Abstract
For a long time, the prevailing approach to Jewish identity has been dominated by a “survivalist” perspective focused on the threats of assimilation and intermarriage rather than the new realities created by modernity which allowed a variety of new ways of being Jewish to emerge. The widespread anxiety about group survival in the field of Jewish education has led to a survivalist paradigm that has tended to narrow the field’s theoretical conceptions of Jewish identity and identity in general, resulting in largely static and monolithic formulations. Instead, drawing upon the work of multiple disciplines, the authors argue for a shift from thinking about identity as some “thing” that someone “has” toward identities as being multiple and shifting processes that people practice and rehearse. The chapter concludes with examples of scholarship from various disciplines that approach identity formation in light of such a shift and with pedagogical applications and implications for the shift within the field of Jewish education, specifically.
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Notes
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JESNA newsletter, Summer 2008
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At least since 1976, a long sociological tradition of “impact studies” exists that has attempted to relate the effect of Jewish education in childhood to levels of Jewish identification in adulthood. Some of the earliest of these include, for example, Geoffrey Bock’s The Jewish Schooling of American Jews: A Study of Non-Cognitive Educational Effect, 1976; Harold Himmelfarb’s Impact of Religious Schooling: Effects of Jewish Education, 1974; and Steven M. Cohen’s “The Impact of Jewish Education on Religious Identification and Practice” (Jewish Social Studies) 1974. Cohen and others have continued this quest throughout the decades with articles such as Steven M. Cohen’s “Jewish Education and Its Differential Impact on Adult Jewish Identity,” in Jack Wertheimer (ed.), Family Matters: Jewish Education in an Age of Choice (University Press of New England), 2008; Steven M. Cohen’s highly charged and controversial work “A Tale of Two Jewries: The ‘Inconvenient Truth’ for American Jews’” which warned of dire decline in American Jewish identity as a direct result of intermarriage (Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation) 2006; and Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman’s less survivalist-driven study called Cultural Events and Jewish Identities: Young Adult Jews in New York (UJA NY) 2005. Also, in 2005, Jack Wertheimer introduced an important policy paper, a metaphor which entered into the field of Jewish education, called Linking the Silos: How to Accelerate the Momentum in Jewish Education Today (Avi Chai Foundation). Calling for the linking of silos of Jewish educational settings and initiatives, Wertheimer’s research team consisited of Steven M. Cohen, Sylvia Barack Fishman, Shaul Kelner, Jeffrey Kress, Alex Pompson, and Riv-Ellen Prell. They explored the relationship between pre-school attendance and later Jewish educational experiences and the impact of parents’ Jewish schooling on children’s Jewish education, of parents’ Jewish youth group experience and children’s Jewish education, of parents’ Israel travel as students on their children’s education, and grandparents’ observance upon their grandchildren’s education. Focusing on Jewish camp and Israel travel experiences, Amy Sales and Leonard Saxe published the report Limud [learning] by the Lake: Fulfilling the Educational Potential of Jewish Summer Camps (Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University), 2002; and Leonard Saxe et al.’s produced a study called “A Mega-Experiment in Jewish Education: The Impact of birthright Israel” (Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University), 2001.
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See, for example, Prell (1988) ethnography, “Laughter that Hurts: Ritual Humor and Ritual Change in an American Jewish Community,” where Purim becomes a keen window into painful gender inequalities and unnamed taboos within a learning community. Prell demonstrated how that community’s ritual celebration of Purim revealed tensions regarding gender roles and religious authority in a group that consciously described themselves as officially and proudly egalitarian.
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Charmé, S., Zelkowicz, T. (2011). Jewish Identities: Educating for Multiple and Moving Targets. In: Miller, H., Grant, L., Pomson, A. (eds) International Handbook of Jewish Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0354-4_10
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