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The Library owns the volumes of the American Jewish Yearbook from 1899 - current.
An American college student traveling around Europe on a bicycle with two friends arrived at a recent July 4th celebration in Moscow and remarked, "We've been traveling around Europe and Russia for almost a month now. I never thought I'd be saying this, but I never wanted to see and hear Americans so much in my life. That would be so corny back home. But here it just seems right" (Hartford Courant, July 5, 1989, p. A2). Apparently you can take an American out of America, but you cannot take America out of an American-and perhaps this notion applies to other migrants as well. This is a book that explores the experience of Americans abroad, specifi cally those who are living in other countries...
Having a religious preference and expressing it via a denominational choice is a fundamental way Americans relate to their society. Similarly, American Jews have divided their religion into four parts—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and no preference Jews. This book focuses on how Jewish lifestyles are expressed through denominational affiliation. The development of American Jewish denominations is viewed as more a matter of individual choice than family heritage. The characteristics of individual adherents of the three major denominations vary systematically as does one's involvement both in local Jewish communities and in the community-at-large. The authors show that as one goes from Orthodox to no preference Jews, the extent of religious expression, ethnic attachments, and Jewish community involvement declines. They project the distribution of denominational preference in 2010 and conclude with recommendations for those who wish to see Jewish identity survive and thrive in America.
This is a ground breaking collection of essays that takes a hard look at the Reform Movement today. Opening essays look at the problem of building a religous community, the competition in the "spiritual marketplace," and why people join or do not join a Reform synagogue. Other contributors look at a host of controversial issues including Patrilineal Descent, Outreach, Intermarriage, gender issues, gay and lesbian participation, and others.
Introduces the cutting edge issues and current scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of Israel Studies.
This sixth volume in the Books on Israel series is an interdisciplinary compilation that encompasses contributions from both the social sciences and the humanities, and reflects the exciting integration of approaches that are on the cutting edge of Israel Studies. The contributors go beyond the review of recent books on Israel to offer original examinations of the state of scholarship about Israel within the various disciplines of anthropology, economics, history, literature, political science, and sociology. Recent trends in contemporary Israeli society, politics, economics, and culture are also explored.
World Jewry today is concentrated in the US and Israel, and while distinctive Judaic approaches and practices have evolved in each society, parallels also exist. This volume offers studies of substantive and creative aspects of Jewish belonging. While research in Israel on Judaism has stressed orthodox or "extreme" versions of religiosity, linked to institutional life and politics, moderate and less systematized expressions of Jewish belonging are overlooked. This volume explores the fluid and dynamic nature of identity building among Jews and the many issues that cut across different Jewish groupings. An important contribution to scholarship on contemporary Jewry, it reveals the often unrecognized dynamism in new forms of Jewish identification and affiliation in Israel and in the Diaspora.
This book takes a new look at the study of emigration since publication of Americans Abroad in 1992. The US receives a high volume of immigrants, but its emigrant population is less frequently studied. International migration continues to increase, with now over 200 million people worldwide living as emigrants from their birth country for the purposes of work, family integration, improved living situations, or human rights. Utilizing the same social psychological approach that made the first edition so successful, the authors examine the motivation, adjustment issues and return migration of American emigrants. The analysis of these comparative experiences reveals core elements of American cu...
The major focus is on the who, when, and where of American immigration to Israel, but it is the "why" of this aliya which constitutes the core of the book. Waxman analyzes the relationship between Zionism, aliya, and the Jewish experience. Chapters include "Zion in Jewish culture," a synopsis of Zionism through the years, and "American Jewry and the land of Israel in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," an account of proto-Zionist ideas and movements in early America. Chaim I. Waxman delivers a broad analysis of the phenomenon of American migration to Israel - aliya. Working within the context of the sociology of migration, Waxman provides primary research into a variety of dimensions of this movement and demonstrates the inadequacy of current migration theories to characterize aliya.