The Jew Within

Abstract

Based on quantitative data from national statistical surveys and qualitative data teased out from 45 in-depth interviews, social scientists Cohen and Eisen present the most up-to-date analysis of what being Jewish means to moderately affiliated American Jews, who comprise approximately 50-60 percent of the US Jewish population. The authors conclude that these Jews are engaged in a journey whose guidepost is individual autonomy, whose basic thrust is the quest for a personalized, family-centered, nontheological spirituality, and whose fundamental mode of expression is selective ritual behavior. But the interviewees are inconsistent; notwithstanding their smug, self-satisfied affirmation of total independence, they nevertheless seem desperate to envelop themselves somehow with a sense of Jewish family, past and present, and to link themselves to the tribe. The authors explore both the similarities and discontinuities in Jewish identity between this generation of Jews and those of prior decades, and between the identity formation of these Jews and contemporary US Christians; they ruminate about the implications of these Jewish self-definitions for the Jewish future. Furnishing the survey's questionnaire and the interviewers' personal questions, this book constitutes an intelligent, learned, and engaging start for what is sure to be the next generation of assessments of American Jewish identity. All collections.

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