JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

of their parents or community. Others see it as a response to
the spiritual emptiness found in so many contemporary Jewish
families and synagogues. The ḥavurah and programs that
educate the Jewish family, both of which initially gained wider
popularity in the early 1970s, reflect the efforts of the Jewish
community to combat these problems.
The community ḥavurah is modeled after the student
organized Havurah that “originated in the late 1960s [in New
York and Boston] with young Jews who were unhappy with
the Conservative and Reform congregations in which they
had been raised. Influenced by the counterculture, they were
dissatisfied with contemporary Jewish institutions, both religious
and communal, which they regarded as “sterile, impersonal,
hierarchical, and divorced from Jewish tradition”
(Weissler, p. 200). Both the independent ḥavurah, which is
unaffiliated with any community institution, and the synagogue
or community center ḥavurah, whose participants are
generally affiliated with these institutions, typically consists
of a small number (10–20) of singles, couples, or sometimes
both. The typical ḥavurah holds Sabbath and holiday services,
celebrates life-cycle events, organizes study groups, and undertakes
one or more social action causes. The particular activities
of each ḥavurah reflect the interests of its membership. It
is an attempt to establish community and to retain a personal
dimension to institutional Jewish life.
The small and intimate setting of the ḥavurah compares
favorably to the vast and formal surroundings of many American
synagogues to those seeking fellowship and spirituality
in their worship. The ḥavurah experience is an “opportunity
to have a continuing intimate association – to feel a sense of
belonging, to be linked with people they know personally and
who care about them, and to have people with whom to share
happiness and sorrow – bar mitzvahs, Passover seders, sickness,
death, etc.” (Reisman, p. 207). The ḥavurah experience
is used by many singles, couples, and families, as a substitute
for the natural family and community network that was once
much more prevalent within American Jewish life.
Economic considerations also play a role in Jewish affiliation.
The higher one’s economic status, the more likely
one is to affiliate with the Jewish community and the less
likely one is to intermarry. Rates of intermarriage are consistently
higher among those of lesser socioeconomic achievement
as measured by education, occupation and income, especially
for those under 45. In 1990 one in two of those Jews
with an income of more than $100,000 were Jewishly affiliated;
the rate of affiliation was one in three for those earning
less than $60,000. Lower income Jews also feel disaffiliated
from Jewish life.
Jewish education programs for families have existed in
the United States for decades, but it is only since the 1970s
that this approach has been developed as a sub-specialty
(Schiff, p. 262). Jewish family education is based on the premise
that, although “the attitudes and behavior patterns [of
most American Jewish families presently]…resemble those
of the non-Jewish, white middle-class (Rosenman, p. 153),” a
family, american jewish
percentage of these families are willing, or can be induced, to
be tutored in basic Jewish knowledge, skills and values and
helped to integrate these into their lives.” Programs in Jewish
family education exist at the local level where they are sponsored
by community centers, synagogues, day schools, [and]
family service agencies. At the national level, the William
Petschek National Jewish Family Center established in 1981
by the American Jewish Committee, the Whizin Institute for
Jewish Family Life at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles,
Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, Yeshiva University
in New York, and other universities, are among those institutions
that offer research opportunities, professional and lay
seminars, personnel training, and produce and disseminate
educational materials. Although the proliferation of these institutions
reflects the growing importance of this field in the
eyes of community educators and leaders, it is also indicative
of the sense of urgency which surrounds the present condition
of the American Jewish family.
Two important studies in the 1970s (Himmelfarb, 1974
and Bock, 1976) found that the most salient influence on adult
Jewish identification was the family. Yet, most synagogues,
schools and community centers focused their programming
exclusively on children, leaving the family to its own devices.
Wolfson (1983) called the family’s reliance on the institution
to provide opportunities for Jewish celebration a “dependency
cycle.” He called on synagogues and schools to empower families
with the skills and resources to create a home filled with
Jewish celebration, content and values. In 1989, Wolfson gathered
a group of pioneering Jewish family educators to establish
the Whizin Institute for Jewish Family Life to further the field
of practice in Jewish family education. Hundreds of Jewish
professionals and laity attended Whizin seminars to learn the
latest strategies for “reaching and teaching” the Jewish family.
By the end of the century, virtually every synagogue, school
and JCC had a full range of Jewish family education programming
(Wolfson and Bank, 1998).
End of the 20th Century
At the end of the 20th century, the American Jewish family
more strongly resembled its non-Jewish neighbor than its
own forebear of a hundred years ago. Goldstein and other
“survivalists” insist that Jewish families continue to maintain
sufficient distinctive collectivist socio-economic and sociocultural
characteristics to guarantee continuity, at least for the
foreseeable future. Cohen (1994) argues that current intermarriage
and birth rates will result in a smaller, but qualitatively
stronger American Jewish community “[O]n the family level,
rather than the group level, for the vast majority of families,
intermarriage eventually severs the link of future generations
with the Jewish people.” While Cohen remains optimistic
about the overall long range survival of the American Jewish
community, he foresees the disappearance of many presently
existing Jewish family lines.
The only variance to the observations above lies within
the Orthodox sector. Orthodox families, who constitute some
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 705