The place of Judaism in American Jewish identity

Rethinking the Education of Cultural Minorities to and from Assimilation: A Perspective from Jewish Education

“…Phillips and Kelner (2006), for example, point out that American Jews raised without a Jewish denominational affiliation (i.e., those Jews whom we might consider to be "more assimilated") are not more likely to disaffiliate with the Jewish community than those who are raised in one of the three major Jewish denominations. Kaufman (2006) argues that most studies are designed to measure religiosity on a continuum of more or less-implicitly endorsing the norm of "tenacious adherence of traditional forms"-but these studies "cannot, for the most part, capture the many complex, sometimes contradictory, if not ambivalent, expressions of religious identity among American Jews today" (p. 170). 8 And perhaps most influentially, Horowitz (1998Horowitz ( , 1999Horowitz ( , 2000Horowitz ( , 2002 advocates for a reframing of Jewish sociology, away from the more normative question "How Jewish are the Jews?"…”

Jewish Identity and the Secular Achievements of American Jewish Men and Women

“…Two explanations are most prominent in accounting for secularity among American Jews. One is the mixture of ethnicity and religiosity in American Jewry (Cohen and Eisen 2000; Hartman and Kaufman 2006; Horowitz 2000; Kaufman 2005; Sharot 1997; Winter 1996, to name but a few). An individual may identify ethnically as a Jew without identifying with or practicing Judaism, the religion (Beit‐Hallahmi 2007; Sharot 1997).…”

The Circularity of Secularity: The Sacred and the Secular in Some Contemporary Post-Holocaust Identity Narratives

“…4 In short, these critics claim that a Eurocentric focus has invented (or at least dominated) the constructs we call secular and/or religious and that much of contemporary analysis neglects the many ''modernities'' and ''traditions'' that make up the ''secular age' '. 5 Similarly, as with secularization theory in general, the past fifteen years has seen a growing critique of Jewish identity research, drawing our attention to the fluid and complex ways in which identity is constructed and then reconstructed according to time, place, and the normative voices of those who do the research/scholarship (Kaufman 2003(Kaufman , 2005a. In essence much of this critique posits that prior to the postmodern influence on intellectual inquiry most discussions of Jewish identity assumed the existence of an ''essential'', ''core'' and/or ''authentic'' Jewish self.…”

“…Others suggest that since the behavioral indicators for each may reflect simultaneously ethnic or religious components of identity and/or that they may change over time and over the life course, perhaps we need a postmodern or more ''constructed'' and fluid view of each in our discussions of identity (Kaufman 2005a). 13 When in the majority culture, as in Israel, some argue that Jews are Jews by national identity with, as Daniel Elazar (1999) notes, a ''set of religious dimensions'' (35).…”

“…In this specific sense, symbolic religiosity better represents a behavioral rather than a meaning system. 19 See Kaufman (2005a). 20 See earlier references to Asad's (1996) concerns about a priori thinking in the construction of modernity, secularization and urbanization.…”