights generated during the jam session and have integrate them into a set of recommendations that will be presented to the government for approval.