Nostalgia, inspiration, ambivalence: Eastern Europe, immigration, and the construction of collective memory in contemporary American Haredi historiography

Viewing itself as the spiritual heir of Eastern European Orthodoxy, contemporary Haredi Orthodoxy in the United States is much invested in its representation of the transition of Jews and Judaism from Eastern Europe to the United States. The story of this transition is contemporary American Haredi Jewry’s “founding myth,” shaped into a narrative that aids the Haredi community to define itself with respect to the American culture in which it is perforce embedded. Contemporary English language Haredi historical writing offers a nostalgic image of Eastern European Jewry, as well as a vision of the destructive effects of immigration to America. It paints an inspirational portrait of a handful of immigrant rabbis who managed to recreate on American shores a (purportedly) ideal Judaism of Eastern Europe, despite American culture’s imputed destructive nature. At the same time, this narrative also conveys a sense that Americanization is not all bad, that it is even a necessary aspect of contemporary Haredi Judaism. This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at Ben Gurion University’s Hurst Seminar on Jewish Immigration in the 20^th Century, May 24, 2006. The research was partially funded by a grant from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and by the Moshe Davis Memorial Fellowship from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University. My thanks to Nava Finkelman, Eliezer and Marilyn Finkelman, Kimmy Caplan, Menachem Kellner, Marc Shapiro, Moshe Shoshan, Kenneth Stow, and two anonymous referees for their comments on previous drafts of this paper.     

Tradition versus tradition: Mizrahi pupils in National Religious schools in Israel, 1948–1990

Absorbing the immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa in Israel was one of the Israeli education system’s important tasks. This article deals with the way the National Religious schools treated these new immigrants and their descendants, known as Oriental Jews, Mizrahi Jews, or “Mizrahim.” The differences between Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews (those of European ancestry) were related to differences in religious traditions, academic level, and religious observance. Educators imposed the Ashkenazi tradition on Mizrahi pupils. This created social tension and alienated Mizrahi pupils from the system. On the other side, Ashkenazi pupils who had difficulties with the heterogeneous educational environment left the public system and enrolled in more religious schools, which had a much smaller percentage of Mizrahi pupils. This segregation was even more common at the high school level. Ashkenazim attended yeshiva high schools, while Mizrahi pupils went to regular high schools. Small changes were evident by the 1990s. By that time, more Mizrahi pupils were attending the elite yeshivot, and the public system adopted a more multicultural attitude and included the Mizrahi tradition as well.     

Farewell to multiculturalism? sharing values and identities in societies of immigration

For critics of multiculturalism, societies of immigration need to strengthen cohesion based on shared democratic values and national identities. This article suggests that democratic values are not a sufficient basis for political cohesion, because they are universal and cannot identify a particular polity toward which one ought to be loyal. Immigrants are always asked to accept a package deal that includes not only democratic values, but also the hegemony of established national cultures. Shared democratic values may also not be strictly necessary for political cohesion. They must be embedded in political institutions and ought to be respected by office holders, democratic politicians, and parties, but democratic states must tolerate that most citizens appear to hold illiberal beliefs including illiberal attitudes toward immigrants. Immigrants are then often asked to profess a commitment to values that citizens do not widely share. If political loyalty, cannot be exclusively based on democratic values, must societies of immigration then ask newcomers to assimilate into a shared national identity? The article argues that this requires, first, a self-transformation of these identities in response to immigration. Instead of regarding shared identities as overriding all other affiliations, democratic states should see them as overarching and overlapping. Different attitudes toward dual nationality illustrate the implication of this suggestion. The article concludes by proposing a catalyst model of multiculturalism as an alternative to the metaphors of the melting pot, the salad bowl, and the mosaic.     

The impact of early missionary enterprises on landscape and identity formation in Palestine, 1820–1914

Most studies relating to missionary activity in various parts of the globe have dealt with missions both as agents of penetration of the colonial powers and as conveyers of Christian concepts of cultural and religious supremacy expressed as ‘redemption of the heathen world’. This paper argues that it is informative to emphasize a new dimension in the study of missions—that of the relationship between belief systems and place. It considers the modes of operation and the physical and ideological impact of British, American, German, Russian and French missionary societies on Palestine and its indigenous population (Muslim and Christian Arabs, and Jews) in the last century of Ottoman rule (1800–1918). The contribution of Western missionary activity to the colonized societies in which they operated has been depicted by recent revisionist historians to have been marginal and largely negative. However, studies of the missionary enterprise in recent years, including the work presented here, suggest that these presumptions are not well grounded.     

Offence,offender, and victim characteristics in South Korean filicides, 1948–1962: A descriptive study

Filicide is defined as the killing of children from birth to age 18 by a natural or step-parent. The legal definition of filicide in Korea does not impose such age limits. Although families in contemporary Korea are nuclear in structure, they were multigenerational prior to the industrialisation that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century. While psychiatric and evolutionary theories have been predominantly used in the filicide literature, prior works have neglected to examine how culture shapes violence against one’s offspring. This paper explores the offence, offender, and victim characteristics in South Korean filicides (1948–1962) through a content analysis of a major newspaper (Chosun Ilbo). Results indicate that filicides occur in one-on-one contexts, primarily carried out by biological parents against their offspring while adoptive children appeared as victims due to the genealogical customs practiced in Korean society. Results indicate that more than 12% of filicide victims are adults. The implications of our findings are discussed.     

Generational differences in American students’ reasons for going to college, 1971–2014: The rise of extrinsic motives

ABSTRACT

We examined generational differences in reasons for attending college among a nationally representative sample of college students (N = 8 million) entering college between 1971–2014. We validated the items on reasons for attending college against an established measure of extrinsic and intrinsic values among college students in 2014 (n = 189). Millennials (in college 2000s–2010s) and Generation X (1980s–1990s) valued extrinsic reasons for going to college (“to make more money”) more, and anti-extrinsic reasons (“to gain a general education and appreciation of ideas”) less than Boomers when they were the same age in the 1960s–1970s. Extrinsic reasons for going to college were higher in years with more income inequality, college enrollment, and extrinsic values. These results mirror previous research finding generational increases in extrinsic values begun by GenX and continued by Millennials, suggesting that more recent generations are more likely to favor extrinsic values in their decision-making.     

Psychometric Properties of the Beck Depression Inventory–II in Low-Income,African American Suicide Attempters

The construct of perfectionistic cognitions is defined as a state-like construct resulting from a perfectionistic self-schema and activated by specific situational demands. Only a few studies have investigated whether and how perfectionistic cognitions change across different situations and whether they reflect stable between-person differences or also within-person variations over time. We conducted 2 studies to investigate the variability and stability of 3 dimensions of perfectionistic cognitions while situational demands changed (Study 1) and on a daily level during a highly demanding period of time (Study 2). The results of both studies revealed that stable between-person differences accounted for the largest proportion of variance in the dimensions of perfectionistic cognitions and that these differences were validly associated with between-person differences in affect. The frequency of perfectionistic cognitions increased during students' first semester at university, and these average within-person changes were different for the 3 dimensions of perfectionistic cognitions (Study 1). In addition, there were between-person differences in the within-person changes that were validly associated with concurrent changes in closely related constructs (unpleasant mood and tense arousal). Within-person variations in perfectionistic cognitions were also validly associated with variations in unpleasant mood and tense arousal from day to day (Study 2).     

Attachment Mediates the Childhood Maltreatment–Daily Hassles Link in Low-Income,Suicidal African American Women

This study examined if attachment patterns mediated the link between childhood maltreatment and total daily and interpersonally oriented life hassles in 135 low-income, inner-city, suicidal African American women. Participants completed self-report measures of childhood maltreatment, attachment styles, and daily life hassles dimensions. Bootstrapping analyses revealed that (a) negative views of self mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and social and cultural difficulties and social acceptability; and (b) negative views of other mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and total daily life hassles, social victimization, and social and cultural difficulties. These findings can inform interventions for suicidal African American women with a history of childhood maltreatment and subsequent maladaptive attachment styles.     

What Does It Mean to Be an American? Patriotism,Nationalism, and American Identity After 9/11

The period of heightened nationalism in the United States that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 provided unusual conditions for investigating issues surrounding the distinction between patriotism and nationalism and the relationship between national identification and pluralistic values. In a survey of national identity and social attitudes conducted in late September 2001, two different definitions of national unity were inserted in the introduction to the questionnaire in an attempt to prime activation of different conceptualizations of nationality. Results demonstrated that the priming conditions did have an effect on the pattern of interrelationships among measures of patriotism, nationalism, and tolerance for cultural diversity.     

The Demilitarization of Thai American Marriage Migration, 1980–2000

In this study, we look at marriage migration patterns among Thai Americans using US Census data drawn from 5% PUMS sets made available through the IPUMS project. Marriage is one of the most important means of migration to the USA and the overwhelming majority of Thai Americans are foreign-born women married to non-Thai men. Therefore, the sources and nature of Thai marriages to non-Thai men constitute essential elements of contemporary Thai migration and can provide valuable insight into how this key process of marriage migration can be established and maintained. Analyzing data from 1980, 1990, and 2000, our results are consistent with the argument that much of the marriage of Thai Americans to non-Thai is historically rooted in the military connection between the USA and Thailand. However, there is evidence that the marriages of Thai women to non-Thai men have been “demilitarized.” The military background of spouses has become much less compelling over the years as a predictor of the types of marriages resulting from marriage migration. Therefore, we argue that the American military presence in Southeast Asia established a pattern that continued to contribute to marriage migration even as that presence greatly diminished.     

An American Philosopher at Moscow State University, 1964–1965

For an American philosopher participating in a cultural exchangeprogram with the Soviet Union in 1964–65, a year spent in thePhilosophy Faculty of Moscow State University, studying and doingresearch in the history of Russian philosophy, provided manyinteresting insights – some of them surprising – into the theoryand practice of Marxism-Leninism and the nature of philosophicaleducation in Russia in the 1960s.     

Technical expertise and the construction of the rural Yishuv, 1882–1948

In fin de sièecle Europe, political economy viewed science as an indispensable tool of state power. Accordingly, in the early 1900s exponents of Zionist political economy saw the World Zionist Organization (WZO) as a government with the responsibility to direct the nation-building enterprise in Palestine. The principle beneficiaries of assistance from the WZO, youthful pioneer laborers from eastern Europe,shared the WZO's reverence for technical knowledge, but distrusted technicians, whom they associated with authoritarianism. In the eyes of the pioneer laborers, a technican should not lead, but rather make vital resources available to the workers to use as they saw fit. Key figures in the WZO's settlement institutions accepted this subordinate status for the technician and employed technical experts to guide,rather than direct, the labor movement in the construction of publicly-funded, co-operative agricultural settlements. From its beginning, however, the Zionist movement featured an alternative conception of technical expertise, drawn more from business economics than political economy, and tending to favor as its model the corporation rather than the state. One characteristic of this approach was the conviction that apolitical experts should direct settlement activity.For a brief period during the 1920s, champions of this approach wielded influence over the WZO's settlement institutions. But as a result of the tumultuous events of the years 1929–1939, the Zionist settlement enterprise fused politics and economics tightly together. From the mid-1930s on to the founding of the state of Israel, technical expertise was mobilized to serve the political and military leadership of the Yishuv. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Self-efficacy,parent–child relationships,and academic performance: a comparison of European American and Asian American college students

Parent–child relationships play an important role in successful academic outcomes. Previous research suggests that the association between parent–child relationships and offspring’s academic achievement may be mediated by offspring’s self-efficacy levels, although these relationships are not fully understood. Furthermore, the association between family support and academic outcomes is well-documented among European Americans, but not across cultures. Therefore, the present study examined how parent–child relationship quality relates to young adults’ academic achievement and self-efficacy among European Americans and Asian Americans. Participants were 258 undergraduate students (85 male, 173 female) who completed a survey. Overall, both parent–child relationships and self-efficacy were significantly associated with the offspring’s academic performance, and self-efficacy mediated the relationship between parent–child relationships and school outcomes. Ethnicity moderated these relationships: among European American students, quality of parent–child relationships was not associated with self-efficacy level whereas for Asian Americans, parent–child relationships were associated with self-efficacy. These findings suggest that European American college students’ self-efficacy levels are less dependent on parent–child relationship quality, but for Asian Americans college students it may be important for educators to facilitate communication and family support so students may continue to use family as a resource for self-efficacy levels.     

Religion in the American Congress: the case of the US House of Representatives, 1953–2003

Although there has been a surge of scholarship on the role of religion in American electoral politics, there has been much less analysis of its influence over the behaviour of public officials, such as national legislators. In this study, I review the literature on religion in the Congress, noting the limitations of that research, primarily its failure to measure adequately the religious affiliations, activities and beliefs of members. I then outline an alternative approach that promises a fuller assessment, showing how both ethnoreligious affiliation and theological perspectives have influenced legislative voting since the 1950s. Ethnocultural affiliation was the most powerful influence until the 1990s, but has recently been overlain by deepening ‘culture war’ divisions. The study concludes with a stringent multivariate analysis that controls for important variables typically included in legislative roll call analysis, showing that many religious measures survive those controls.     

Death education in American medical schools: Tolstoy's challenge to Kübler-Ross

No one has done more to shape contemporary physicians' and nurses' understandings of dying and death than Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. A comparison of her views to those of another era, as delineated by Leo Tolstoy, raises questions concerning Kübler-Ross' five-stage theory and points out inadequacies in current medical education and in the values that shape American culture. According to Kübler-Ross, the dying person angrily asks “Why me?” Tolstoy's Ivan Ilych is more concerned about the implications for cosmic justice than for self-perpetuation, and angrily asks “Why death?” One's sadness is born of depression (sadness over the nearness of one's death), the other's is born of despair (sadness over the apparent meaninglessness of life or of life as one has lived it). Kübler-Ross and Tolstoy also differ in their views of what can be done to “sweeten the pill,” whether “acceptance” is the best way to face death, and whether death ought to be viewed as a barrier to self-fulfillment or a means of self-transcendence.