Persistence and Flexibility

Anthropological Perspectives on the American Jewish Experience

Edited by Walter P. Zenner

Subjects: Jewish Studies
Series: SUNY series in Anthropology and Judaic Studies
Paperback : 9780887067501, 304 pages, July 1988
Hardcover : 9780887067488, 304 pages, July 1988
Out of print (Hardcover)

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Table of contents

Preface

Introduction

 

1. The Cultural Anthropology of American Jewry
Walter P. Zenner and Janet S. Belcove-Shalin

 

Part I. IDENTITIES AND IDENTIFICATION

 

2. Stigma, Identity, and Sephardic-Ashkenazic Relations in Indianapolis
Jack Glazier

3. American Yemenite Jewish Interethnic Strategies
Dina Dahbany-Miraglia

4. Jewish in the USSR, Russian in the USA
Fran Markowitz

5. Learning to Be a Part-Time Jew
David Schoem

6. Integration into the Group and Sacred Uniqueness: Analysis of an Adult Bat Mitzvah
Stuart Schoenfeld

 

Part II. ARENAS OF JEWISH LIFE

 

7. A Home Away from Home: Participation in Jewish Immigrant Associations in America
Hannah Kliger

8. Family, Kinship, and Ethnicity: Strategies for Social Mobility
Myrna Silverman

9. The Hasidim of North America: A Review of the Literature
Janet S. Belcove-Shalin

10. Separatist Orthodoxy's Attitudes Toward Community: The Breuer Community in Germany and America
Steven Lowenstein

11. That Is the Pillar of Rachel's Grave Unto This Day: An Ethnoarchaeological Comparison of Two Jewish Cemeteries in Lincoln, Nebraska
David Mayer Gradwohl and Hanna Rosenberg Gradwohl

12. Jews and Judaica: Who Owns and Buys What?
Samuel Heilman

 

Glossary

Contributors

Index

Description

Using a variety of anthropological approaches, the authors illustrate how the Jewish identity has persisted in the United States despite great subcultural variation and a wide range of adaptations. Within the various essays, attention is given to both mainstream Jews and to the Hasidim, Yemenites, Indian Sephardim, Soviet Emigres, and "Jews for Jesus. " Institutions such as the family, the school, and the synagogue, are considered through techniques of participation/ observation and in archeological research. Persistence and Flexibility provides a means of viewing the Jewish community through the prism of key events, or rituals, and symbols.