The Future of the Jews in France
The major Jewish organizations in France are in crisis. The organizational model that has served the French community in the past decades is no longer viable. It is unclear whether a new workable model will emerge that can replace it.
From Binationalism to Multiculturalism to the Open Society: The Impact on Canadian Jews
With multiculturalism falling out of favor, many in Canada and elsewhere now laud the individualism of the open society. Declining communal participation and rising intermarriage rates among Canadian Jews, however, indicate that both multiculturalism and even binationalism were more conducive to Jewish group survival.
Modern Orthodoxy and Its Future
Modern Orthodoxy is a form of Jewish Orthodoxy that is open to the outside world. It is characterized by five principles: its outlook on education, its stance toward Israel, its attitude toward the role of women, a mindset of inclusiveness, and a moderate mode of speaking and reacting.
Jewish Education in the Age of Google
The success of Jewish education in the twenty-first century requires serious consideration of the wide range of changes affecting it. Education itself must change to meet the new challenges and seize the opportunities it faces.
Intermarriage and Jewish Leadership in the United States
The question of mixed marriage poses a dilemma to the American Jewish leadership. It would prefer not to choose publicly between integration into the broader society and distinctive Jewish survival. The realities of Jewish life in the United States, however, increasingly compel choices.
Blacks and Jews in America: History, Myths, and Realities
Black-Jewish relations, while not a paramount concern for most American Jews in 2006, are a useful vehicle for exploring intergroup conflict. The history of Jewish involvement in the American civil rights movement is highly instructive in this regard.
UJA-Federation of New York: Strengthening a Global Jewish Identity
UJA-Federation of New York encompasses New York City’s five boroughs, Westchester County, and Long Island. Approximately 1.4 million Jews live in an estimated 640,000 households in the eight-county area, with about one million residing in the five boroughs.
Transformations in the Composition of American Jewish Households
About half of recent marriages involving an American Jew are marriages between a Jew and a non-Jew. This means that about one-third of recently married American Jews have married non-Jews. Younger Jewish women’s rates of intermarriage are almost identical to those of men.
The Chabad Lubavitch Movement: Filling the Jewish Vacuum Worldwide
The influence of the Chabad Lubavitch movement in the Jewish world has greatly increased over the past decades. The seventh Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), who died without a successor – and is considered by part of the Chabad Hasidim as the Messiah – was in the 1950s at the origins of the present international outreach campaign.
The Jews, Israel, and India
The Cochin Jewish community is the oldest east of Iran. Most members now live in Israel, with only a few families remaining in Cochin. India’s main present Jewish community is in Bombay, nowadays Mumbai. This Bnei Israel community is slowly growing in numbers.
Winners and Losers in Denominational Memberships in the United States
Although dominant in the mid-twentieth century, Conservative Judaism has lost this place and is declining in numbers. Over the past decade, Reform Judaism has become the largest denomination. Despite Reform’s more "traditionalist" manifestations than in the past, the rift between it and the traditional Jewish community remains wide.
Are American Jews Becoming Republican? Insights into Jewish Political Behavior
An overwhelming majority of American Jews – 73 percent – describe themselves as moderate or liberal; 23 percent label themselves as conservative. Only 19 percent voted for Bush in the 2000 elections, but there are indications that Jewish support for the Republican Party is on the rise. The growing Orthodox communities in the New York metropolitan area and elsewhere are distinctively Republican.
Countervailing Trends in American Jewry: An Interview with Norman Podhoretz
A trend toward increasing indifference in the Jewish community is being countered by a return to religious observance. The second Palestinian uprising in 2000 had a profound effect on American Jewish attitudes toward Israel. Most American Jews who care about Israel take their cue from the Israeli government, and in Israel, public opinion had also shifted, leading to the Labor party’s dramatic demise in the 2003 elections.
American Jewish Public Activity: Identity, Demography, and the Institutional Challenge
Jews in America have been known to be, in Earl Raab’s felicitous phrase, "politically hyperactive." Yet today, the most fundamental indicators of Jewish support — membership, participation, and contributions — are on the wane for most of the organizations which have been in the forefront of Jewish activity in the public square in recent decades.
Don’t Look Back: Holocaust Survivors in the U.S.
Where Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers deals with Jews who came to America between 1881 and 1917, there is no World of Our Fathers about the 140,000 European Holocaust survivors who came to the United States after World War II or even about the other two-thirds of the survivors who came to Israel.
