Jewish Identities in Postmodern Societies
Is being Jewish a matter of culture, religion, belonging to a nation or to a community? Or is it also something else?
Transformations in the Composition of American Jewish Households
Delayed marriage and nonmarriage contribute to a low American Jewish fertility rate, well under replacement level. The high school years are very important for later patterns of behavior, including Jewish family formation. Community leaders, policy planners, and parents can enhance the likelihood that children will grow up to want to create their own Jewish households. Educational programs for teens are a top priority.
Post-Soviet Jewry on the Cusp of Its Third Decade – Part 2
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee continues to do essential work in the post-Soviet states, but financial distress has caused the organization to sharply curtail its welfare services to vulnerable Jewish population groups. The cutbacks are due as much to decisions by North American Jewish federations to reduce subventions to international programs before the onset of the current financial crisis as to the crisis itself.
Jews as Symbols and Reality in Multicultural Canada
The growth of Canada’s Jewish population has followed the pattern of Canada’s development: a shift from east to west. Until the mid-twentieth century, Montreal was the center of Canadian Jewish life; today that role is played by Toronto. About half of Canada’s Jews reside in Toronto, a quarter in Montreal, and the rest in smaller communities such as Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Vancouver.
The Paradox of the Italian Jewish Experience in 1990-2010
There is a paradox to the Italian Jewish experience in the 2000s. Jews are more integrated than ever since 1945, and Israel has been relegitimized in important quarters after being in practice delegitimized by the Communists, Socialists, and those media close to the Christian Democrats in the late 1970s and 1980s, reaching the lowest point in the second half of 1982. Yet, because of various factors including the web as well as unwillingness to take things in stride any longer, the organized and
The Challenges Facing British Jewry
The challenges facing British Jewry now are little different from those that have faced Diaspora Jewry generally over the past one hundred years or more, namely, the twin problems of assimilation and anti-Semitism. The interesting questions today are whether the nature and context of these challenges are different at present, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and how effective the community’s response to these challenges is likely to be.
American Muslims: The Community and Their Relations with Jews
Muslims in the United States number slightly under three million according to the most accurate population studies.They are among the wealthiest, most educated, and most ethnically diverse Muslim communities in the world.Their integration into the United States is remarkably different than in European countries, most notably in the near-absence of Muslim ghettos or enclaves common across the Atlantic. Three well-organized and well-funded political and civil rights organizations form the core Muslim advocacy.They work within the American political process to advance Muslim interests, but frequently present their community as victims of widespread “Islamophobia.”Leaders in all three have drawn controversy for support of extremist groups, and are overall hostile to Israel.
The Slow Disappearance of Turkey’s Jewish Community
Turkey’s Jewish community is one of the few remaining Diaspora communities in a country with a Muslim majority. Despite its apparent dynamism, its long-term viability is doubtful. The community does not have any influence or play any role worth mentioning in Turkey’s cultural, political, or intellectual life. Furthermore, in recent years the entire community has become the target of much resentment and hostile rhetoric from the country’s Islamist and ultranationalist sectors.
The Expulsion of the Jews from Muslim Countries, 1920-1970: A History of Ongoing Cruelty and Discrimination
Between 1920 and 1970, 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab and other Muslim countries. The 1940s were a turning point in this tragedy; of those expelled, 600,000 settled in the new state of Israel, and 300,000 in France and the United States. Today, they and their descendents form the majority of the French Jewish community and a large part of Israel’s population.
JCall Discourse: A Semantic Analysis
The year 2010 has witnessed a turning point in the way that Jews and Israel are treated. Through the JCall phenomenon, a part of the world Jewish community has become the partisan of a changed attitude toward the state of Israel. A call for "pressure" on Israel is voiced by a part of the Jewish elites who claim to be doing so out of affection.
Highly Engaged Young American Jews: Contrasts in Generational Ethos
Many engaged Jews under the age of forty emphasize, more than their elders and predecessors, Jewish purpose. They have created new minyanim, expanded social justice activities, engaged in various cultural endeavors, undertaken Judaic learning singly and in groups, and established a powerful and significant presence on the Internet and other new media.
Environmental Activism in the Canadian Jewish Community
While there have been numerous literary efforts to inform the scholarly and lay public concerning ecology and Judaism at least from the 1980s, the penetration of these concepts to the level of ordinary public discourse within the Canadian Jewish community is barely a decade old, and its appreciable impact has been even more recent.
Elderly Jews: An Increasing Priority for the American Jewish Community?
The American Jewish community is rapidly aging. The absolute number of elderly Jews more than doubled from 1957 to 2000, reaching more than a million persons. Data are presented on Jewish elderly from both the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey and local Jewish community studies that are useful to Jewish community planners in prioritizing services for the Jewish elderly in an environment of both increasing numbers of elderly and increasing needs in other areas of Jewish communal concern.
Jewish-Muslim Interaction in Canada
The number of Muslims in Canada has grown exponentially, while the size of the Jewish community has remained more or less stable. There are now 780,000 Muslims in the country, representing 2.5 percent of the total population, while the 373,000 Jews account for about 1 percent.
American Jewry’s Comfort Level: Present and Future
The challenges confronting American Jewry are multiple. Jewish continuity has many disparate aspects, among which are issues such as Jewish identity, education, marriage, aging, gender relations, the strengthening of communities, leadership, mobility, attitudes toward Israel, philanthropy, outreach, government relations, anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, building alliances, interfaith relations, and many others. In a postmodern society, fragmentation of views on these issues is likely to increase further.
