Research Paper: Measuring Jewish Identity in the United States

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Measuring Jewish Identity in the United States

     

My research focus is on Jewish identity in the United States. This paper will focus on 7 articles that discuss how Jewish identity is measured and how external factors such as assimilation and intermarriage has changed the cohesiveness of the Jewish American family. This paper will be surveying articles that have looked at such issues like intermarriage, conversion, assimilation, education, Jewish affiliation, psychological well-being, and synagogue attendance. The articles that I have chosen used quantitative methods to give fascinating data that can be useful to trace the development of Jewish identity in the United States. I chose Jewish cultural identity because it interests me and I chose the United States rather than Canada because most of the World's Jews are in the United States (approximately 6 million from the 1998 Jewish Yearbook). I am hoping to further my research to Canada's Jews but there is little research on Canadian Jewry because of the small population of Jews in Canada (approximately 350,000 in 1998)

Most of the articles deal with a method that includes surveys, interviews. I will discuss how some articles asked questions and then constructed indexes to measure the level of identity on a scale. Some articles grouped Jews into categories and labels.

Case Study of the Denver Jewish Community

Judd's article uses a case study of the Denver Jewish Community to discuss how Jewish identity if affected by intermarriage. Her article compares households with intermarried couples who bring their children to Jewish school versus couples who bring their children to a new innovative school for children of mixed marriages. This study speaks to the question, "What becomes of the children of intermarriage?" Her questions stem from the wedding ceremony, the degree of "Jewishness", and there is a concentration on both the Jewish parent and the non-Jewish parent. This includes church activity, and friendship patterns. Separate questionnaires were given to the Jewish parent and to the non-Jewish parent. The sample size was 51 (23 mothers and 28 fathers). All participants were in their 30's and 40's. Some questions that were asked included, where are you from originally? Is your family in the Colorado region? Do you have a lot of Jewish friends? She found that 60% of the couples had Jewish friends but it did not influence their decision to join a synagogue.

She uses statistics and she discusses her findings by looking at the Jewish population in the world from an historical perspective. Her case study involved looking at households with one Jewish parent who has brought the children fully Jewish and she looked at households with families who brought up their children learning both religions. She took in the ecological factors of having Jewish relatives, and the proximity from the family home to a Jewish community centre. She also looked at the marriage ceremony and the degree of religiosity of the family. She also looked at participation of the family activities like Church, friendship patterns, and the importance of his/her childhood religion. There were separate questionnaires for the Jewish and non-Jewish parents. This study is an example of quantitative research because the data that is collected and then transformed into numbers that are used in a scale. The case study took into account several external factors:

    Ecological Factors: Presence of Jewish relatives and friends that may affect how intermarried couples bring up their children.

    Marriage Ceremony: If the couple got married in a synagogue, then we can make an assumption that they may want to raise their child as Jewish

    Jewishness: the level of religiosity is measured by recoding into Orthodox, Liberal Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, and Secular.

    Non-Jewish Parent: This survey also examines the non-Jewish parent and the family's participation in Church, friendship patterns, and the current childhood religion. Separate questionnaires were given to the Jewish and the non-Jewish parent therefore data analysis could be available at the individual level. 70% of the families responded with a sample of 51. In some cases, the marriages had dissolved, or one of the spouses died. More than 100 parents returned the questionnaire. 51 were non-Jews. It was found that the rate of intermarriage for women was approaching the rate for men. 27 fathers responded with 24 mothers.

Judd's article claimed that the results were representative of the American Jewish population. However, she used convenient sampling using a snowball technique. Her sample could only be representative of children of mixed marriages in Denver. Since she used the snowball technique to get more respondents, this would discourage randomness, thus most of the sample consisted of people in the same age group.

    Symbolic Ethnicity and American Jews: The Relationship of Ethnic Identity to Behaviour and Group Affiliation

Kivisto and Nefzger used two indexes to quantify the degree of "Jewishness" for the Jewish American family. They used prior research to re-construct "Cohen's ritual observance index". This index was a summary score based on six rituals: Passover Sedars, Chanukah lighting, fasting on Yom Kippur, lighting Shabbat candles, keeping a kosher home, and refraining from carrying money on Shabbat. In Kivisto and Nefzger's article, the last question was removed, and the index was collapsed into 5 categories. Cohen's 4 categories of highly observant, moderately, low, and non observant were collapsed into observant and non-observant.

Kivisto and Nefzger constructed a Communal Affiliation Index and the Interpersonal Index and an index called Symbolic Ethnicity. The Communal Affiliation Index focuses on memberships in organisations, both religious and secular. The Interpersonal Index focuses on friendship and marriage. Symbolic Ethnicity focused on the level of importance of being a Jew. The responses for the 3 categories were transformed into a Kendall's tau with a significance level of p<0.01 for the Symbolic Ethnicity Category and p< 0.05 for the Behavioural Characteristics.

Kivisto and Nefzger used the findings and broke down the scores into Kendall's tau. They placed the Kendall's tau scores and compared them to Cohen's research. Kivisto and Nefzger's findings do not support Cohen's survey regarding Symbolic Ethnicity. Perhaps some of the reasons were because many of them considered being Jewish as important or very important and the more strongly they held this belief, the more likely they were to express it behaviourally. The cross tabulation of the identity variable with many additional behavioural ones in the survey. As depicted in one of the tables in the article, nearly every behavioural characteristic is positively associated with the importance of being Jewish.

Kivisto and Nefzger conclude that their research is exploratory and cannot be generalized to the population. They conclude that their case cannot be made because their data is not based on longitudinal nor generational data. Their analysis shows that symbolic ethnicity is not strongly related to one's sense of identity. They conclude that their findings point to the likelihood of a distinctive future trajectory for Jewish ethnic identity and communal life. Their findings indicate that younger Jews are more likely to have non-Jewish friends and to intermarry than older Jews. The unexpected results in their research are pointed to the fact that their research was undertaken at a later date and that Jews have changed their ideologies from the earlier research of Cohen. To conclude, symbolic ethnicity had a weak association to the connection between ethnic identity and behaviour and group affiliation. This gap in data could be related to the decline in religiosity or the disconnection between religious Jewish identity and cultural Jewish identity.

I found this article too quantitative in nature and I did not understand how all of these questions could be transformed into numerical data. I also found that there was no explanation of Cohen's research. I had to guess the scope of his research and I did not know his exact findings. Furthermore, I did not know how each writer defined symbolic ethnicity. The results could have been different because there was no standard as to its definition. Kivisto and Nefzger took data from a survey and analysed it but they did not mention the sample size or the logistics of the survey. It was only at the end of the article when it is mentioned that the survey was not generalizable.

Jewishness and Well-Being: Specific Identification and General Psychological Adjustment

    Ressler's study examined the relation of nine factors that describe Jewish identification with three scales relating to aspects of psychological well being. (Belonging, Optimism, and Self-acceptance). 177 American Jews aged 22-40 years were surveyed. The sample was limited to Americans who were born to 2 Jewish parents. This limit on the sample size was employed to ensure a uniform sense of assimilation to American culture. Questionnaire was given to participants, rated on a 6-point scale in terms of how characteristic each statement is of them. 25 items came from scales measuring Belonging, Self-Acceptance, and Optimism. 98 other items were drawn from previous studies; this method was used to study Jewish identification. Among the 98 items, several redundant items were dropped to 81 items dispersed among 9 factors influencing Jewish identification. A series of tables were made to show the Number of items per factor, the alpha value, Eigen-Value, % Variance, Standard Deviation, and the Mean. Each factor was converted to a scale and analyzed. I had trouble understanding this table. I found it difficult how people's measurements can be quantified in such a highly scientific manner. It is clear that my preferences are qualitative research and not quantitative research. I found this article to be interesting, but I found that the authors used the data incorrectly. I would have recoded the respondents responses of Jewish identity into levels and not scaled.

In the other table, there is a linear regression equation that shows a positive association between Jewish identity and Psychological Well-Being (Through the factors of Belonging, Optimism, and Self-Acceptance). I found that this method did not give enough results. It showed a weak positive association but it did not give respondents' actual results. I had trouble believing that a weak association could support that Jews who felt more Jewish would feel psychologically stable. I found that this data was more coincidental than factual. Since the data was converted into scaled numbers, it was difficult to analyse. Regression analysis was employed and a small positive relationship was detected between the well being of the people and their sense of Jewish identity. They were recruited using a snowball technique to generate a diverse and representative sample. An underlying problem was the sample. This sample was not diverse because the authors used the snowball technique, and it could not be representative since it was a convenient sample. The psychological scores were tested against two areas of Jewish identification; activism in Jewish organisations, and religiosity. The questions asked about background and demographics as well as a series of statements rated on a 6-point scale that asked the participant to rate themselves on each characteristic of themselves. Twenty-five items were associated with belonging, optimism, and self-acceptance. The two tables that were drawn from the data include scales of Jewish identification and psychological well-being. Table 2 includes Pearson Correlations and Beta Weights from Final Linear Regression Equations.

I found that this article lacked any solid foundation. I found the associations to be weak, thus I could understand that social cohesion may lead to psychological well-being and stability, but I did not think and I did not expect to see research in the area of Jewish-ness and psychological well-being. This article was surprising and refreshing, but it will not be a part of my research in the future. I found the content to be appropriate in preliminary research on the topic of Jewish identity, but my future research will focus on intermarriage, assimilation, and the external ideologies of Canada and the United that help shape Jewish identity.

    Who needs Yiddish Today? Report From The Campuses

    Hannah Kliger, a professor at The University in Massachusetts interviewed and analyzed years of her students backgrounds and discussed the various reasons why her students took Yiddish courses. This article was interesting and insightful, yet it lacked a sample size and a solid methodology. I found myself guessing if she was writing out of stream of consciousness or if she had a firm sample size but she refused to disclose it in her article.

    Since this was the only qualitative study, I found the results more "human" and less mathematical. The data was clearly not representative of anything larger than students in her classes over the years. I also did not fully trust her observations, because I did not know how reliable they were. Were they her reflections over the years, or were they journal entries from student interviews. I wondered if the interviews were formal or informal. It would have been beneficial if she mentioned how she conducted her research for this article.

    She commented that students took Yiddish class to re-connect with their Jewish heritage, to learn about Jewish history through language, and to identify with their Jewish identity. Some took Yiddish classes to have a closer bond with their family members, while others took the course to enable them to study scholarly Yiddish material that they could not get translated into English.

    I found her study interesting, but it lacked precision and I found that she might have tried to make broader claims that her students represent the Jewish population. In her article, she did not list her interview questions and she did not talk about her respondents. She analyzed her students from the present and the past from a broad and general level, which made the results interesting and thought provoking. The common point that she was discussing in her article is that Yiddish acts as a vehicle to preserve Jewish identity and the connection to the Jewish past through discussions with older family members and through reading old Yiddish scholarly works. I enjoyed this article because it was less scientific, but I was weary as to its reliability and validity. There was no mention to sample size, what types of questions she asked, how old her sample was, was the research longitudinal or was it continuous over a set period of time, or was her research taken over discrete periods over a period of time. I also could not detect if the questions were formal or informal. I found that a lot of the article was rambling, but I enjoyed getting a sense of richer data.

Jewish identification in intermarriage: does a spouse's religion (Catholic vs. Protestant) matter?

Rebhun's article on intermarriage rates between Jews and Catholics and Jews and Protestants used a sample of 2699 and asked them questions about their family life, and their Jewish identity, and how they were brought up. The dependent variables were education, and labour force characteristics. The independent variables were Jewishness, which was divided into 6 factors: ceremony, ritual, ASSOC (aspects of Jewish life), denomination, informal Jewish contact, and formal Jewish education.

    The article used the National Jewish Population Survey from 1990. The responses were narrowed down to 5,146 identifying at least one Jewish member in the household (Jewish was defined as currently Jewish or of Jewish background) The final stage of the survey yielded 2,441 respondents. The measures included and independent variable of religion of spouse and 7 dependent variables. The dependent variables were Jewish rituals and practices, Institutional Affiliation, Informal Jewish networks, Non-Jewish practice, Number of Jewish Parents, Year of Marriage, Residence, County Size, Education and Occupation. The variables of gender and region were dummy coded because males were the reference category for gender and the Northeast was the reference category for region because most American Jews are in the Northeast part of the USA. I liked how the definitions of Jewish were more elaborate. In some articles, they were coded in 4 or 5 methods, while some articles tend to collapse Jewish identity into 3 categories. As discussed in class, it is unwise to collapse Jewish identity into a dichotomy, because identity may not be so rigidly defined. Being Jewish may not be social or biological, but cultural or ethnic.

Jews without Judaism? Assimilation and Jewish Identity in the United States

Amyot and Sigelman's article on Assimilation and Jewish identity in the United States also use data from the 1990 National Jewish population survey. In their method, the survey comprised of over 125,000 households that yielded about 5,000 households with at least one Jewish family member. From that sample 2,500 households were interviewed and one third of those families were asked additional questions. There is no explanation of how Amyot and Sigelman narrowed down their sample. They were left with 510 ethnically Jewish interviewees with who they made three scales: religiosity, personal contact with other Jews, and Jewish identification. There was no clear definition of who was ethnically Jewish or who was not. I found that this term was not clear and should have been defined in the article.

A religiosity scale was constructed and it contained three components: religious orthodoxy, religious observance, and private religious observance. Questions were based on synagogue attendance, whether they fasted for Yom Kippur, and if they refrained from handling money on Shabbat. They also measured how often they attended a religious function like a Passover seder, purchased kosher meat, used separate dishes for milk and meat products, lit candles on Shabbat, and lit Chanukah candles. All of the data from this survey was graphically summarized and quantified. The equation to determine Jewish identification was a mathematical equation is JewishIdentification=0.510(Religiosity) + 0.305(SocialContact)

I could not fully understand the equation for calculating Jewish identity. I could not understand, as the other articles how an identity can be measured quantitatively. On a qualitative level, I found that the scales were too confusing because each index contained scales with different measurements. For an example, the index on social contact contained questions about 1) Religion of current spouse, and 2) Proportion of friends who are Jewish, and 3)Level of Jewish character in the neighbourhood. In this index, there should be the same kind of measurement, but instead, each question had their own scale, or Jewish, not married, not Jewish for the 1st question and for question #2, Most/All, Some, and Few, and for question #3, Very, Little/Somewhat, and Few/None. If the index had a standard means of measurement for the list of questions in that index, it would be easier to read and to understand and analyse.

For the other index, labeled Jewish identification discussed 1) importance of being Jewish, 2) importance of living in a Jewish neighbourhood, and 3) reaction to a child marrying a non-Jew. I found that the measurements were not consistent with all of the questions. For some of the questions, there were 3 responses, and for some there were 6 responses. I found the results looked messy and difficult to understand.

Symbolic Ethnicity and symbolic religiosity: towards a comparison of ethnic and religious acculturation

Gans' article on Symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity is drawn from his 1979 article on Symbolic ethnicity and the future of ethnic groups and cultures in America. Most of his data is drawn from qualitative studies and observations about American Jewry. His article does not contain a particular method, rather going back to his article from the late 1979. His method is descriptive and qualitative. It appears that this article is an update to his 1979 article and he gives his new insights and the trends of American Jews. He brings us up to date with little statistics and he brings up his 1979 article as a foundation for his discussion. His method refers to tables and charts from past articles that indicate statistical data. It does not look like he did a lot of work for this article since it seems like a rehashing of his older article. There is no concrete method, even for his previous research. (Mogen David, candlesticks, food, books, art, records). Gans'defines symbolic religiosity as the consumption of Jewish symbols. Symbolic ethnicity is the consumption of ethnic symbols so that the ethnic groups identifies with the ethnic group through the use of these ethnic symbols.

These articles mostly consist of quantitative data in the form of index construction, tables and charts with statistical data. One article is composed of open-ended interviews, and general trends that are happening in our lives. There is a rich amount of data in Kliger and in Gans article, but the method is less structured, thus it leaves me with unanswered questions. Many of the writers used innovative and creative methods to obtain information on the topic of Jewish identity in the United States and the threats of assimilation, intermarriage, and conversion. To conclude, these articles are of great use for me in the future and they will be very helpful for me to further my research.

Bibliography

Amyot, Robert P. And Lee Sigelman "Jews without Judaism? Assimilation and Jewish Identity in the United States" in Social Science Quarterly v 77 no 1 March 1996

Dominguez, Virginia "Questioning Jews" in American Ethnologist v 20 no 3 1993

Gans, Herbert J. "Symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity: towards a comparison of ethnic and religious acculturation" in Ethnic and Racial Studies v 17 no 4 October 1994

Hartman, Harriet and Moshe Hartman " More Jewish, less Jewish: implications for education and labour force characteristics" in Sociology of Religion v 57 Summer 1996

Judd, Eleanore Parelman " Intermarriage and the Maintenance of Religio-Ethnic Identity, A Case Study: The Denver Jewish Community" in Journal of Comparative Family Studies v 21 no 2 Summer 1990

Kivisto, Peter and Ben Nefzger "Symbolic Ethnicity and American Jews: The Relationship of Ethnic Identity to Behaviour and Group Affiliation" in The Social Science Journal v 30 no 1 1993

Kliger, Hannah "Who needs Yiddish Today? Report from the Campuses" in The Journal of Ethnic Studies v 19 n 1

Rebhun, -Uzi Jewish identification in intermarriage: does a spouse's religion (Catholic vs. Protestant) matter? In Sociology of Religion v 60 no1 Spring 1999. p. 71-88.

Ressler, William Harris "Jewishness and well being: Specific identification and General Psychological Adjustment" in Psychological Reports v 81 1997

Zenner, Walter R. " Jewishness in America: ascription and choice" in Ethnic and Racial Studies v 8 no 1 January 1985

http://www.degrassi.ca/mark/papers/ma/s ... ty-usa.htm