...But They're Still Jews: Jewish Identity, Assimilation, and the Ethnogenesis Model

Myrna Livingston Hewitt, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Abstract

This study explores the nature of Jewish identity and identification in contemporary American society. It is anchored theoretically in an analysis of alternative models of the nature of ethnic relations. Traditional models, including the theory of the melting pot, cultural pluralism, and the dominant perspective, assimilation, are discussed in Chapter I and found to be inadequate for the depiction and explanation of the Jewish experience. An alternative model, called ethnogenesis, is developed, which emphasizes changes in group life and the creation of new definitions of what it means to be an ethnic group member as well as the partial maintenance of traditional group characteristics and behavior patterns. Chapter II explores the American Jewish experience in some detail, paying particular attention to the religious and ethnic duality of this group's attitudes and behavior. To test the applicability of the ethnogenesis model, a research strategy was devised which utilized a new survey as well as an existing, larger-scale survey of Jewish attitudes and behavior. The former survey sampled the beliefs and practices of Jews raised and confirmed in a Reform Jewish congregation in Erie, Pennsylvania. Members of the sample were adults aged thirty-one to forty-one; as many of those who were confirmed (at age fifteen) in this congregation from 1952 to 1962 were contacted and surveyed by means of a mailed questionnaire. A reform congregation was chosen in order to maximize the likelihood of assimilation and thus provide a severe test of the ethnogenesis model. To supplement data from this small sample, data from the 1970-71 National Jewish Population Survey, sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, were also employed, and findings from the Erie survey were compared with findings from a comparable age group in the National survey. Chapters IV and V, the data analysis chapters, examine in detail the shape of contemporary Jewish ethnicity. Chapter V focuses on Jewish identity, which refers to the subjective or attitudinal dimension of being Jewish--the meaning of being Jewish to the individual Jew. Chapter V focuses on identification, which refers to the behavioral dimension--what people do in their lives to announce to themselves and to others the fact of their Jewishness. Both chapters examine these issues from the standpoint of both the religious and the ethnic component of Jewishness. Chapter VI attempts to bring together the detailed analyses of the preceding chapters and to examine the case for the ethnogenesis model. It concludes that ethnogenesis is a superior way of depicting and explaining patterns of contemporary Jewish life, and is probably a superior general model for the study of ethnic relations. Data from the Erie and national surveys indicate that new cultural patterns have emerged in this society that define Jewish identity and identification, and that, accordingly, an accurate portrayal of Jewish life cannot be made simply by examining the extent to which traditional group patterns of belief and behavior have persisted. While the shape of Jewish life has clearly changed, with many traditional beliefs and practices abandoned, Jews continue to identify as Jews, their Jewishness continues to have subjective importance to them, and they continue to act in ways that identify them to others as members of a distinct group. Despite the ease and potential for assimilation, Jews persist as a group, losing some ground to attribution and lower birth rates, but nevertheless preserving linked patterns of belief and action.

Subject Area

Ethnic studies|Judaic studies

Recommended Citation

Hewitt, Myrna Livingston, "...But They're Still Jews: Jewish Identity, Assimilation, and the Ethnogenesis Model" (1980). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8101332.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8101332

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