Jewish Family

Randal F. Schnoor, Alex Pomson

Description

In Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor advance a new appreciation for the deep significance of Jewish family in developing Jewish identity. This book is the result of ten years of research focused on a small sample of diverse families. Through their work, the authors paint an intricate picture of the ecosystem that the family unit provides for identity formation over the life course. They draw upon theories of family development as well as sociological theories of the transmission of social and cultural capital in their analysis of the research. They find that family networks, which are often intergenerational, are just as significant as cultural capital, such as knowledge and competence in Judaism, to the formation of Jewish identity. Pomson and Schnoor provide readers with a unique view into the complexity of being Jewish in North America today.

Acknowledgments
1. "Growing in to our skin as a Jewish family": Proposing a new approach to the study of Jewish self-formation
2. Dreidels on the Christmas tree: Jewish capital in the family
3. "Reversing some screwed up thing": Changes in families' Jewish lives over the life-course
4. "It's about the kids, right?": Jewish families as social systems
5. "This is the way our family is": The work of home-based family ritual
6. "I'm my generation": Talking with Jewish teens at home
7. Home work: Reflections on studying families for ten years
Appendix A
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Jewish identity
• General officer
• Demography
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 11 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253033123
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

JEWISH FAMILY
T HE M ODERN J EWISH E XPERIENCE
Deborah Dash Moore and Marsha L. Rozenblit, editors
Paula Hyman, founding coeditor
Jewish Family
IDENTITY AND SELF-FORMATION AT HOME
ALEX POMSON AND RANDAL F. SCHNOOR
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2018 by Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pomson, Alex, author. | Schnoor, Randal F., author.
Title: Jewish family : identity and self-formation at home / Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2018] | Series: The modern Jewish experience | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017055812 (print) | LCCN 2017056533 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253033109 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253033086 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780253033093 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Jewish families—Ontario—Toronto—Longitudinal studies. | Jews—Ontario—Toronto—Identity. | Toronto (Ont.)—Ethnic relations.
Classification: LCC HQ525.J4 (ebook) | LCC HQ525.J4 P66 2018 (print) | DDC 306.85/089924—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055812
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
For Mum—kin-keeper extraordinaire
Alex
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1. “Growing into Our Skin as a Jewish Family”: Proposing a New Approach to the Study of Jewish Self-Formation
2. Dreidels on the Christmas Tree: Jewish Capital in the Family
3. “Reversing Some Screwed-Up Thing”: Changes in Families’ Jewish Lives over the Life Course
4. “It’s about the Kids, Right?”: Jewish Families as Social Systems
5. “This Is the Way Our Family Is”: The Work of Home-Based Family Ritual
6. “I’m My Generation”: Talking with Jewish Teens at Home
7. Home Work: Reflections on Studying Families for Ten Years
Appendix: The Participating Families
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Working together on a project in which we submitted the final manuscript more than fifteen years after we originally launched our work, we have benefitted from the support of a great many institutions and people over an extended period. We want to recognize those who made a decisive contribution to the completion of this project.
First and foremost, we are fortunate to have received two significant grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of the Government of Canada (SSHRC). A first SSHRC grant in 2003 supported the three-year study that laid the foundations for our research. This grant resulted in our first book, Back to School , published in 2008. A second grant, in 2009, made it possible to return to the families who had participated in the first study, something we had not originally expected to do.
The professional and lay leadership of the Paul Penna Downtown Jewish Day School gave us access to a wonderfully diverse group of families. While the children in those families had all moved on from the school by the time we completed the study, we would not have been able to get started on any aspect of this project without the school’s initial support.
Over many years, faculty and leadership at the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University have generously supported our efforts. Year after year, they provided a comfortable space for us to meet where we could cover a long table with transcripts and piece together an emerging narrative over the course of multiday meetings. Over the years, the menus that fueled these intense sessions changed—we transitioned from deli-sandwiches to healthier fare—but the hospitality provided by the Centre was unchanging. We especially thank the Centre directors who provided a home for our work: Michael Brown, Marty Lockshin, Sara Horowitz, and Carl Ehrlich.
We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to test the ideas that emerged during our research with students at York University and at the Hebrew University, specifically at the Melton Center for Jewish Education. Mirroring the evolution of our work, the courses we taught started out with a focus on schools, they then placed a spotlight on schools and families, and in later years, they have specifically explored the life course of families. On numerous occasions, almost annually, conference sessions at the Association for Jewish Studies and the Network for Research in Jewish Education also helped move forward our thinking.
When one of us transitioned away from a full-time position at the university, that move could have been fatal to the kind of emergent inquiry in which we were engaged. The support of colleagues at Rosov Consulting, Alex Pomson’s professional home for the last five years of this project, has been critical to the completion of this endeavor. We thank Wendy Rosov, in particular, for her generosity, guidance, and friendship. But for her vision, we would never have brought our efforts to a successful conclusion.
Dee Mortensen and the team at Indiana University Press deserve a special shout-out for their interest in our work. Their encouragement inspired us to think bold and work hard. We are honored that Deborah Dash Moore and Marsha L. Rozenblit have welcomed this volume into The Modern Jewish Experience series. We appreciate their leadership. And we are especially grateful for the input provided by two anonymous reviewers at the press for offering suggestions that significantly helped improve our work.
Concluding a longitudinal study of families’ lives, we have experienced significant family life course changes of our own over the same period. We ourselves and our own children have reached important milestones: some of our children now have families of their own; a few have even developed an interest in our work. Alex Pomson would like to thank his wife, Tanya, especially, for her commitment to and encouragement of his work, and for many other things besides. Her support has been a remarkable constant over a great many years. She has maintained and sustained the family system that made this book possible. Randal Schnoor would like to thank his wife, Marsha, for her constant support in everything he does. Randal’s family has traversed through the life course with his two children entering Jewish day school at the early stages of our research and culminating in the recent very joyous and personalized Bat Mitzvah celebration of his daughter upon the submission of the manuscript for this book.
Beyond the dinner selections, it is fair to say that over a decade and a half, the authors’ relationship evolved as well, from a productive professional collaboration to a close friendship. Randal has even acquired an interested in British football! We look forward to future work together.
Last, but not least, we are immeasurably grateful to the sixteen Toronto families that stuck with us over the course of our research. Their willingness to open their homes and their lives to us is a gift we will treasure.
JEWISH FAMILY
ONE
“Growing into Our Skin as a Jewish Family”: Proposing a New Approach to the Study of Jewish Self-Formation
In the fall of 2003, Sandy Kleinman and Carla Lowe started Jewish day school for the first time: Sandy in kindergarten and Carla in first grade. The school they joined, the Paul Penna Downtown Jewish Day School (DJDS), had been founded five years earlier with just ten students and a staff of three. When the girls started school, there were seventy children in five grades.
The girls’ parents had spent some of their own school years in Jewish day schools, but they were deeply ambivalent about the choice they had made for their children. That wasn’t because of the quality of the education provided; both couples had visited a number of other schools before opting for DJDS and were pleasantly surprised by the school’s progressive approach to education, its warmth, and the inclusive Jewish environment. The parents were ambivalent because they had never thought of themselves as Jewish day school parents. Carla’s mother, Karen Lowe, had wanted to stay clear of what she called the “ghetto.” As she elaborated, “I didn’t want Carla’s world to be too narrow. I didn’t want her only to be friends with Jewish kids.” The ambivalence of Sandy’s father derived from a different source. Joe Kleinman feared that in choosing a Jewish day school he was selling out on his commitment to public education. “For me, I think the ideological and political aspects of the decision to send a child to private school weigh down on me more. . . . We really support the public system!”
In the last months of 2003, we first interviewed these two sets of parents, along with twenty-six other families who had children in kindergarten, first grade, and fifth grade at DJDS. We were starting a research project to explore the relationship between parents and their children’s schools. At the time, these two sets of parents and others in our sample talked with palpable emotion about the first few months since their children started school.
Joe Kleinman—a secular Jew, exploring Suki Gakai Buddhism and expressing doubts about God