Boundaries of Jewish Identity

by Susan A Glenn (Editor), Naomi B. Sokoloff (Editor)

Overview

The subject of Jewish identity is one of the most vexed and contested issues of modern religious and ethnic group history. This interdisciplinary collection draws on work in law, anthropology, history, sociology, literature, and popular culture to consider contemporary and historical responses to the question “Who and what is Jewish?”

These essays are focused especially on the issues of who creates the definitions, and how, and in what social and political contexts. The ten leading authorities writing here also look at the forces, ranging from new genetic and reproductive technologies to increasingly multicultural societies, that push against established boundaries. The authors examine how Jews have imagined themselves and how definitions of Jewishness have been established, enforced, challenged, and transformed. Does being a Jew require religious belief, practice, and formal institutional affiliation? Is there a biological or physical aspect of Jewish identity? What is the status of the convert to another religion? How do definitions play out in different geographic and historical settings? What makes Boundaries of Jewish Identity distinctive is its attention to the various Jewish “epistemologies” or ways of knowing who counts as a Jew. These essays reveal that possible answers reflect the different social, intellectual, and political locations of those who are asking.

This book speaks to readers concerned with Jewish life and culture and to audiences interested in religious, cultural, and ethnic studies. It provides an excellent opportunity to examine how Jews fit into an increasingly diverse America and an increasingly complicated global society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295990552
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	07/01/2011
Series:	A Samuel and Althea Stroum Book, Jackson School Publications in International Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	259
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Susan A. Glenn is Howard and Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History and a member of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Washington. Naomi B. Sokoloff is professor of Near Eastern languages and civilizations and professor of comparative literature at the University of Washington, where she has also served as the Samuel and Althea Stroum Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies. Other contributors are Gad Barzilai, Lila Corwin Berman, Laada Bilaniuk, Jonathan Freedman, Calvin Goldscheider, Susan Martha Kahn, Erica Lehrer, and Shulamit S. Magnus.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Who and What Is Jewish" 3

Controversies and Comparative Perspectives on the Boundaries of Jewish Identity Susan A. Glenn Naomi B. Sokoloff

1 Are Genes Jewish" 12

Conceptual Ambiguities in the New Genetic Age Susan Martha Kahn

2 Who is a Jew" 27

Categories, Boundaries, Communities, and Citizenship Law in Israel Gad Barzilai

3 Jewish Character" 43

Stereotype and Identity in Fiction from Israel Aharon Appelfeld Sayed Kashua Naomi B. Sokoloff

4 "Funny, You Don't Look Jewish" 64

Visual Stereotypes and the Making of Modern Jewish Identity Susan A. Glenn

5 Blame, Boundaries, and Birthrights 91

Jewish Intermarriage in Midcentury America Lila Corwin Berman

6 Boundary Maintenance and Jewish Identity 110

Comparative and Historical Perspectives Calvin Goldscheider

7 Good Bad Jews 132

Converts, Conversion, and Boundary Redrawing in Modern Russian Jewry, Notes toward a New Category Shulamit S. Magnus

8 "Jewish Like an Adjective" 161

Confronting Jewish Identities in Contemporary Poland Erica Lehrer

9 Conversos, Marranos, and Crypto-Latinos 188

The Jewish Question in the American Southwest (and What It Can Tell Us about Race and Ethnicity) Jonathan Freedman

10 The Contested Logics of Jewish Identity Laada Bilaniuk 203

Bibliography 216

Contributors 233

Index 237

What People are Saying About This

David Biale

"Jewish identity presents a particular challenge for students of culture because the Jews are at once a profoundly variable group—both religious and secular, national and cosmopolitan, ethnically diverse—and also highly unified by historical and textual associations. Boundaries of Jewish Identity is a provocative and stimulating book on a much talked about but surprisingly under—analyzed subject."

Steven J. Zipperstein

"A wonderfully coherent, superbly edited volume about the incoherence of contemporary Jewish identity. Its lucid, intriguing essays provide a fresh, at times, unsettling perspective on what it means to be Jewish."

From the Publisher

"Jewish identity presents a particular challenge for students of culture because the Jews are at once a profoundly variable group—both religious and secular, national and cosmopolitan, ethnically diverse—and also highly unified by historical and textual associations. Boundaries of Jewish Identity is a provocative and stimulating book on a much talked about but surprisingly under—analyzed subject."—David Biale, University of California, Davis

"A wonderfully coherent, superbly edited volume about the incoherence of contemporary Jewish identity. Its lucid, intriguing essays provide a fresh, at times, unsettling perspective on what it means to be Jewish."—Steven J. Zipperstein, Stanford University

Editorial Reviews

An outstanding collection of essays . . . both scholarly and highly readable . . . It is a quintessential work of Jewish scholarship - the questions are hard and the answers complex, open-ended, and mid-wives of future questions.

--Riv-Ellen Prell "Lilith" (1/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)

This highly readable co-edited volume . . . . is highly compatible with a critical approach to the study of identity and identity making, a perspective that is increasingly finding its way into the study of identity and identity making scholarship.

--Debra Kaufman "H-Judaic" (1/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

An outstanding collection of essays... both scholarly and highly readable... It is a quintessential work of Jewish scholarship - the questions are hard and the answers complex, open-ended, and mid-wives of future questions.

Lilith - Riv-Ellen Prell