'Good For The Jews:' Response to the Sklare Lecture

Autor: Michelle Shain
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: Contemporary Jewry. 34:27-30
ISSN: 1876-5165
0147-1694
DOI: 10.1007/s12397-014-9114-1
Popis: Amidst Marshall Sklare’s papers in the Brandeis University Archives & Special Collections Department is a box containing reel-to-reel tape recordings of a 1979 ‘‘Planning Conference for a Center for Modern Jewish Studies.’’ One of the tapes contains Sklare’s extemporaneous ‘‘Remarks on the Preparation of a Sociology of American Jewry.’’ In these remarks, Sklare said that one of the Cohen Center’s first tasks should be to write a definitive, scholarly sociology of American Jewry, a work of ‘‘synthesis and interpretation.’’ This was important to Sklare because he saw his fellow social scientists in the field of contemporary Jewry publishing basic research, while leaving the tasks of synthesis and interpretation to popular writers of whom Sklare had a particularly low opinion (e.g., Kahn 1968; Yaffe 1968). Sklare listed five challenges facing the person who would tackle this scholarly sociology. One of them he called the question of ‘‘self-censorship.’’ He said that there were some ‘‘sensitive’’ areas of research that were better left unexplored: the full range of American Jewish activities in support of Israel, Jewish involvement with American Communism, American Jewish youth and the campus revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and American Jewish action in support of the right of emigration of Soviet Jews. Essentially, Sklare argued that scholars of American Jewry should think carefully about what was Good For The Jews before embarking on a program of research. Sklare’s remarks raise the same questions of scholarly motivations and biases that are at the heart of Leonard Saxe’s Sklare Award Lecture. Of course, most scholars who dedicate themselves to the study of contemporary Jewry are motivated by a deep, abiding commitment to the survival and wellbeing of Jews and Judaism. The key question is how to control the biases that arise from these commitments. Postmodern thinkers call on researchers to engage in ‘‘reflexivity,’’ questioning how their own commitments and life experiences shape their research (Lincoln and
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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