Why Study the Sociology of the Jews?

sociology of jews

Emergence of the discipline, as a subset of modern Jewish Studies

Role of Marshall Sklare: launched this field in the 1950s-1960s

• Emergence from wissenschaft des judetums (German term) 

• Means the scientific study of Jewishness

Growing pains: historically there were only religious Jewish studies 

• Religious approach to science: bible place in academics

  • With the evolvement of the Enlightenment: objectivity and reason

  • Ex. the ten plagues of the Egyptians under the Pharoah: the scientists don’t believe in the miracles, but they believe it could be something else (ex. Climate reasons why there were so many frogs) 

• Yeshivas: the place of religious Jewish study (similar to Christianity (priests, ministers, study the bible)) 

Jews and Assimilation

Traditional people but they have tried to embrace modernity (some kind of assimilation) 

Chicago school: studied the immigrants of Chicago (Robert Park) 

Social scientists post-war then mixed harsh critique of Jewish suburbia (all the houses are the same) with idealization of the shtetl 

Fiddler on the Roof: the father runs the house, and the mother has to work on the home (traditions)

• Hundreds of towns like this in Eastern Europe

• The family fell apart in the face of modernity and the traditions weakened and disappeared

  • Due to forces of modernity, immigration, and holocaust  

Park’s assimilation model

immigrant minorities should and would assimilate (now seen as racist, but it was actually very progressive for the time)

• America was able to absorb and include these peoples  

• Similar to Louis Wirth’s view on Jews (a colleague of Park, the first Jewish academic sociologist in the USA) 

  • Wrote his thesis on the Ghettos, where the Jews in Chicago lived 

  • wanted Jews to become Americans 

  • Would have been astonished to see the persistence of Orthodox Jews

Jewish Studies in the Academy 

Jewish studies: AJS 1969

ASSJ Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry 1971

Academic journals

Some classical sociologists have discussed Jews and Jewish-related themes (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel) 

Jews and Multiculturalism

Poster children for Canadian Multiculturalism 

• Multi-hyphenated lives 

Success 1: high levels of integration into the host culture and socio-economic success

Success 2: relatively high degree of cultural and identity retention, including change and evolution

• Require overcoming the barriers of antisemitism and the legacy of the Holocaust 

Assimilation: Jazz Singer

First urbanites: Jews and the city, modern economic life, advance highly in secular education, embraced liberalism and welfare state, lower family size

Managed via negotiation, ethnic, religious, and cultural identities

First talking movie made in the USA