FROM IMMIGRANT TO ETHNIC COMMUNITY:
THE TRANSFORMATION OF JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN ISRAEL

Calvin Goldscheider
Brown University

The goal of this paper is to identify how the transformation of Jews in Israel from immigrant populations to ethnic communities may be compared to similar processes among Jews in the United States. I shall argue that there are several major commonalities that emerge from these comparisons. However, none of these commonalities are directly connected with the cultural specifics of Judaism or the Jewish people. Rather they are part of the general processes underlying immigration and the social processes that lead to the formation and continuities of ethnic communities in pluralist societies. My major points are:
" Families and networks are powerful in sustaining ethnic networks
" Residential concentration and community cohesion are important sources of ethnic continuity
" Jewish institutions and networks in Israel and in the United States reinforce the cultural basis of Jewish ethnic communities.

America is not Israel and ethnic pluralism in America is not the pluralism in Israel. I examine American Jews as a white ethnic group in the United States and Israeli Jews as they compare among other ethnic communities. My general substantive conclusions are that fourth generation Jews in America are not part of a disappearing or weakening community and Jewish ethnic communities are not melting in the mythical Israeli national pot. Jewish ethnic communities have been transformed and have been re-defined as distance from the immigrant generation has increased. American Jews have formed a powerful ethnic community even when ethnic (national origins) divisions among them have diminished. Ethnic divisions based on inequality, residential concentration and family networks have emerged in Israel, as Israeli Jews have become one cohesive national community. These transformations imply both significant changes and continuities.
ETHNICITY AND ASSIMILATION
The Jewish community has constructed for itself three compelling arguments about the Jewish past and the basis of interpreting the present. These have been based, in part, on social science theories, and have gained legitimacy in the Jewish communities in America and around the world as a basis for policy formation, setting a research agenda and strategic planning. These arguments are also consistent with a set of ideological orientations that have been current in the Jewish community for more than a century. Somewhat oversimplified these arguments are as follows:
The first argument is that Jewish communities have moved over the last century away from communities based on religion and religious activities to becoming secular communities. In modern, open, voluntary societies, Jews like others have become more secular, less attached to religious activities, religious institutions and a religious way of life. Whatever religious orientations of past generations Jews have fewer of them. Religion is simply less central in the lives of Jews today, so it is argued. Judaism, the religion of the Jews, has itself become secular. This is the so-called secularization theme. It has been applied to all communities of Jews in and outside of Israel.
A second argument focuses on ethnic or the peoplehood dimension of Jewish identity. Jews in the past, so the argument goes, had a distinctive sense of being a people apart from the Christian and Moslem societies where they lived, i.e., Jews were a social minority, not only a religious minority. Their minority status reduced access to social and economic opportunities, involved political constraints and discrimination in everyday life, at times to extreme levels. However, with increasing openness of society, the expansion of political rights and economic opportunities and the acceptance of Jews into society, the ethnic component has diminished. Similar to other white social minorities subject to decreasing discrimination, over the generations Jews have assimilated ethnically into western societies. Jews have accepted their new situation and have been accepted by others. As generational distance from immigrant origins has increased, the ethnic distinctiveness of Jews has faded. In the state of Israel, Jews remain distinctive because they are different ethnically (nationally) from their surrounding neighbors. They have become decreasingly ethnic in terms of their own national origins, as they have become increasingly "Israelis". Jews in America have become thoroughly American. The second argument suggests that ethnic identity recedes and ethnic assimilation occurs over time when Jews are a minority in an open society. Only where Jews are a majority, does ethnic/national identity become reinforced. And then the ethnic (national) origins of the Jews become increasingly insignificant as a new national ethnic identity emerges.
A third argument follows directly from and combines the secularization and minority assimilation arguments. It assumes that as religious identity weakens and ethnic identity fades, the Jewish community outside of the state of Israel weakens. To support their distinctiveness, therefore, external stimuli are needed to ignite the dying embers of Jewishness. At times these sparks come from some ethnic cultural attachment and pride in a new nation-state (Israel) or some recognition of Jewish vulnerability to external forces that threaten their group survival. These external factors (in their anti-Semitic guise) tend to be unstable and marginal to the daily lives of most Jews. They appear and re-appear occasionally (particularly in Europe) and almost always in reaction to events and conflicts in the state of Israel. Thus, as secularization diminishes Judaism and assimilation decreases Jewish ethnicity, few internally generated Jewish values or features of Jewish culture remain to sustain continuity of the community or of identity. As Judaism and Jewishness fade, so the argument goes, nothing beyond externals can form the basis for the future growth of Jewish communities outside of the state of Israel.
In the secular state of Israel only the sense of peoplehood maintains group identity and distinctiveness. Within the state of Israel, the argument continues, the Judaism component within Jewish identity leads to cultural and political conflicts between the religious and secular communities. And the ethnic cultural component is diminished by the powerful influences of mass media and western culture. Hence, secularization even in Israel has become dominant for the majority of Jews. In turn, for political and related reasons secular Jews have become openly hostile to the orthodox in Israel. National origins weaken as statehood is legitimated, routinized, and normalized, except again in times of external threats and conflicts. As Israeli Jewish ethnic cultural origins diminish over time, a new Israeli Jewish culture emerges that is highly selective about its historical memory and its rich cultural heritage. Israeli Jewish culture tends to emphasize the biblical roots of nationalism, often ignoring the Judaisms of the Rabbinic period and the richness of diaspora cultural developments. The Jewish cultural cement of group life is therefore weakening, sustained largely by historical reconstructions of external evil and internal survival.
Hence, some perspectives from social science and history postulate that the Jewish diaspora is vanishing and Jewish communities are eroding. The decline of Jewish communities outside of Israel is in sight, if not in our generation then soon. The demographic strength of Jewish communities in Israel is matched by their cultural and ethnic decline. Arguments about secularization and assimilation and the uniqueness of Jewish statehood have in one form or another informed discussions of contemporary Jewish communities in and outside of Israel.
A systematic body of evidence, I submit, challenges the main implications of these arguments. The paths Jewish communities have taken in modern open pluralistic societies are not adequately described by the assimilationist implications of these arguments. For while Jews have clearly assimilated, their communities have not proportionately weakened, and many have strengthened anew. The fundamental dichotomy between religious and ethnic identity is not as useful among Jews as it may be among other groups. Jews are not simply a religious group like Protestants and Catholics, Mormons and Muslims. Jewish Americans are also not an ethnic group like Italian Americans or Hispanic Americans. And while Israeli Jews have developed common nationalistic commitments ethnic identities and communities also divide them. In large part ethnic and religious differences in Israel have been shaped in new ways in Israeli society rather than representing transferals from places of origin.
How do we make sense of the historical changes and its implications for understanding contemporary Jewish communities? How do we go beyond the current arguments about the decay of diaspora Jewry that cloud our assessments of the Jewish communities outside of Israel to new understandings? How do we go beyond the national ideology arguments about the end of Jewish ethnicity in Israel? How do we move away from the selective truths of Jewish ideology and Jewish organizational propaganda, to delve more systematically into the fundamentals of Jewish ethnic continuity and change in the past and among contemporary societies? We start with American Jewish distinctiveness.

American Jewish Distinctiveness
Instead of asking whether the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to America are assimilating or whether they are surviving as a community (they are doing both), social scientists have reformulated the central analytic questions about Jews and other ethnic and religious minorities in the United States: What factors sustain the ethnic and religious continuity of American Jews in the absence of overt discrimination and disadvantage? What structural and cultural forces sustain continuity in the face of pressures toward the disintegration of the uniqueness and distinctiveness of their communities? The short answer to these questions is that communal institutions and social and family networks, the structural underpinnings of communities, using Jewish values as their themes, are the core elements sustaining communal continuity. Institutions construct new forms of Jewish cultural uniqueness that redefine the collective identity of Jews.
Several features of social life form the basis for my assessment of the transformation of American Jews. I focus on the structural not only the cultural features of Jewish communities and emphasize the contexts (networks and institutions), not only the values that distinguish Jews from others. I target communities and families rather than individuals as the units of theory and analysis. With the emergence of the fourth and later generations, distance from immigrant origins has faded as the major axis of change in the community. Although individuals exit and enter the community, the institutions and the collectively shaped culture sustain continuity and commitments.
Social class and family patterns of American Jewish communities are the core of generational continuity and institutions are the sources of their distinctiveness. Jews have been transformed from an immigrant group defined by a combination of religious and ethnic distinctiveness to an American ethnic community defined by a distinctive cultural construction of Judaism and Jewishness with central features that are particularly American.
Several analytic themes shape my orientation: First, changes over time in the characteristics of Jews and their communities do not necessarily imply the decline of community or the total assimilation of Jews. There is no simple inference that can be extrapolated from change to communal continuity. Hence, the identification of changes over time may imply the transforming of community but not its disintegration. Second, my focus is on the cohesion of communities, based on the extent and contexts of intra- and inter-group interaction along with a shared constructed (and changing) culture. These contexts of sharing and interaction may occur in specific institutional or religious contexts but are likely to occur in the daily round of activity associated with the multiple spheres of social activities-work, school, neighborhoods, leisure, and family. Nevertheless, an examination of interaction in any one sphere may not have implications for interaction in other spheres. Third, time can be viewed both in terms of generations, historical context, and in terms of the life course. I expect that ethnic and religious identity, at both the individual and communal levels, varies over time as context changes. The life course is one perspective at the micro level for studying a variety of unfolding and emerging changes in the context of ethnic communities.
There are a wide variety of structural and institutional features that link Jews to one another in complex networks and mark Jews off as a community from those who are not Jewish. These features include family and social connections, organizational, political, and residential patterns, and religious and ethnic activities that can reinforce the values and shape the attitudes of American Jews. Institutions play a powerful role in ethnic communities as they continually construct the cultural basis of community. Family and social networks reinforce shared cultural constructions of Judaism and Jewishness.
At work, in neighborhoods, in schools, as well as in religious, political and social activities, immigrant Jews and their children were interacting with other Jews. Yiddish and socialists schools and newspapers competed with public and religious schools. Credit associations, landmanschaften, local fraternal and communal institutions appeared and expanded. While learning English, Yiddish remained the language of business and social life among Jewish immigrants. Even when their children rejected Yiddish as their language, it was still the cultural environment of their upbringing. In the pre-world War II period, most Jews in America interacted with other Jews in their community. The number of bases of cohesion among Jews was large indeed. The overlap of occupational, residence, and ethnicity was as high in America as anywhere in urban Europe. Jews left the Old World behind, not all of it to be sure, to become American. Their Jewishness was conspicuous by their background, culture and social structure.
What happened to the community and ethnic and religious identity among the descendants of immigrants? Clearly the third and later generations faced a very different social and economic context and a new opportunity structure. In turn, stratification (the commonality of social class not class disadvantage) became one of the new forms of communal cohesion. Understanding the transformation of American Jews begins therefore with stratification since it is a key structural condition that affects cohesion within Jewish communities in the United States.
The story of the changing educational profile of the American Jewish community from the turn of the 20th century to its end is for the most part clear and well known. Jews in the United States have become the most educated group of all American ethnic and religious groups, of all Jewish communities around the world and of all Jewish communities ever in recorded Jewish history. Quite a feat, given the low level of education of the American Jewish community three to four generations ago. This accomplishment reflects both the value that Jews place on education and the educational opportunities available in the United States. Over 90 percent of contemporary American Jewish young men and young women go on to college, and they are the children of mothers and fathers who also have studied in college-two generations of men and women who are college educated. Many have grandparents who have exposure to some college education. Increases in the educational level of the American Jewish population have been documented in every study carried out over the last several decades and the level attained is a distinguishing feature of American Jewish communities. It may be a core value of contemporary American Jewish culture.
What do these and related stratification changes imply for the continuity of the American Jewish community? There are two views. On the one hand, increases in educational attainment and the diversification of occupational types result in greater interaction with "others" who are not Jewish. These new contexts of interaction between Jews and non-Jews challenge the isolation and segregation of Jews and in turn the cohesion of the Jewish community. The institutional contexts of schooling and the workplace may also expose Jewish Americans to new networks and alternative values that are not ethnically or religiously Jewish. The combination of interaction and exposure may result in a diminishing of the distinctiveness of the community over time through family changes and generational discontinuity. So stratification is associated with new inter-group interaction patterns that in turn result in diminished community cohesion.
There is another side of this stratification picture. The emerging commonality of social class among Jews and the distinctiveness of Jews relative to others are important sources of cohesion of the Jewish community. Jews are both marked off from others and linked with other Jews by their resources, networks, and life styles, which are the obvious implications of their occupational-educational distinctiveness and high levels of attainment. To the extent that community is based on both shared interaction among members and a common set of values and life styles, these occupational and educational transformations among American Jews are significant bases of communal cohesion. The mobility of Jews away from the occupations characteristic of the immigrant generation has been a dominant theme in research. Missing has been an emphasis on the new forms of educational and occupational concentration that have emerged.
Neither high levels of educational attainment nor being in managerial and professional jobs weaken the intensity of Jewishness in all of its multi-faceted expressions. It may be that the commonality of social class among American Jews and their very high levels of educational and occupational re-concentration are not sufficient to generate the intensive in-group interaction that characterized the segregated Jewish communities in some areas of eastern Europe and the United States a century ago. The benefits of these stratification transformations in terms of networks and resources have not recreated the cultural and social communities of Jews of a different era. Nevertheless, the evidence indicates that the emerging social class patterns are not a threat to Jewish continuity in the transformed pluralism of American society.
The educational and occupational transformations of 20th century America mark Jews off from others and connect Jews to one another. The connections among persons who share history and experience and their separation from others are what social scientists refer to as community. The distinctiveness of the American Jewish community in these stratification patterns becomes clear.
When these stratification profiles are added to the residential concentration of American Jews, the community features become even sharper. Many have noted the move away from areas of immigrant residential concentration, the residential dispersal of American Jews and the reshaping of new forms of residential concentration for the second and later generations of American Jews. The national data on educational and occupational concentration only begin to tell the story of new forms of community interaction. The residential and occupational concentration of Jews, attendance at selective schools and colleges away from home, and work in selected metropolitan areas have resulted in a geographic concentration of American Jews that is astonishing for a voluntary ethnic white group several generations removed from foreignness and not facing the discrimination of other American minorities.
The value placed by Jews on educational attainment as a mechanism for becoming American (and obtaining good jobs and making higher incomes) clearly is manifest in the context of the opportunities open to Jews in the United States. Their higher level of education and their concentration in professional and managerial jobs has not led to the "erosion" or total assimilation of the Jewish community. While these stratification changes may result in the disaffection of some individual Jews from the community, it may also result in the greater incorporation within the Jewish community of some who were not born Jewish, and the general attractiveness of the community to Jews and others.
Educational, residential and occupational concentration implies not only cohesion and life style similarity but also exposure to options for integration and assimilation. Education implies exposure to conditions and cultures that are more universalistic and away from ethnic-based education, even when most Jews are sharing this experience together and are heavily concentrated in a select number of colleges and universities. If high levels of educational attainment and occupational achievement enhance the choices that Jews make about their Jewishness, then Jewish identification and the intensity of Jewish expression are becoming increasingly voluntary in 21st century America. In that sense, the new forms of American Jewish stratification have beneficial implications for the quality of Jewish life. There is a balance between the forces that pull Jews toward each other, sharing what we call community-families, experiences, history, concerns, values, communal institutions, religious commitments and rituals, and life styles-and those that pull Jews away from each other, often referred to as "assimilation." The evidence available suggests that the pulls and pushes of the changing stratification profile toward and away from the Jewish community are profound. They are positive in strengthening the Jewish community and represent a challenge for institutions to find ways to reinforce their communal and cultural benefits.
There are two important points to stress about education in the past. Educational attainment in the past was one powerful path toward social mobility. Education led to better jobs, higher incomes, escape from poverty of the unskilled and skilled labor characteristic of parents, and in turn an escape from the neighborhoods and networks that consisted of the foreign born. Education was a means or escape from the association of foreignness with a foreign language, a foreign culture, and foreign parents. For many, education was the escape from Jewishness and Judaism. In short, education was the path to becoming American but required leaving the community.
Education has almost always been celebrated among Jews, with pride in the group's accomplishments. When children and grandchildren became doctors and lawyers, skilled business people and teachers, it was thought that this was the "Jewish" thing to do. But in those early years there was a cost. The cost was for Judaism and Jewishness and more importantly for relationships between the generations. Although parents encouraged their children to obtain a high level of education, the life style associated with higher education often meant the disruption and conflict between parents and children who had different educational levels and between siblings and peers who had different access to educational opportunities.
But looking beyond the costs, we now appreciate the value of education over the last two generations. Here the value of education has not lessened but the opportunities have increased and spread. Education has not disrupted Jewishness but increased generational similarities and removed one source of the generation gap. So the meaning of two generations of college educated Jews becomes not simply a note of group congratulations and pride, not only a changed relationship to Jewishness as a basis of intergenerational commonality. Educational attainment has become a feature of families that is not disruptive within families and points to sharing and common experiences.
An analysis of the educational attainment points to the increased power of families, the generation increase in resources and the common lifestyles that far from dividing families bind parents and children together again into a network of relationships. These emphases on education and achievement, of family cohesion and values have become group traits that make the Jewish group attractive to others. Unlike in the past, when interaction and marriage between Jews and non-Jews was also a mechanism of escape from Jewishness and foreignness, the Jewish group has now become attractive to others because of their family and communal traits, particularly education. Hence, like education, intermarriage cannot have the same meaning in the new context of generations as it did in the older context of rejection and escape. By binding the generations, education has become a family value.
But what about the content of this generational commonality? What are families sharing Jewishly? Are they sharing Jewish culture and Judaism? I would argue that religious ritual observances, formal Jewish education, and attending religious services are no more and no less valid indicators of contemporary American Judaism than of Judaism 200 years ago! In the past, the work Jews did, the jobs they had, the institutions they created and their cultural forms, the shared totality, reinforced a sense of distinctiveness and community of the Jews. And the non-Jews reminded them that Jews were a minority. So it is in America today; the numbers show that most Jews in the 1990s share Jewish holidays and ritual occasions with other Jews, (Passover, Chanukah, and the High Holidays are the most popular), share commitments to the state of Israel and the giving of charity to Jewish causes; many if not most see other Jews as their closest friends, many work with other Jews, attend Jewish institutions and want to provide some Jewish education to their children, to transmit Jewish culture to the next generation. In general Jews consider being Jewish one of the important things in their lives even when it is as abstract as "tradition" and "family values". Indeed, in the minds of American Jews, being Jewish in some form is one of the most expressed and deeply felt values. If poverty and lack of access to opportunities occupied Jewish communities of the past, other distractions, some associated with wealth and resources distract today's American Jews. The commonality of religious expression between the generations at the end of the 20th century reinforces the bonds created in the home. Just as educational commonality between the generations are sources of bonds and cohesion, the commonality of religious expression binds the generations. This is the case even when the religious basis of both generations is weak.
Unlike a generation ago when the children of the immigrants and their children were raised in different religious homes, and certainly unlike the immigrant generation and their children, the religious attitudes of the third and fourth generation in America have much in common religiously. To be sure it is a secularized and transformed Judaism but it is not a source of generational conflict. Judaism is not a source of rejection and escape as it had been in the past.
What is the content of American Jewish institutions? What makes them Jewish and not something else? Institutions selectively construct Jewish history and cultural memory. They provide one basis for cultural and religious continuity. This pattern is similar to the families and generations of the past that constructed their own version of Jewish culture and religion even as the content of their culture has changed. It is the community, the networks, the shared lifestyle, values, and concerns of American Jews that bind them together. The form and content are radically different today than in the past. I argue that the community itself and the institutions that shape the culture of the community are critical in terms of ethnic continuity. Institutions are the visible and conspicuous symbols of Jewish culture and the basis of Jewish communal activities.
In contemporary America, the evidence suggests that a critical part of Jewish continuity is connected to whether there are Jewish based communal institutions. Jewish schools and Jewish libraries, Jewish homes for the aged, Jewish community centers, many and diverse temples and synagogues are important elements in the development of our communities. The Jewish institutions compete with one another for loyalty and commitments. Playing golf together with other Jews in a Jewish country club, swimming and playing softball at the Jewish Community Center, or using day care facilities in a Jewish institutional setting do not seem on the surface to be very Jewish, but they are. They are part of that total round of activity that makes for a community of intertwined networks. These "secular" activities within Jewish institutions can enhance the values of Jewish life, intensify shared commitments, and increase the social, family, and economic networks that sustain the continuity of the Jewish community. They may also reinforce the value of Jewish religious rituals and religious institutional activities. Using Jewish institutions to create networks sets up the potential to improve the quality of Jewish life and to ensure its continuity. All of these activities together, not only the formal educational ones and not only the religious ritual ones, form what we mean by community. Indeed our studies show that the "secular" activities of Jewish life reinforce the "religious" and vice versa because so many Jews participate in them. The intensities often go together because they lead to the same place-the Jewish community. And it is community that shapes the lives and future of Jews in America, as it had in the past. The connection between the family and these communal institutions therefore becomes a central feature of Jewish continuity.
Intermarriage and Families
If family is important and its meaning has changed we need to directly confront the increasing rates of intermarriage among third and later generations of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Intermarriage has become an obsession with Jewish communal leaders, some social scientists, and many journalists and Jewish parents.
For a community to survive and to flourish, some attention needs to focus at the most elementary level on generational renewal. The question of the continuity of any group or community in society is how to insure the continuity of that community for the people who define themselves and are defined as part of that community. An ethnic or religious group requires particular attention to generational replacement. Institutions alone are insufficient to insure survival. Without people, institutions become heirlooms to be examined in museums, relics of the past, interesting artifacts for archeologists and historians. Judaism, Jewish history, culture, and religion should be living fountains not relics of the past. For continued survival, the institutions of the Jewish community must focus on demographic continuity. To do so requires attention to renewal. In the American context, generational renewal is anchored in the family.
The family has changed so much in the last several decades that our great grand parents would not recognize it; we hardly do. In the context of a changed family and pressures for ethnic continuity we confront what some consider the most "threatening" process to emerge: intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. It appears that intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews directly reflects the extent of assimilation of the community, threatens the demographic renewal central to communal population renewal, and inevitably leads to a weakening of the content of Jewish cultural continuity. All these negative implications of intermarriage appear obvious and accepted when just the rates of intermarriage are presented. The implications are understood intuitively from the rates of intermarriage and from their increases over time. In general, I think that the Jewish community's concern with intermarriage is misleading and misdirected and the "threat" is more apparent than real.
During most of the 20th century, Jewish intermarriage rates were low, but the phenomenon had been devastating to the Jewishness of the intermarried and to the Jewish community. Those who intermarried repudiated their religion, their families and their communities. And their religion, their families and their communities abandoned them. The small loss of numbers to the Jewish community as a result of intermarriage was to their generation and an irrevocable loss to the generations that would have come. Intermarriage thus resulted in a Jewish loss to the intermarried, their families and their children. So the historical basis for the obsession of the American Jewish community with intermarriage as threatening to the community is understandable. Most Jewish parents at the end of the 20th century grew up in communities where intermarriage was low, where the intermarried were largely of Jewish men married to non-Jewish born women, where conversions to Judaism were not encouraged and often seriously discouraged, and where the intermarried couple and their children were not accepted members of the Jewish community. The intermarried persons that were known to families were exceptional and outside of the Jewish community.
However, the context of American Jewish communities, the circumstances of the family lives of American Jews in the last several decades have changed, and so have the rates of intermarriage. To understand the changing family and its impact on intermarriage, we need to appreciate the American-ness of Jews in the United States and their integration into modern American society. The changing integration of American Jews has been associated with the increasing social contacts between Jews and others. Universalistic criteria have opened choices in residence, jobs, and marriage. The move toward non-Jewish circles is particularly conspicuous in choices of spouses and neighbors. Intermarriage has become less idiosyncratic, less an issue of alternative religious discovery or of political or economic necessity (as it had often been in the past and in European countries). Intermarriages between Jews and non-Jews have become a reflection of the routine interaction among individuals. These relationships are an integral part of the daily lives of secular American Jews. In this sense intermarriage has become embedded into American Jewish culture and family life. Marrying someone of a different ethnic or religious background has become consistent with the way Jewish parents and their children live.
Social scientists focus on intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews precisely because it symbolizes the extent of Jewish-non-Jewish interaction and by inference the potential weakening of the community Jewishly. It directly addresses the question of the centrality of Jewish values and the content of these values. The fundamental demographic issue in a voluntary community is who is a member and affiliated with the community. Being Jewish in America and being part of the community is a question of who is in the Jewish group-not only who you marry-the Jewishness of children, and the next generation, and hence the continuity of the community. In America, by and large, Jewish group membership is voluntary, based on a social not a biological or a religious legal definition. It is informal not formal group membership, but is no less powerful. Among the concerns within the community is where do those who are socially, informally or newly Jewish fit?
The evidence shows that most American Jews continue to be Jewish by the standards of being born into a Jewish family. But, there is an increasing reality of new Jews in the United States, that is, persons who become Jewish through commitments to their newly formed families and their identification with the Jewish community. Becoming Jewish through having a Jewish home and identifying with the Jewish community, as well as the formal process of conversion to Judaism, varies through the life course. Jewish identification often increases as families are formed and children need to be educated. And the major source of Jewish identification for American Jews tends to be ethnic-communal and not narrowly religious. So in a real sense the issue of Jewish continuity in the context of higher intermarriage rates is not intermarriage per se but the Jewishness that characterizes the family and household. Formulated as a question we need to ask, How do people who are raised in Jewish families and those who choose to identify as Jews conduct their lives and raise their children and connect to their extended families and the broader community that is Jewish?
What are the facts, as we know them? There is no question that there have been increases over time in the rates of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews in the United States. While the exact level is unknown, it probably varies nationally between 40 and 50 percent of those who have married in the period 1990-2000. There is a considerable range among communities in the level of intermarriage but again the detailed evidence is weak since migration between communities is high. It is also not clear whether the size of the Jewish community is a major determining factor influencing intermarriage or whether the intermarried are more likely to move to areas of lower Jewish population density.
In the past, Jewish men married out more than did Jewish women. There is some evidence suggesting that gender differences in intermarriages have diminished considerably in the recent period. Since women tend to take a more active role in the home, the gender difference was the basis for more concern in the past since the non-Jewish born spouse would be more likely to define the Jewishness of the home. In contrast, in contemporary intermarriages, it is more likely, but unexplored empirically, that Jewish women who marry out may want to encourage the Jewishness of the home compared to Jewish men who marry out. Hence, the changing gender pattern of intermarriage may have a more positive effect on the Jewishness of the home today than in the past.
There is also no simple association between intermarriage and alienation from the Jewish community. Over the last two decades, it is likely that the relative rates of generational continuity of the intermarried within the Jewish community have increased (i.e., the number of children raised in households where one or more persons was not born Jewish who remain Jewish in a variety of ways as they form their own families). This new pattern is connected to the increased levels of intermarriage and conversions, and the increased acceptance of the intermarried among families and within the Jewish community.
What happens to the non-Jewish born spouses and the children of those who marry out? Are they always lost to the Jewish community? Doesn't the high rates of Jewish intermarriage imply a decrease generationally in the Jewishness of children and the non-Jewishness of households where Jewish intermarriages occur? Don't the simple numbers reveal that high rates of Jewish intermarriages threaten Jewish demographic continuity in America?
I try to answer these questions about the future by examining a model of intermarriage over two generations. In the first generation, I postulate that there are ten couples. Half of the couples are Jewish by birth; 70 percent of the couples are Jewish either by birth or by religious conversion. Examining individuals, not couples, reveals that of the 15 born Jews in this generation (or cohort), ten are postulated to be married to born Jews (or 66 percent). In this generation, there are 15 born Jews and two conversions to Judaism, hence a gain of two Jews.
One clear implication of this simulation among the first generation is that there can be demographic gains for the Jewish community with an individual rate of intermarriage of 33 percent (when 5 out of 15 born Jews marry persons not born Jewish) and a couple intermarriage rate of 50 percent. Thus, when one-third of the Jews marry non-Jews and one half of the couples consist of Jews marrying born non-Jews, the Jewish community gains two additional Jews. This gain occurs when conversions to Judaism take place among only 40 percent of the non-Jews who marry Jews (2 out of 5). If we think of Jewish continuity not based solely on religious conversions but on ethnic identification, then the prospects of gain, stability and continuity in the context of high intermarriage rates are reinforced. In short, high individual or couple intermarriage rates do not necessarily result in demographic decline of the generation that is intermarrying.
We have argued that the key question of group continuity is generational. What happens to the second generation, the children of the intermarried, under a regime of high rates of intermarriage? We do not have clear empirical answers but if we continue with the simulation the results may be as surprising for the second generation as they were for the first. For this part of the exercise I postulated an estimated 15 Jewish children for the second generation. I assumed that each couple in the first generation had two children. The results show that the number of Jews in the second generation is exactly the same number of Jews as in the first generation. How does this come about? We assumed that each of the Jewish born couples had two Jewish children and each of the Jewish families where one partner was converted had two Jewish children. We assumed that only one out 6 of the children of families of those Jews married to non-converted Jews are Jewish. The result of these combined assumptions is again stability generationally in the size of the Jewish group despite high rates on intermarriage.
Of course, much depends on the third and subsequent generations, their rates of intermarriage, identification and conversion. Evidence for these third generation children are simply not available (we barely have systematic evidence for the second generation). There is little that is inevitable about the Jewishness of that generation. Nor can we assume that the family size patterns and the Jewish conversion or identification rates will remain the same. The exercise is not to predict the impact of intermarriage on the Jewish community but to simply demonstrate that the implications of high rates of intermarriage are not pre-determined or obvious. The future of the Jewish community with high rates of intermarriage is therefore not a direct consequence of intermarriage per se but of the extent to which the intermarried are incorporated into the Jewish community either through conversions or through the Jewish identification of the non-Jewish born partners. Perhaps the key is the Jewishness of the home, not the marriage patterns. Simply put, it is not who you marry but the ethnic features in the homes of the intermarried that count demographically.
The primary lessons to be learned from this are therefore two fold:
" High intermarriage rates of individual and couples may result in population stability when conversions occur or when the non-Jewish born partner identifies with the Jewish community. More importantly, overall numerical stability of the community with high rates of intermarriage occurs when children are raised as Jews. Intermarriage does not directly challenge Jewish continuity demographically. The future impact of Jewish intermarriages on the Jewish population in America reflects the extent to which Jewishness is an integral and important part of Jewish homes and families.
" A generation perspective is needed to identify those who are raised as Jews and who grow up to be Jewish and start Jewish families. Hence the policy and communal question becomes, how do we encourage the children of Jews and of mixed Jewish-non-Jewish families to be raised as Jewish and want to be Jewish when they form families of their own? How much does the acceptance of the intermarried by the Jewish community facilitate the eventual Jewishness of the homes and children of the intermarried?
Thus, intermarriage and disengagement from the Jewish community are no longer synonymous. Since those who intermarry are often not less attached to the Jewish community and no less Jewish in their behavior and commitments, increasing rates of intermarriage by themselves are poor indicators of the weakening quality of Jewish life. Intermarriage is not necessarily the final step toward total assimilation. In most intermarriages, the Jewish partner remains attached to the Jewish community, and unlike in the past, in many cases, the non-Jewish born partner becomes attached to the Jewish community, as do many of the children of the intermarried, through family, friends, neighborhood, and Jewish organizational ties. Many of their friends are Jewish; many support Israel, and many identify themselves as Jews. And some proportion of spouses and their children formally convert to Judaism, many becoming Jewish under the direction of religious leaders and their institutions.
In conjunction with the increasing rate of intermarriage, and associated with its high level, has been the increasing acceptance of the intermarried by Jewish families and by the secular and religious institutions of the community. Unlike in the past, the intermarried are more likely to be accepted and even welcomed in the Jewish community. Hence, when taken together, the research evidence shows that intermarriage should not be viewed as the quintessential indicator of assimilation among American Jews. The increasing rate of intermarriage therefore does not necessarily mean erosion of the Jewish community except through the prism of the segregated Orthodox and from the perspective of some Jews who reject the possibility of Jewish continuity as a minority within an open pluralistic society. Intermarriage may even imply strength when significant proportions of the intermarried are actively involved in being Jewish and practicing Judaism. High intermarriage rates unambiguously mean that the networks of Jews are touched, affected and linked to the intermarriage issue and that the proportion is larger than the percent that are currently intermarrying. There is hardly a Jewish household in America that has not experienced the taste of intermarriage of a family member, a neighbor, or a friend.
Therefore, whether intermarriage should be treated as a sign of erosion of the American Jewish community depends on the Jewish commitments of the intermarried to the Jewish community and the eventual commitments of their children. Much depends as well on how the Jewish community, the formal religious and secular institutional structure accepts and nourishes linkages between those born Jewish and those Jewish by their identification, commitment, and conversions. It is important to see the issue of intermarriage from the perspective of the next generation, young adults who have been raised with an open positive value of family and community and who struggle with the question of what the community and the family will do in enhancing the acceptance of new family members. So while marriage may be based on individual decision-making, marriage links families and families are the basis of community. Marriage and the formation of new families are critical for the quality of Jewish life.
Ethnic Distinctiveness in Israel
Strikingly similar patterns of ethnic educational inequalities, residential concentration and family characterize ethnic communities in Israel. Judaism in Israel as in America has become secular and a source of internal conflict and division. The strength of Israeli Jewish communities lies in the political and social institutions they have created and in everyday life. The state of Israel is a strong Jewish community because of the power of Jewish communities and the role of family networks. Collective nationalism and culture sustains families when religion is weak and divisive. Extensive interaction almost exclusively among Jews in jobs, schools, the military and in neighborhoods are the bases for Jewish cohesion in Israel.
The divisiveness of religion in Israel may be linked to its political linkages. There has not been a religious renaissance in Judaism in Israel of any magnitude. The emergence of moderate forms of religion (whether liberal or Masorti) has not developed among the younger generation. Israeli Judaism manifests itself largely in the reactionary elements of Haredi Judaism, in it various forms, and in the political role of religious political parties among Sephardim. As religion is one of the ways that mark Jews off from non-Jews in communities outside of Israel, Judaism tends to divide Jews in Israel. There is increasing anti-religious feelings among the majority of the Israeli secular Jewish public. There is also residential and institutional separation and concentration among the ultra-orthodox and a political articulateness among the more institutionally religious in terms of government policies.
Ethnic Groups in Israel: Sources, Ideology, and Formation
The transition from immigrant to ethnic communities in Israel is complicated by the changing salience of ethnicity as some groups have assimilated and disappeared over several generations, while other ethnic divisions have been reinforced. My review of the changing meaning of Jewish ethnicity in Israel points to two central conclusions: First, no analysis of change and no investigation of differences within Israeli society can ignore the ethnic dimension, since it is a continuing aspect of Israel's pluralism. Second, ethnic differentiation is a changing basis of distinctiveness and cannot be regarded solely as "primordial" or a constant of birth or of cultural heritage. It changes over the life course and is more salient in various contexts.
National policy and cultural ideology favor the integration and total assimilation of Jews from diverse countries of origin in the Jewish state. Yet ethnic differences have characterized social life and demographic changes in Israel, despite ethnic integration into the national society and polity. Paradoxically, the integration of ethnic groups has at times led to increased ethnic distinctiveness rather than to total assimilation. The tensions between ethnic change and continuity, between ethnic pluralism and an ethnic melting pot, are powerful themes in understanding of Israeli society.
The primary objective of studying ethnic differentiation is not to examine ethnic differences per se but to identify how ethnicity is conveyed generationally. The key is how ethnic differences have been translated into inequalities-the unequal access of groups to the rewards and opportunities within the society. In particular the timing and selectivity of immigration and the continuing patterns of residential concentration have been critical in shaping the emergence of the ethnic mosaic in Israel, are central to the ways in which ethnicity has changed over the last half century, and are directly linked to the perpetuation of ethnic differentiation and inequality. Ethnic differences that are embedded in the structure of social life in Israel tend to be perpetuated. At the same time, ethnic differences that are primarily transfers from places of origins are rarely sustained and at best selectively reinforced. Hence, the sharp ethnic differences in fertility and mortality that characterized groups in the past have narrowed considerably as exposure to Israeli society has increased. These demographic factors are no longer the sources of ethnic distinctiveness and mainly reflect national origins and socioeconomic factors. In Israel, ethnicity emerges in new arenas.
Jewish ethnic differentiation in Israel reflects a combination of social and cultural origins of immigrant groups and the effects of Israeli's social conditions. Ethnic divisions among Jews do not derive from Zionist ideological sources or explicit Israeli policies. To the contrary: The national ideology, Zionism, denies the salience of ethnicity as a continuing factor for the Israeli Jewish population. National origin differences among Jews are viewed as the product of the long-term dispersal of the Jewish people in the diaspora. Returning to the homeland, it is argued, will result in the emergence of a new Jew-untainted by the culture and psychology of the disapora and freed from the constraints and limitations of experiences in places of previous (non-Israel) residence.
Zionism's construction of Jewish peoplehood, therefore, involves the assignment of ethnic origin to the minority experiences of Jews outside of Israel and, hence, requires its devaluation. Zionism rejected the assimilation of Jews in communities outside of Israel and the retention of ethnic minority status as viable solutions to the position of Jews in modernizing societies. The long Jewish diaspora of 2,000 years is viewed simply as an empty interlude between the origin of a Jewish nation in the land of Israel and the return of Jews to their land of origin. Hence, Zionist ideology posits that Israel is the national origin of Jews. Their countries of "interlude," that is, their ethnicities, are not the source of their Jewish-national identity; Israel is. It follows that the recognition of ethnic origins as the country of ancestry would be, in part, a denial of the "return" home to Israel. To recognize the continuing salience of ethnicity would be to treat coming to Israel as immigration in the normal demographic sense, not as aliya, the imperative "ascent" to Israel of Zionist ideology. To deny "returning" to Israel would be ideologically and politically untenable, as would the acknowledgment of the value and salience of ethnic origins. The continuing distinctiveness of ethnicity among Jews in Israel is perceived, therefore, as temporary, reflecting the past, diminishing in the present, and expected to disappear in future generations. Zionist ideology as it is manifest in contemporary Israeli society, constructs the obvious evidence of Jewish ethnic differences in Israel as transitional and largely irrelevant to the longer term goals of national Jewish integration and nation-building.
The consensus within Israel about the value of bringing Jews to Israel from diverse countries of origin and the resulting policies encouraging this "in-gathering" are consistent with Zionist ideology, as is the anticipated integration of immigrants with these diverse ethnic backgrounds into the national culture and polity. To hasten achieving this latter goal, explicit policies were designed and implemented to "absorb" Jewish immigrants into Israeli society. Along with the deliberate policy of building the nation through immigration, the goal was to mitigate social splits and cleavages along lines of national origin. These goals have been at the top of the national agenda from Israel's earliest days. A great deal of effort and extensive resources were aimed at closing the gaps among Jews of different socioeconomic backgrounds in the hope of achieving rapid integration and equalization. This social policy has been reflected in Israel's particular development as a welfare state and its related economic system.
Israeli policy makers fully expect the total assimilation of Jews from diverse countries of origin as the third generation emerges, distant from ethnic origins, socialized into the national polity and culture by exposure to educational institutions and the military, and raised by native-born Israeli parents. The ethnicity remaining among third-generation Israeli Jews is expected to be marginal, cultural remnants of no economic or social significance, celebrated in "disapora" museums as relics and curios of the past. Nation-building in the ideological and policy contexts of Israeli society is expected to remove the diversity of ethnic origins, as new forms of national Israeli loyalty emerge, focusing solely on Jewish peoplehood. Religious similarity (i.e., being Jewish), military service, education, and "collective consciousness," derived from Israel's security situation, it is argued, operate to dilute ethnic differences. Ethnic cleavage becomes a "problem to be solved," not a cultural trait or a source of generational socioeconomic inequality.
Nowhere is the ideology that denies the salience of Jewish ethnicity more poignant symbolically than in the way ethnic origin is treated in official government statistical publications. Ethnic origin among the Jews in Israel is almost always categorized in terms of the place of birth of the person (i.e., some "objective" fact that is ascriptive and unchanging). For the Israeli born, place of parents' birth (usually father) is obtained, also an unchanging characteristic. In that context, ethnic origin is simply limited by time (until the third generation) and is descriptive of the immediate past. Using this definition, generational distance from foreignness or exposure to Israeli society marks the progress toward the end of ethnicity and ethnic self-identification (in the particularistic sense). The question of the ethnic origins, or in the Western sense, of the "ancestry" of the third generation (the native born of native-born parents) has not so far been addressed by officials in Israel. Indeed, to judge solely by the way official government bureaus in Israel present their texts, this third generation has no differentiating ethnic origins of significance-they are simply Israeli born of Israeli-born parents, with no need to pursue retrospectively the origins of the generations.
Information collected on specific country of origin is re-categorized into broad divisions by continents-Europe-America, and Asia-Africa (with a third category-Israel born of Israeli-born parents). This ethnic categorization is unique historically among Jewish communities of the world and is constructed only for Jews living in the state of Israel. It clearly reflects a distinction between Jews of "Western" and "Middle Eastern" origin. It is a rejection of the more widely used, and historically more complex, division between "Sephardic" and "Ashkenazic" Jewries, although there is some overlap. The latter distinction has been retained only to identify the political designations of the two chief rabbis of Israel, the only legitimate, governmentally recognized and reinforced arena for Jewish "ethnic" diversity. This designation is largely political and serves as a cultural division within the secular government of Israel.
Ethnicity and the Life Course
Some have argued that ethnic categories should be treated as ascriptive; indeed, primordial, fixed at birth, and constant throughout the life course. In the Israeli case it has been argued that ethnic encounters are based on shared primordial historical and religious attachments that preserved the individual communities in their disaspora histories.
However, such an emphasis may be misleading, since it treats ethnicity as a "constant," unchanging over the life course of individuals and between generations; an ascriptive category that is "objective." In contrast, I treat the classification of persons into ethnic categories as a social construction that varies with who is categorizing, who gets categorized, and in what contexts these categories are applied during the life course. Thus, for example, third generation Israeli Jews of Yemenite origins may be classified in Israeli government records as Israelis, born of Israeli-born parents (i.e., without ethnic origins). In a local community they may be classified as of "Middle Eastern" origins (or of Asian-African origins) or classified by family members as Yemenites of a particular regional origin. American Jews living in Israel may be referred to by some as "Westerners," European-Americans, as "Anglo-Saxons," or as New Yorkers. When they are touring Europe or visiting family in the United States, they may be labeled "Israelis." In Utah they would be called "gentiles".
These labels are neither correct nor incorrect but are constructions designed by different "others" in an attempt at social classification and definition. Ethnic categories designated formally or informally can, of course, change over time-in the historical sense of time and in its life-cycle meaning. Young adults living alone may be less likely to identify themselves ethnically, whereas families with young children may be linked to ethnic communities through networks, jobs, schools, friends, and neighborhoods. The salience of ethnic identification may increase as new families are formed or as transitions occur-marriage, childbearing, death-that link the generations. Ethnicity may be reinforced through family networking during particular seasons of the year, holidays, and celebrations. Since the boundaries dividing some ethnic groups tend to be flexible, people are able to shift between groups most commonly at particular points during the life course. Multiple social identities have emerged in modern pluralistic societies; the salience of any one identity varies with the particular context, of which life-course transitions are of special importance because of the link between the life course and family networks.
The life-course perspective emphasizes the treatment of ethnic classification as variable, focused on family networks and intergenerational connections, not as a fixed individual identity or a group ascriptive trait. As transitions occur in the life course-as persons marry and form new families, as they become ill or seek medical treatment, as they have children or when they die-issues of community and family support, of local institutions and networks based on ethnicity become more salient. In contrast, at points in the life course where there is an emphasis on independence and autonomy, or on broader national identity, ethnic networks are likely to be less valued.
Ethnic differences characterize social life in Israel, as in other pluralistic societies. The question is, What are the contexts that sharpen or diminish these differences generationally? Of critical significance in studying the changing importance of ethnicity in society is to examine changes in socioeconomic opportunities and the differential access of ethnic groups to these opportunities. The concentration of ethnic groups in particular jobs, neighborhoods, industries, and schools implies at times socioeconomic disadvantage and inequalities. Almost always the ethnic-social class overlap indicates more intensive interaction with members of the ethnic community than with those outside of the ethnic boundaries. The overlap of ethnic factors and social class connects to the importance of family and economic linkages. Social class combines with broad family-economic networks to establish bonds of community and generational continuities. Hence, the generational transmission of inequality becomes the key question to pose in understanding ethnicity over time. The importance of formal and informal, explicit or subtle, forms of discrimination in jobs, housing, schools, and government allocations are among the primary factors that reinforce ethnic communities.
Ethnic intensity is likely to be greater when the ethnic origins (and hence the intergenerational bonds) of a couple are the same. When ethnic family members live close to each other, when they attend the same schools, have similar jobs and leisure activities, marry within their ethnic groups, and are involved in ethnic social and political institutions, ethnic attachments within groups are more intensive. Examining the intensities of ethnic attachments reinforces the notion that ethnic classification should be treated with movable boundaries over time and with varying involvements in the ethnic community over the life course.
In addition to the socioeconomic and demographic factors connected to ethnic groups, the state may play an important role that, including the development and implementation of ethnic-specific policies. The state may indirectly shape ethnic communities through policies, affecting education, real estate and housing, business practices, jobs, public welfare, and health systems. The entitlement systems common in modern welfare states and their links to ethnic factors, therefore, influence ethnic continuities and change. These systems can encourage and reinforce ethnic political mobilization and may often become the basis for the institutional expressions of ethnic interests.
These "external" contexts are often complemented by the reinforcing role that ethnic institutions play in sustaining continuity. Some of these are family based and others are political, social, and cultural institutions that create a more intense ethnic community. In the absence of economic discrimination or ethnic markers that distinguish groups in the eyes of others, ethnic institutions become the major constraint on the total assimilation of ethnic populations.
Operating between the life course of individuals and the impact of the state on ethnicity are families and households, with their extensive patterns of exchanges that I refer to as community. Community and family factors are powerful and conspicuous bases of ethnic continuity, shaping the ways individuals identify themselves ethnically.
Ethnicity has often been assumed to diminish with time and exposure to the new place of destination. As generations exposed to places of destination increase, the impact of origins recedes in memory and diminishes in effect on the life of the group. As the third and fourth generations are socialized and integrated into the economy, dispersed residentially and geographically, exposed to the influences of educational institutions and mass media, and as they interact with others on a basis other than ethnic origin, they melt away-they are thus homogenized into the larger culture and become undifferentiated through intergroup marriages and broader national political identification. This view assumes the centrality of the past for the continuity of groups in the present and de-emphasizes the roles of family and community. When ethnicity is viewed primarily of the past, the driving question is, How much of the past could be retained in the face of pressures toward integration and cultural homogenization? How long would it take before ethnicity becomes only "nostalgia" and hence difficult to transmit generationally?
This perspective appears to distort the questions that I address about ethnic phenomenon. In contemporary Israeli society, ethnicity is constructed (or reconstructed) out of the present circumstances, shaped not simply by what was, but by what is, incorporating selectively from the past within the present. Ethnicity revolves around institutions, those that reduce and those that sustain ethnic communities. In the process, new ethnic forms appear, as different institutions develop to reflect these emergent cultural forms. Even when cultural differences weaken, institutions can be retained and can continue to shape communities. These institutions include family and kin, and social, economic, cultural, and political organizations. Ethnic groups that have retained, developed, and extended institutions have more cohesive communities when compared to those whose search for individual identity or for cultural forms of the past take precedence over social institutions.
Both the cultural and social class perspectives tap important dimensions of the differences among ethnic groups in Israel. Taken together, they argue that ethnic differences are the combined consequence of cultural and social class factors; when social class factors are neutralized and discrimination minimized, the remaining ethnic differences are "only" cultural. These unmeasured, residual "cultural" factors are minor and tend to weaken generationally. Cultural factors are reinforced by the disadvantaged socioeconomic position of ethnic groups, which reflect discrimination, blocked opportunities, and economic origins (including the occupational skills and lower educational levels of the first generation acquired elsewhere). In more complex interactions, cultural forms of ethnicity are considered more intense among the less-educated, poorer social classes, since social mobility and the attainment of middle-class and higher status minimizes the salience of ethnic distinctiveness.
Both perspectives, in their own way, project the steady reduction of ethnic differences over time in Israel when cultural integration occurs, usually with the length of exposure to Israeli society. With linguistic homogeneity and educational equalization, with the reduction in ethnic job discrimination and residential segregation, and, in general, when social class factors are more equalized among groups, ethnic distinctiveness should be reduced or eliminated.
The cultural and social class perspectives assume that ethnic particularism and discrimination are likely to diminish over time because of the ideological and institutional commitments of the state toward the integration of groups into a political and economic system based on merit, achievement, and universalism. Hence, with political modernization, the social class basis of ethnic differentiation declines and cultural differences are homogenized. In short, the salience of group differences diminishes. Indeed, the Arab exception in Israel is often used to prove the rule. When discrimination blocks the integration of groups and their access to economic opportunities, continued inequality and distinctiveness are reinforced. When residential segregation and family patterns are reinforced by state policies, ethnic differentiation is likely to persist generationally. Political and social factors reinforce Arab cultural distinctiveness.
Ethnicity as Networks
An alternative and complementary view to the cultural and social class arguments, and the third framework, places emphasis on the structural networks and the power of a community and its institutions that reinforces ethnic distinctiveness and identity. The networks of ethnic communities may be extensive; they are often tied to places of residence and connected to families, linked to economic activities and enclaves, and expressed in political ties, cultural expressions, and lifestyles. Institutions and organizations that are ethnically based reinforce these networks. The key element of this argument is that the cohesion of ethnic communities is based on institutions and networks. Hence, the intensity of community is facilitated by the intensity of social networks-the greater the social networks and the denser the institutions, the greater the cohesion of the ethnic community. Cohesion is reflected both in interaction patterns and in cultural expressions. The larger number of spheres where interaction occurs within the ethnic community, the more cohesive the group; the greater the arenas of cultural particularities and activities, the higher the rate of ethnic attachments.
According to this perspective, the basis of ethnic community is the extent of ethnic ties to the labor market over the life course, not simply the overlap of ethnicity and social class. Changing economic networks forge the greater interactions within ethnic communities, developing bonds of family and economic activities at different points during the life course. The support of kin and family and the concentration of ethnic groups in geographically defined areas become important bases of ethnic continuity. Whatever the values and common background, the specific history and unique culture that may bind ethnic members together in a "primordial" sense, the key factors involved within this framework are structural-residence, jobs, schooling, and family. The cultural bases of ethnic groups reinforce and justify the cohesion of the community and are themselves variable, but they do not determine its continuity. Cultural distinctiveness and values occur in social contexts, and their construction changes over time as contexts change.
When networks and the communication within ethnic groups are strong, ethnic group attachments are more salient. Viewed in this way, ethnic distinctiveness is not limited to unacculturated immigrant groups or to ethnic groups that have experienced discrimination or are economically disadvantaged. Ethnic communities are sustained by informal institutions and networks, are often reinforced by local politics and policies, and are enhanced by extended family connections.
The network perspective emphasizes that national attachments do not necessarily imply the reduction of ethnic group distinctiveness, even when discrimination diminishes and social mobility occurs. Under some conditions, nation-building reinforces distinctiveness, particularly when there is increased socioeconomic competition among ethnic groups, intensified forms of economic concentration, and residential segregation. Often ethnicity is reinforced rather than diminished when acculturation takes place, when the values among ethnic groups become more similar, and when socioeconomic competition among groups becomes sharper. Ethnic social mobility through improvements in education and jobs may increase economic concentration at the upper levels of socioeconomic status, just as ethnicity was associated in the past with concentration at lower socioeconomic levels.
Under some conditions, nation-building results in the total assimilation of ethnic groups through the erosion of community and family based institutions, through residential integration and intergroup marriages, through open market forces and universal schooling, and through state policies that provide access to opportunities and that enforce nondiscrimination. But not always; not for all groups; not as an inevitable by-product of urbanization, economic development, nationalism, and social mobility. The specific contexts must be studied to examine these patterns so as not to infer them from broad patterns of societal change.
Treating ethnicity as networks implies that ethnic groups may not necessarily be transitional or unimportant features of modern societies. Ethnicity may be embedded in the institutions, politics, and economy in ways that are likely to have a significant impact on the lives of people. The reinforcement of ethnic connections through continuous patterns of immigration insures that ethnic origins remain important factors that distinguish communities for an even longer period of time. Community, not individual, identity is the most fruitful unit for an examination of ethnic expression in Israel. Therefore, I argue explicitly against those who would examine ethnicity among Jewish Israelis mainly as a reflection of transitional immigrant categories and individual ethnic identity.
Ethnicity and Nationalism
One of the key questions is: What is the relationship between nation-building and ethnic stratification? Specifically, what are the contexts in Israel that exacerbate the ethnic division of labor, and when do these forms of ethnic stratification and inequality diminish? There are major ethnic divisions in Israeli society as well as ethnic convergences. Jewish ethnic convergences in some processes (e.g., fertility, family, and mortality) and continued ethnic distinctiveness in others (e.g., residential concentration and socioeconomic measures) have been well documented. Have these patterns resulted in the declining significance of ethnicity and of ethnic communities? If ethnic communities are continuous features of Israel's emerging pluralism, how is national integration affected? In short, does ethnic continuity conflict with national Israeli integration?
It is clear that the earlier entry into Israel's society of European immigrants and their socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds facilitated their relatively successful socioeconomic mobility and their access to power, resources, and opportunity. European immigrants could take advantage of their connections to the European-dominated society and economy that they found established as the state was developing. Burdened by larger families, higher mortality and morbidity, and fewer resources than Jews from Western societies, Asian and African immigrants arrived in Israel later in time, with a higher level of dependency on sociopolitical institutions. They came from less-developed societies, with fewer urban skills and less-powerful economic networks, and they were therefore less able to compete with European-origin groups in Israel. The timing of immigration and the cultural differences between groups reinforced these structural background factors that divided Israeli Jews.
The differential timing of immigration and the changing ethnic composition of immigrant streams created the contexts of residential concentration among Jews. Ethnic residential patterns, more than the legacy of social and cultural origins, shape what ethnicity continues to mean in the process of nation-building in Israel. Residential concentration forged from political and economic consideration has become the key process marking off Israeli-born Jews from each other, as it has been the demographic foundation of the continuing Jewish-Arab distinctiveness.
Ethnic residential concentration is linked to educational opportunities and, in turn, to jobs; it is likely to relate to intra-ethnic marriages and a reinforced sense of ethnic self-identity, pride, and culture, connecting ethnic origins and families into networks of relationships. These separate patterns characterize significant segments of third-generation Jews when examined by the two broad Jewish ethnic categories--Western and Middle Eastern.
In my review of the political and demographic contexts of Israeli society, it has become clear that some ethnic demographic differences diminish in importance and that ethnic convergences occur over time. Ethnic convergences seem to result when difference are primarily the result of the background of immigrants and are largely the legacy of the past. Thus, for example, family size and family structure differences among ethnic groups have diminished with each passing generation, as mortality differences disappeared among the foreign-born first generation. In contrast, ethnic communities remain salient when the sources of ethnic differences are embedded in the society of destination as a result of the timing of immigration and the ethnic and economic selectivity of immigrant streams or because of emerging residential segregation, occupational concentration, or economic niches that flow from political and economic considerations. Cultural expressions and values in turn legitimate these structural features.
Ethnic residential concentration among Jews reinforces the overlap of ethnicity and socioeconomic factors through the impact of location factors on access to educational and economic opportunities. Together, residential and socioeconomic concentrations shape the continuing salience of ethnic distinctiveness in Israel. When groups are integrated residentially, ethnic differences become marginal in their social, economic, and political importance; where residential segregation in Israel has persisted, it has become the primary engine of ethnic persistence and inequality. Although ethnic segregation is associated at times with poverty and lower socioeconomic status, it also implies supportive and family networks that shape the lives of many Israelis. Local institutions serve as further bases for ethnic continuity. These include ethnic family networks, economic networks that are ethnically based and some local institutions--synagogues, community centers, political organizations, health clinics, and leisure-time and cultural activities (sports, music, for example)--that are concentrated among particular ethnic groups. Jewish ethnic continuities persist despite government policies and ideological orientations to deny the salience of ethnicity.
These arguments suggest that convergences among ethnic groups in some aspects of social life do not necessarily provide clues about total ethnic assimilation. Increasing similarities in family structure or educational levels among Jews from different ethnic origins are an inadequate basis for concluding that assimilation is proceeding to eliminate ethnic communities. Ethnic communities have been redefined away from specific countries of origin toward an amalgamation of broader ethnic groups that represent new forms of ethnic differentiation. The diminished significance of Polish, Romanian, Algerian, and Tunisian ethnicity, for example, does not preclude a recombination into new ethnic categories that are specific to Israel's society and have importance as "European" and "Asian-African" Israeli communities. New ethnic divisions mark Jews off from each other and have significance in the context of Israeli society.
Large scale Russian immigration has created a new and powerful ethnic community in Israel, reinforced by political mobilization, language, and residential concentration. In turn, they have influenced other ethnic groups to mobilize politically as they compete over resources. The conspicuous structural differences among Jews negate the "melting pot" response to the economic and demographic integration of ethnic populations. The resultant ethnic divisions do not imply that individuals do not move between ethnic groups or into a third ethnically neutral Israeli group. The fluidity of boundaries does not imply their absence. Ethnicity may continue to be a characteristic of populations, although it may not be an ascribed feature of each person's identity. And the results of ethnic intermarriages among Jews in Israel often reinforce ethnic and social class divisions because of the social class selectivity of those who intermarry. Increasingly, multi-ethnic identities are emerging among the children of the inter-ethnically intermarried in Israel, similar to the multiple identities of the children of intermarried Jews in the United States. These multiple identities should not be viewed as transitional or temporary but as individual expressions of identities in modern pluralistic societies, often changing over the life course and varying in different social contexts.
Concluding Thoughts
Jews in America are surviving; indeed some Jewish communities are thriving. Contemporary American Jewish communities have resources, money, education, health and talent, organizations and institutions, on a scale unprecedented in historical memory. The survival of American Jews is less threatened by external forces than ever before. Indeed, it is the external forces that brings together the diverse communities that are American Jews and creates the new basis of culture and commitment. Most Jews in most Jewish communities in the United States have found unparalleled freedom and choice. And the amazing fact of our day is that when confronted with freedom and choice, most Jews choose to be Jewish rather than something else.
Ethnic group differences in Israel have been become part of the social fabric of Jewish Israelis. Surely some Israeli Jews have lost their ethnic attachments and altered their ethnic networks, as they have become "just Israelis". Others have rediscovered their ethnic roots and culture. Most have become part of Israeli-defined ethnic communities, clearly distinct from Israeli minorities (Arabs) and transformed ethnically. Few members of ethnic communities identify themselves in the same way that their parents and grandparents viewed themselves. Yet many are part of newly formed ethnic groups within Israeli society, sharing life experiences, culture and community within an ethnic framework. The overlap of ethnic origins and social class reinforce these networks. Social and political institutions that are dominated in some ways with ethnic interests complement the family networks that are ethnically based.
The conspicuous ethnic differentiation and the generational transmission of educational inequality in Israel suggest also that stratification issues loom large in the future of ethnicity in Israel. Combined with residential concentration and marriage patterns, the salience of the ethnicity over the life cycle is reinforced by the state in areas of politics and family, the military, and jobs, in the selection of married partners and in the socialization of children. Ethnic differences within the American Jewish community have diminished, as American Jews have become an American ethnic group. Ethnic differences in Israel have become sharper in some contexts as Jewish Israelis have become the majority ethnic national population. As assimilation occurs in both communities, new forms of ethnicity have emerged. In America where ethnic pluralism is celebrated and in Israel where Jewish ethnic diversity is denied, Jewish ethnic identities, culture and communities have emerged to shape the relationships between American and Israeli Jews. Demographic decline characterizes neither the American Jewish community nor Israeli ethnic communities. The future of Jewish ethnicity hinges on the quality of Jewish ethnic life, education and culture. The irony is that indicators of Jewishness focused on Jewish quality remain high in the United States and somewhat problematic in Israeli society.

FROM IMMIGRANT TO ETHNIC COMMUNITY: THE TRANSFORMATION OF JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN ISRAEL

FROM IMMIGRANT TO ETHNIC COMMUNITY:
THE TRANSFORMATION OF JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN ISRAEL