Demography

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Della Pergola
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Population ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
The Status ◽  
Jewish Demography ◽  
Scientific Rationale ◽  
Jewish Populations

The scientific study of the Jewish population, also known as demography of the Jews or Jewish demography, does not actually claim the status of a distinct discipline. It is an area of specialization focusing on the changing size and composition of Jewish populations and on the determinants and consequences of such changes. This article outlines some of the main concepts, interpretative frameworks, and methodological issues in the field, followed by a short outline of substantive patterns and applied uses of available knowledge. The main scientific rationale for the study of Jewish populations rests with the growing interest in understanding the demography of religious, ethnic, and cultural groups and minorities. Demographic changes provide an important and occasionally indispensable background for an appraisal of Jewish history and cultural experience. Hence, the study of Jewish demography is organically tied to the development of Jewish studies.

The Exceptions to the Rule

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-12
Author(s):  
Cynthia Seton-Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Population ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Anti Jewish

Abstract History has largely ignored Anglo-Jewish history in the years between the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and their readmittance in 1656 by Cromwell. This article revisits that period and disputes the misconception that the Period of Expulsion left England without any Jews for nearly 400 years. Although the small Jewish population ebbed and flowed with the rising and waning tides of English anti-Jewish hostilities, it nevertheless persevered. This article highlights some of the more well-known and thus well-documented of these Jews, the majority of whom were Crypto-Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin.

Spinoza’s Jewish Modernities

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
Great Culture

This introductory chapter considers why the hallmark of modern Jewish identity is its resistance to—and, at the same time, obsession with—definition. Like battles over national identity in the modern state, clashes over the nature and limits of Jewishness have frequently taken the shape of controversies over the status—and stature—of marginal Jews past and present. The Jewish rehabilitation of historical heretics and apostates with a vexed relationship to Judaism has become so much a part of contemporary discourse that it is difficult to imagine secular Jewish culture without it. Yet this tendency has a beginning as well as a template in modern Jewish history, which the chapter introduces in the figure of Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677)—“the first great culture-hero of modern secular Jews,” and still the most oft-mentioned candidate for the title of first modern secular Jew.

Jewish Cultural History in Early Modern Europe

2008 ◽  
pp. 95-111
Author(s):  
David B. Ruderman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Jonathan Israel ◽  
Boundary Lines

This chapter examines the innovative call of Jonathan Israel to recognize an 'early modern age' in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European Jewish history. It provides a useful survey of the recent flurry of historical research and identifies five markers of a newly emerging transnational European Jewish cultural experience. It also talks about the surge in the development of powerful Jewish communal structures coupled with the growing laicization of communal authority. The chapter investigates a crisis of religious authority that was accompanied by the related threats of heresy and enthusiasm and epitomized in the contemporaneous phenomena of Spinozism and Shabateanism. It describes social and religious identities, in which Conversos and their descendants, Jewish converts to Christianity, Christian Hebraists, and Shabatean syncretists helped to blur previously sharper boundary lines between Jews and their Christian neighbours.

Group Size, Social Class, Religion, and Politics

2017 ◽  
pp. 31-51
Author(s):  
Chaim I. Waxman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
York City ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Core ◽  
Jewish Demography

This chapter focuses on determining the size of the Orthodox Jewish population in the United States and difficulties related to the problem of estimating the Jewish population as a whole. It analyses the acceptance of the notion of the 'core Jewish population' among social scientists and Jewish communal professionals. It also looks at major debates relating to significantly different estimates of population size among those specializing in Jewish demography. The chapter addresses questions as to whether belonging to an Orthodox synagogue makes one Orthodox, or whether being Orthodox entails matters of faith and behaviour. It cites the UJA-Federation of New York, which estimated the total Orthodox population in New York City at 493,000 in 2013.

Comparing Older Persons’ Human Rights: Exploratory Study of the International Older Persons’ Human Rights Index (IOPHRI)

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-634
Author(s):  
Israel Doron ◽  
Carole Cox ◽  
Benny Spanier
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Older Persons ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Constitutional Protection ◽  
The Status ◽  
Design And Methods ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Actual Relationship

Abstract Background and Objectives Over the last 2 decades, several international indices have been developed to describe the status of older persons. None, however, have examined their human rights. The International Older Persons’ Human Rights Index (IOPHRI) fills in this gap by analyzing the formal legislative foundation of human rights for older people. The objective of this exploratory study is to examine the IOPHRI while comparing the legislation in 6 countries. Research Design and Methods A comparative international exploratory study comparing the human rights legislation of 6 countries: United States, Chile, Ireland, South Africa, India, and Australia in 5 different human rights domains: constitutional, protection, familial and informal support, planning, and empowerment. Results The findings suggest that the actual relationship between formal human rights of older persons and the real world is complex: for example, while the IOPHRI index places South Africa in first place, it is far behind compared with all other participants in the Global AgeWatch Index (which measures objective elements such as life expectancy at 60, or poverty rates in old age). Discussion and Implications Measuring and indexing human rights of older persons reveal significant methodological issues. Beyond these methodological challenges, comparing the ranking of the IOPHRI to nonlegalistic indices raises significant questions about the relationship between formal human rights and the actual living experiences of older persons.

From Toleration to Verbesserung: German and English Debates on the Jews in the Eighteenth Century

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Liberles
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Moses Mendelssohn ◽  
General Utility ◽  
The Status ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
Council Of State

In 1780 Christian Dohm, a ranking Prussian civil servant, collaborated with the Berlin Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn on a memorandum submitted on behalf of the Jews of Alsace to the French Council of State. A year later Dohm issued his Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, a treatise on the civil improvement of the Jews, which contained a comprehensive program for increasing the general utility of the Jewish population. By that time, the European debate over the Jews was already long in progress. The seventeenth century had dealt with the question of readmission and the first half of the eighteenth century less successfully with naturalization. Both debates had centered in England, although the issues involved were pertinent to Holland, France, and to some extent Italy as well. Both debates had also produced a considerable number of polemics. Most recently, a 1753 bill sponsored by the Pelham government sought to facilitate the process of naturalization for Jewish immigrants. The so-called Jew Bill precipitated a wide-ranging public debate on the status of the Jews in England.

scholarly journals Methodological issues and prospects of semiotics of humour

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Dmitrij Gluscevskij
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Unique Object ◽  
The Status ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Epistemological Views

This article aims at proposing a way to identify humour by means of Greimassian semiotics and to single humour out as a unique object of semiotic analysis. Firstly, the article discusses the fundamental epistemological premises of semiotic text analysis through the analysis of texts by Greimas which were meant to further and legitimize his project of semiotics. Also, the already existing attempts at providing a semiotic definition of humour are critically evaluated while relating their problematic aspects with the implicitly defined field of semiotic interest. Finally, it is demonstrated that a productive semiotic description of a comic text is possible when the status quo epistemological views are revised and the traditional field of semiotic analyses is expanded accordingly.

scholarly journals Introduction to the Theme: The Jerusalem Temple in History, Memory, and Ritual

AJS Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-269
Author(s):  
Hayim Lapin ◽  
Marjorie Lehman
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Methodological Approaches

The following group of essays emerged out of a seminar held at the Association for Jewish Studies conference in 2015. As section heads of Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity and Rabbinic Literature and Culture, tasked to think about how to address gaps in our fields, we recognized that despite a large amount of scholarship available on the Jerusalem Temple and its priesthood, there was a dearth of cross-disciplinary scholarly exchange, especially between ancient Jewish historians and those of us who engage in literary analysis of rabbinic sources. As a result, our divisions joined together to create “The Jerusalem Temple in History, Memory, and Ritual,” taking advantage of the “seminar” format at the conference. Twelve scholars, each working with different source material and employing different methodological approaches, participated.

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