NEJS 164b. SOCIOLOGY OF AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY. Spring 2014

Prof. Sylvia Barack Fishman.

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Phone: 62065. Lown 210

Office hours, Mondays noon-2 p.m., unless otherwise posted, and by appointment.

Course meets Mondays and Wednesdays, 5-6:20.

This course explores transformations in modern American Jewish societies, first surveying Jewish social groups in historical Jewish communities and then focusing on American Jews in the second half of the 20th century. The course uses an interdisciplinary approach, analyzing material culture, literature, and film as well as sociological and social-historical texts. It is the goal of this course that students learn about the field of the social scientific study of American Jewish societies as a discipline, as well as about the societies themselves.

Assignments:

All students are expected to do each of the required readings by the date indicated, and to be ready to participate in class discussions. A short 5-7 page fieldwork assignment will be due on February 24. A written mid-term examination will take place during the class period on March 17. The major research paper (15-20 pages) will be due on April 30, at 5 p.m. A separate graduate discussion section will be arranged for graduate students.

Students with documented learning disabilities or other health issues should inform the professor as soon as possible, and should provide written documentation.

Required Texts for all students, available at the Brandeis University Bookstore:

1. Sylvia Barack Fishman, The Way Into the Varieties of Jewishness (2007)

2. Harriet Hartman and Moshe Hartman, Gender and American Jews: Patterns in Work, Education & Family in Contemporary Life (UPNE, 2009).

SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND DISCUSSION TOPICS BY CLASS PERIOD

January 13 (Monday)--Introduction. Overview of course semester. Methods of studying American Jews as a contemporary social group: Triangulation--Using quantitative and qualitative research and cultural artifacts to understand American Jewish life. Are American Jews distinctive—and is America distinctive in Jewish history?

January 15 and 22—Antecedents: Read Fishman, The Way into the Varieties of Jewishness, Introduction and Chapters One and Two. Characteristics of Jewish societies in historical, pre-modern Jewish communities. How did Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities differ in the social characteristics they developed? How did historical Jewish communities understand past communities? How did Emancipation, and the Jewish Enlightenment change Jewish life?

January 27 and 29 —Immigration: Read Fishman, Varieties of Jewishness, Chapter Three, and selections by Helmreich, Against All Odds. Early waves of Jewish immigration to America; Pre-immigration Jewish societies in the 19th century; How did modernity transform Jewish identity, values and behavior in various geographical areas? Immigration to the United States before World War II. Holocaust survivors; Recent immigration: Former Soviet Union, Israelis, North and South Africa, Latin America, Canada

January 27: Hand out fieldwork assignment

February 3, 5 and 10-- Read Varieties of Jewishness, Chapters 4-5-6-7. Varieties of American Jewish religious culture and how they grew. Interactions, mutual influences, and conflicts between Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Secular Jewish Humanist, Jewish Renewal wings of Judaism, Post-denominationalism, and others. Defining inclusion and exclusion within diverse wings of Judaism. Galvanizing issues within each movement.

February 12 and 24-- Adaptation, Acculturation, and Change: Read Charles Silberman, selections from A Certain People, Jenna Joselit,, “Red Letter Days” and “Kitchen Judaism,” from The Wonders of America, Fishman, Jewish Life and American Culture, chapter One. Jews adapting to American middle class culture at mid-century (behavior, material culture). How did educational and occupational factors transform Jewish life? What were the agendas of acculturation? How were Jewish ceremonies and institutions and concepts of Jewish behavior transformed? How did Jewishness affect Jewish secular education and occupation, and the socio-economic status?

WENESDAY FEBRUARY 12, UNDERGRADUATE DISCUSSION SECTIONS:

Jenna Joselit, “Red Letter Days” and “Kitchen Judaism,” from The Wonders of America,

February 26, and March 3 and 5-- Read Hartman, Gender and American Jews, Part I (13-120), Fishman, "Public Jews and Private Acts: Family and Personal Choices," in Mittleman, Sarna, and Licht, eds., Jews and the American Public Square: Debating Religion and Republic, pp. 265-288; Double or Nothing?, Chapters Three and Eight; Varieties of Jewishness, Chapter 8. View film, "Goodbye, Columbus."The Jewish family as the basic building block of Jewish society. American Jewish individuals and families at mid-20th-century and beyond: changing patterns of family formation, education and occupation, gender construction, and identity. Gender issues as one foundation of Jewish political liberalism.

MONDAY MARCH 3 Undergraduate discussion sections: Real and “reel” Jewish families

March 10 and 12-- Read Gans, "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America," Ethnic and Racial Studies 2, No. 1 (January, 1979), and Marshall Sklare, “The Image of the Good Jew in Lakeville.”Marshall Sklare and the creation of the field of sociology of American Jews; how can we study American Jewish behavior, attitudes, social change. Sklare’s analysis of American Jewish identity and social change. Interpretive framework: how a social scientist positions him/herself. Jews adapting to American middle class culture at mid-century (behavior, material culture). What were the agendas of acculturation? What is “ethnic identity”? What is “social capital”? The image of the “good Jew” in You-ville.

MARCH 17—IN CLASS MID-TERM EXAMINATION

March 19 and 24-- Read selections on Jewish education: Fishman, Jewish Life and American Culture, pp. 93-121; “The Differential Impact of Jewish Education on Adult Jewish Identity,” Steven M. Cohen in Jack Wertheimer, ed., Family Matters: Jewish Education in An Age of Choice (University Press of New England, 2007), pp. 34-58. Sylvia Barack Fishman, "Generating Jewish Connections: Conversations with Jewish Teenagers, Their Parents, and Jewish Educators and Thinkers," in Jack Wertheimer, ed., Family Matters: Jewish Education in An Age of Choice (University Press of New England, 2007), pp. 181-212. Additional discussion on evolutions within wings of Judaism. Then: What are the various forms of formal and informal Jewish education? How did they develop? What impact do they have on Jewish values and behaviors?

March 26--Read selections from Stern and Rosenthal. Intergroup relationships, American Jews and the world. What is Anti-Semitism and how has it changed over history? The “rediscovery” of the Holocaust and Holocaust memorializing. The impact of the “Six Day War” on American Jewish attachments to Israel.

March 31--Read selections from Shaul Kelner, Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism (pp. xv-46, 82-108); and selections from "the distancing debate"--Peter Beinart, Leonard Saxe, Steven M. Cohen. Israel, the dream, the ideal, and the transforming reality in the minds of American Jews. How did American Jew attachment to Israel grow? Has is receded or simply become more complicated? Are there generational or denominational differences in feelings about Israel? How does attachment to Israel interact with American Jewish political values? How do college students and GenXers relate to Israel?

April 2-- Read selections from Jack Wertheimer, ed., The New Jewish Leaders: Reshaping the American Jewish Landscape, Steven M. Cohen, "From Jewish People to Jewish Purpose: Establishment Leaders and Their Nonestablishment Successors," and "Expressive, Progressive, and Protective: Three Impulses for Nonestablishment Organizing among Young Jews Today," and Fishman, Bernstein, and Sigalow, "Reimagining Jewishness: Younger American Jewish Leaders, Entrepreneurs, and Artists in Cultural Context," pp. 45-213. Jewish organizations: What they are and how they function in American Jewish communities on a local and national level. What is the role of American Jewish organizations today, and how has the relationship of American Jews to their organizations changed? The impact of geographical mobility and regionalism on Jewish organizational life; the new crop of American Jewish organizations; the impact of feminism on Jewish organizational life; organizations try to adapt to meet changing American Jewish psyche.

April 7 and 9-- Read Hartman, Part II, pp. 121-252; Fishman and Parmer, Matrilineal Ascent, Patrilineal Descent; Fishman, Jewish Life and American Culture, pp. 123-152. New patterns of (1) education and occupation; (2) connection between secular and religious education and later identification; (3) family formation and construction of Jewish households. Jewish feminism as a force for conflict and revitalization. Have we arrived at a post-denominational time? Do denominations have significance to young American Jews today? New challenges to the American Jewish family: intermarriage, non-marriage, alternative households. What is a “Jewish family” today?

WEDNESDAY APRIL 9, UNDERGRADUATE DISCUSSION SECTIONS on Fishman and Parmer, Matrilineal Ascent, Patrilineal Descent

April 28— Read Varieties of Jewishness concluding chapter. Wrap-up session: What is American Jewish identity today? Class party at Professor Fishman’s home.

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