Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T04:57:11.976Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Minority Situation and Religious Acculturation: a Comparative Analysis of Jewish Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Stephen Sharot
Affiliation:
The University of Leicester

Extract

The need for comparative studies of Jewish communities has occasionally been argued, but apart from largely typological comparisons of Jewish polities, there have been few, if any, attempts at a sociological comparative study of Jewish communities. Nearly all the sociological studies of Judaism have restricted their analysis to the Jewish community in the United States, and it is possible that their findings possess little generality beyond that society.

Type
Minority Acculturation Problems
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Elazer, Daniel J., ‘The Reconstruction of Jewish Communities in the Post-War PeriodJewish Journal of Sociology, 11 (1969), 187226.Google Scholar

2 Sklare, Marshall, Conservative Judaism, Glencoe, III, 1955;Google ScholarGlazer, Nathan, American Judaism, Chicago, 1957.Google Scholar

3 Lipset, S. M., ‘The Study of Jewish Communities in a Comparative Context’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, 5 (1963), 157–66.Google Scholar

4 Gordon, Milton M., Assimilation in American Life (New York, 1964), 79.Google Scholar

5 For a discussion of the distinction between acculturation and assimilation and of the assimilation variables see Gordon, ibid., chap. 3.

6 For a discussion of the comparative method see Smelser, Neil J., Essays in Sociological Explanation, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968, chap. 3.Google ScholarEtzioni, Amitai and Dubow, Fredric L., Comparative Perspectives, Boston, 1970.Google ScholarMarsh, Robert M., Comparative Sociology, New York, 1967.Google Scholar

7 After the Temple of Solomon was destroyed and Judea captured by the Babylonians in 586 B.C, the major part of the population in Israel, was exiled to Babylonia while some fled to Egypt. From that period only a minority of the Jewish people continued to live in Israel.

8 Leslie, D. D., ‘The Kaifeng Jewish Community’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, 11 (1969), 175–85.Google Scholar Since writing this paper, the definitive book on Chinese Jews has appeared: Leslie, Donald Daniel, The Survival of the Chinese Jews; the Jewish Community of Kaifeng, Leiden, 1972.Google Scholar

9 Strizower, Schifra, Exotic Jewish Communities, London, 1962Google Scholar, chap. 3. Mandel-baum, David G., ‘The Jewish Way of Life in Cochin’, Jewish Social Studies, 1 (1939), 423–60.Google Scholar

10 Strizower, Schifra, The Children of Israel: the Bene Israel of Bombay, Oxford, 1971.Google Scholar The Bene Israel claim that they are descendants from the ten lost tribes of Israel and that they reached India about 175 B.C. The Cochin Jews claim that their ancestors came to India after the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70. There is no independent evidence to support these claims. Although it is possible that there were Jewish communities in India as early as the fifth century A.D., the only certainty is that Jews had settled in India before the end of the first millennium after Christ.

11 Chouraqui, Andre N., Between East and West (Philadelphia, 1968), chap. 7.Google Scholar

12 Goitein, S. D., Jews and Arabs (New York, 1955), chap. 6.Google Scholar

13 Numerically Babylon was an important centre of Jewry from the destruction of the Temple of Solomon. Scholars have argued that the pure form of Jewish monotheism developed in the Babylonian exile.

14 Baron, S. W., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, New York, 19521969, vol. 2, chap. 13, vol. 5, chap. 23, vol. 6, chap. 27.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., vol. 6, chap. 27. Goitein, , op. clt., chaps. 1, 3, 7.Google Scholar

16 Baron, , op. cit., vol. 3, chap. 17.Google Scholar

17 Most Middle Eastern Jews spoke Aramaic before they adopted Arabic, but only in the mountains of Kurdistan and Armenia did Jews retain the Aramaic dialect, Goitein, , op. cit., chap. 7.Google Scholar

18 A number of Middle Eastern Jewish communities developed Judeo-Arabic vernaculars, but they contained far less Hebrew than Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazi European Jews. Another difference was that Yiddish, a fusion of medieval German and Hebrew, was transplanted from Germany and preserved in an area, eastern Europe, entirely foreign to it.

19 Goitein, op. cit. Chouraqui, op. cit., chap. 6. Voinot, L., Pélérinages judeo-musulmans du Maroc, Paris, 1948.Google Scholar

20 Chouraqui, , op. cit.Google Scholar, Goitein, , op. cit.Google Scholar

21 Slouschz, Nahum, Travels in North Africa, Philadelphia, 1927.Google Scholar

22 Goitein, , op. cit.Google Scholar

23 Goitein, S. D., ‘Jewish Education in Yemen as an Archetype of Traditional Jewish Education’ in Frankenstein, (ed.), Between Past and Future, Jerusalem, 1953.Google Scholar

24 Feitelson, Dina, ‘Aspects of the Social Life of Kurdish Jews’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, 1 (1959), 201–16.Google Scholar

25 Briggs, L. C. & Guele, N. L., No More for Ever: A Saharan Jewish Town, Cambridge, Mass., 1964.Google Scholar

26 White, W. C., Chinese Jews: A Compilation of Matters Relating to the Jews of Kaifeng Fu, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1942Google Scholar). Leslie, , op. cit.Google Scholar

27 Mandelbaum, , op. cit.Google Scholar, Strizower, , Exotic Jewish Communities, op. cit.Google Scholar

28 Strizower, , The Children of Israel, op. cit.Google Scholar

29 Zimmels, H. J., Ashkenazim and Sephardim (London, 1958), pt. 2, chap. 7.Google Scholar

30 Katz, Jacob, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, New York, 1961.Google ScholarZborowski, Mark and Herzog, Elizabeth, Life is with People: the Culture of the Shtetl, New York, 1962.Google Scholar

31 Trachtenberg, Joshua, Jewish Magic and Superstition, Philadelphia, 1961.Google Scholar

32 Zimmels, , op. clt., pt. 2, chaps. 7, 10.Google Scholar

33 Coulborn, Rushton, ‘The State and Religion: Iran, India and China’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1 (19581959), 4457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Weber, Max, The Religion of China (New York, 1964), 213–14.Google Scholar

35 Balazs, Etienne, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, New Haven, 1964, 22.Google Scholar

36 White, , op. cit.Google ScholarLeslie, , op. cit.Google Scholar

37 Balazs, , op. cit., 41–2, 70–8.Google Scholar

38 Weber, Max, The Religion of India, New York, 1958, 929.Google Scholar

39 Srinivas, M. N., Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India (Oxford, 1952), 31–2.Google Scholar

40 Coulborn, , op. cit.Google Scholar

41 Bendix, Reinhard, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York, 1969), 257–75.Google Scholar

42 Von-Grunebaun, Gustave E., Medieval Islam, Chicago, 1946.CrossRefGoogle ScholarWatt, W. Montgomery, Islam and the Integration of Society, London, 1961.CrossRefGoogle ScholarLevy, Reuben, The Social Structure of Islam, Cambridge, 1957.Google Scholar

43 Baron, , op. cit., vol. 3, chap. 18.Google Scholar

44 Goitein, , Jews and Arabs, op. cit., chap. 5.Google Scholar

45 Baron, , op. cit.Google ScholarChouraqui, , op. cit., chap. 5.Google Scholar

46 Goitein, , op. cit.Google Scholar Section on ‘Yemen’ in Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem, 1971.Google Scholar

47 Goitein, , op. cit., chap. 6.Google Scholar

48 Hirschberg, H. Z., ‘The Jewish Quarter in Muslim Cities and Berber Areas’, Judaism, 17 (1968), 405–21.Google Scholar

49 Cahnman, Werner J., ‘Religion and Nationality’, American Journal of Sociology, XLIX (1944), 524–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Feitelson, , op. cit.Google Scholar

51 Briggs, and Guele, , op. cit.Google Scholar

52 Baron, , op. cit., vol. 4, chap. 20, vol. 9, chap. 37.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., vol. 4., chap. 21, vol. 10, chap. 49. Foliakov, Leon, The History of Anti-Semitism: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews, London, 1965.Google ScholarTrachtenberg, Joshua, The Devil and the Jews, New York, 1961.Google Scholar

54 Baron, , op. cit., vol. 4, chap. 20, vol. 9, chaps. 37, 38, vol. 11, chap. 48.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., vol. 9, chaps, 40, 41, vol. 11, chap. 47.

56 Ibid., vol. 10, chap. 43, vol. 11, chap. 50.

57 Ibid., vol. 6, chap. 22, vol. 12, chaps. 51, 52, 53.

58 Ibid., vol. 10, chap. 24.

59 Zborowski, and Herzog, , op. cit.Google ScholarBaron, S. W., The Russian Jews Under the Tsars and the Soviets, New York, 1964.Google Scholar

60 Katz, , op. cit.Google Scholar, chap. 13.Dublow, S. M., History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Phila delphia, 1920.Google Scholar

61 Baron, , Social and Religious History, op. cit., vol. 3, chap. 16, vol. 4, chap. 20, vol. 10, chap. 44, vol. 11, chap. 50, vol. 13, chaps. 55, 56.Google Scholar

62 Baer, Yitzhah, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, Philadelphia, 1961.Google Scholar

63 Zimmels, , op. cit., pt. 2, chap. 8.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., pt. 2, chaps. 9, 10.