Urbanism, Urban Jews and Jewish identity: part 2, Qualitative Research and Social History

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Co-sponsored by the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry and the Berman Jewish DataBank

The session continues the project of opening up a scholarly focus on urbanism, urban Jews and Jewish identity. Literature in the sociology of North American Jews has developed in the long shadow of Sklare’s 1972 book on Jewish Identity on the Suburban Frontier. However, for at least several decades interesting things have been happening in cities, including interesting Jewish things. In some places, gentrified neighborhoods have expanded and a growing population lives and works in downtown, midtown and urbanized inner suburbs. In other places, declining city neighborhoods have become sites of urban experimentation. These changes may be related to the argument that we are at the beginning of the restructuring of North American social geography into more compact living spaces and more environmentally sensitive living due to a combination of personal values, public policy choices and market conditions.

The transformation of urban life in North America raises questions for Jewish self-understandings. In prosperous, growing cities and in various ways in declining cities, it is possible to find older Jewish institutions that continue to survive and new ones that have been created. How are cities changing? What do we know about Jewish demographic distribution in various types of local geographies: downtowns, midtowns, inner suburbs, newer suburbs, exurbs? What do we know or would like to know about the life-styles of Jews in urban places? What do we know or would like to know about the revival of Jewish institutions and the creation of new ones in urban places? What do we know our would like to know about how local federations see the impact of changing urban neighborhoods? Papers in this section explore the intersection of changing urban cores of cities, Jewish institutional developments and Jewish identity.

A related paper, “Changing Urban Geography and North American Jewish Life”, presented at the Eastern Sociology Society meetings in December 2013 is available from Stuart Schoenfeld (schoenfe@yorku.ca) to those interested in the topic.

This session is paired with "Urbanism, Urban Jews and Jewish identity: part 1 - Quantitative Studies"

Sub Unit

• Social Science

Chair

• Harriet Hartman, Rowan University

Individual Presentations

• The Jews and the city of Chicago: a changing but continuing presence - Peter Friedman, Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago

• Jewish Institutional Revival in Downtown Toronto: What, How and Why - Randal F. Schnoor, York University

• The Urban and Suburban Landscape of Jewish Identity in Baltimore - Stuart Schoenfeld, Glendon College, York University