Jewish Population and Identity - Concept and Reality

This book examines the fundamentals of Jewish demography and sociology around the world. It is not only concerned with documenting patterns of population change but also with an intriguing and ever-present issue like 'Who is a Jew?' The latter transcends the limits of quantitative assessment and deeply delves into the nature, boundaries, and quality of group identification. A growing challenge is how to bridge between concept - related to ideals and theory - and reality - reflecting field research. Divided into six sections, the book discusses historical demography, immigration and settlement, population dynamics, social stratification and economy, family and Jewish identity in the U.S., and Jewish identity in Israel. The volume represents the dynamic and diverse nature of the study of world and local Jewish populations. It shows how that field of study provides an important contribution to the broader and now rapidly expanding study of religious and ethnic groups.
Scholars in disciplines such as history, geography, sociology, economics, political science, and especially demography follow and analyze the social and cultural patterns of Jews in different places around the globe, at various times, and from complementary perspectives. They make use of historical sources that have recently become accessible, utilize new censuses and surveys, and adopt advanced analytical methods. While some of their observations attest to consistency in the Jews' demographic and identificational patterns, others evolve and ramify in new directions that reflect general processes in the areas and societies that Jews inhabit, internal changes within Jewish communities, and intergenerational trends in personal preferences of religious and ethnic orientations. This volume brings together contributions from scholars around the world and presents new and updated research and insights.

Sergio DellaPergola (Ph.D.) The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Professor Emeritus and former Chairman of the Hebrew University's Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry. An internationally known specialist on the demography of world Jewry, he has published many books including Jewish Demographic Policies: Population Trends and Options (2011, Institute for Jewish People Policy) and over two hundred papers on historical demography, the family, international migration, Jewish identification, antisemitism, and projections in the Diaspora and in Israel. He was senior policy consultant to the President of Israel, the Israeli Government, the Jerusalem Municipality, and many major national and international organizations, and won the Marshall Sklare Award for distinguished achievement of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (1999), and the Michael Landau Prize for Demography and migration (2013).

Uzi Rebhun (Ph.D.) The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Professor and former Chairman of the Hebrew University's Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and incumbent of the Shlomo Argov Chair in Israel-Diaspora Relations. His areas of interest are Jewish migration, Jewish identification, the Jewish family, Israel-Diaspora relations, and population projections. His works mainly focus on American Jews and the Israeli population. His most recent book is Jews and the American Religious Landscape (2016, Columbia University Press).