“Jewish Adjustment” and the Professionalization of Jewish Social Work

• In Event: Graduate Student Lightning Session - An Interdisciplinary Panel

Abstract

Despite continual focus on American Jewish communal institutions, historians have written little about labor, professional expertise, and authority within twentieth-century Jewish organizational life. This presentation addresses a growing literature examining how Jewish social workers built a professional identity around their expertise in Americanizing Jewish clients. It asks why “Jewish adjustment”—the practice of fostering Jewish identity among their clients, assuring Jewish preservation without compromising American democratic identity—became the favored tool of Jewish social workers. I argue that an examination of the curriculum of the Graduate School for Jewish Social Work reveals how “Jewish adjustment” afforded these workers autonomy within the sphere of Jewish communal organization, because it differentiated Jewish from non-sectarian social work and distinguished social work from the work conducted by rabbis. I conclude that this distinct expertise enabled social workers to defend their authority within the crowded field of social welfare. Issues raised in discussion could include the connections between Jewish and non-sectarian communal life and the contentious definition of “Jewishness.”

author

• Avigail S Oren, Carnegie Mellon University