The Jewish Journal of Sociology

THE JEWISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY VOLUME VIII NO. 2 DECEMBER 1966 CONTENTS Editorial 141 * Recent Progress in Demographic Research on the Jews R. Bachi 142 * Reaction to Zionism and to the State of Israel in the American Jewish Community Abraham J. Karp io * New Approaches to the Study of the American Jew Fred Massarik 17 * Research on the Jewish Catastrophe Jacob Robinson 192 * A Note on Social Change among Iraqi Jews, 1917-1951 Hajyim J. Cohen 204 (Papers from the Fourth World Congress of Jewish Studies) A Note on the Size of the Jewish Communities in the South of Morocco Joseph R. Rosenbloom 209 The Demography of Australian Jewry Walter M. Lippmann 213 Leisure Activities of Jewish Teenagers in London Adrian Ziderman 240 Chronicle 265 Shorter Notices 270 Correspondence 89 Notes on Contributors 292 Books Received 293 PUBLISHED TWICE YEARLY on behalf of the World Jewish Congress by William Heinemann Ltd Annual Subscription fi.8. (U.S. $4) post free Single copies .r5s ($2.25) Applications for subscription should be addressed to the Managing Editor, The Jewish Journal of Sociology, 5.5 New Cavendish Street, London Wi EDITOR Morris Ginsberg MANAGING EDITOR Maurice Freedman ASSISTANT EDITOR Judith Freedman ADVISORY BOARD R. Bachi (Israel) 0. Klineherg (USA) André Chouraqui (France & Israel) Eugene Minkowski (France) S. N. Eisenstadt (Israel) Louis Rosenberg (Canada) Nathan Glazer (USA) H. L. Shapiro (USA) J. Katz (Israel) A. Steinberg (Britain) A. Tirtakower (Israel) © THE WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS 1966 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD FROME AND LONDON.. EDITORIAL N the last issue of the Journal (Vol. VIII, no. i, June 1966) we published five papers which were read at two meetings devoted to ewish demographic research held at the Fourth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 25 July to i August 196, in the Section 'Contemporary Jewry'. This Section was chaired by Professor Moshe Davis, head of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem; Mr. Paul Glikson served as Section Secretary. We now publish a further five papers (by R. Baehi, A. Karp, F. Massarik, J. Robinson, and H. Cohen). We are grateful to the Institute of Contemporary Jewry for making them available to us for publication. We hope to print a further selection of papers read at the Congress in later issues of the Journal. 141 RECENT PROGRESS IN DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH ON THE JEWS R. Bachi I. INTRODUCTION T~HEews problems connected with demographic research on the throughout the world have been discussed at many cholars' conferences during the past twenty years, and path- cularly in the course of the last five years.' The opinion commonly voiced until a short time ago was that the state of this research was going from bad to worse because of increasing deficiencies in the statistical sources on Jewish population. A review of recent developments in various countries, given by the present author at the Fourth World Con- gress ofJewish Studies held in Jerusalem in 1965, allows us to view the situation a little less pessimistically: while in the past one could only complain of the lack of demographic data, it seems that some signs of improvement, however small, are beginning to appear today, after many years of steady deterioration. It is true that the situation today remains basically as it was a few years ago. In an era in which the production and scientific analysis of general demographic data and interdisciplinary population studies are developing at a stupendous speed, and improving in scope, quality, and depth, nothing similar is happening in the field ofJewish demography, despite the great scientific, political, and practical importance of this branch of study. On the contrary, official documentation on the demography of the Jews through censuses, vital statistics, and migration statistics is very limited in geographical coverage, fragmentary in nature, and obtained by applying different definitions of 'Jew'. Under these circumstances, the future for our field of investigation would look very grim indeed if co-ordinated efforts were not being made today in various countries to induce changes in the collection, pooling, and analysis of Jewish demographic statistics. Although these efforts are merely at their beginning, still weak and not always success- ful, it seems justified to discuss them briefly here. The main topics which I intend to discuss are the following: 142 DEMOGRAPHJC RESEARCH the collection of statistics, by Jewish or general research bodies, in countries where there are no official statistics on the Jews; the development of statistics in Israel is an instrument for research on the Diaspora; the improvement of other official statistics on the Jews; the pooling of world-wide statistical documentation on Jewish demography; the development of contacts and co-operation between people interested in this field. II. COLLECTION OF DATA IN THE ABSENCE OF OFFICIAL STATISTICS ON THE JEWS The problem of ad hoc organization of statistics on the Jews in countries where official statistics on the Jews are lacking, is of basic importance, since this is the situation in the countries where some 62 per cent of Diaspora Jews live today. In order to achieve systematic and co- ordinated progress in - these countries, it seems necessary on the one hand to aim at the clear vision of a long-term programme, and on the other, to try to implement it step by step. The long-term programme should, in my opinion, include two main aims: basic surveys should be made from time to time in each country in order to furnish estimates of the size of Jewish population, its geographical distribution, and its structure according to the main demographic, social, and economic characteristics and indicators of Jewish identity; estimates of the number of Jewish and mixed marriages, births, deaths, and Jewish internal and external migrations should be cur- rently obtained, which might answer, inter alia, the basic question whether the Jewish population is increasing or decreasing. For any other population to be studied demographically, such a programme Could be considered more or less reasonable and even modest, but if we take into account the financial and organizational difficulties existing everywhere in the Jewish field and the political problems of some Jewish communities, we cannot confidently hope that such a programme can be implemented everywhere, at once, and by using the same methods of research. The contrary is probably true: different methods are to be adapted to the reality of different countries, without our losing sight of the necessity to obtain comparable statistics from the various parts of theJewish world; the work should be conducted country by country, step by step, by arousing local initiative in the collection of Jewish demographic statistics. In order to do so, the fundamental step to be taken is to make Jewish '43 R. BACHI institutions in each country aware of the fact that good statistical data on the Jews are generally lacking, and that they are needed both for local purposes and in order to attain a co-ordinated world-wide panor- ama of Jewish demography. It should be stressed that a practical effort should be made in order to collect these data, that such collection is a very complicated matter, not to be handled in an amateurish way, and that it requires much planning, trained personnel, and a scientific outlook. From this point of view, progress seems to have taken place in the past few 'ears. Contacts with a large number of Jewish bodies, sys- tematically pursued by the Institute of ContemporaryJewry, show that awareness of the need to work in this field is beginning to spread from country to country. Practical steps are now being taken in the U.S.A., Italy, Argentine, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. (a) In the U.S.A., which today has the largestJewish community in the world, a very important advance has been the preparation of a plan for a nation-wide sample of the Jewish population, recently undertaken by the Council ofJewish Federations and Welfare Funds.2 The Council is now making systematic efforts to search for a way to implement this gigantic plan; the response of the community to the project seems favourable. Despite this, it would be still premature today to see in the plan more than a project for the future. However, the drafting of such a plan seems to be in itself a very important step forward. I should like, therefore, to stress a few aspects of this project. The adoption in principle of the idea of taking a nation-wide sample of the American Jewish population represents a basic change in the line followed until recently by American Jewry, according to which the main stress was put on local community surveys. Local studies will, no doubt, be continued, and the Council is working both on their in- tegration into the national plan and on the preparation of a manual of community surveys, with a view to co-ordinating them and to stan- dardizing definitions, nomenclature, and methods. However, local community surveys, for all their great practical and scientific importance, cannot provide a nation-wide coverage of American Jewry and without this there can be no possibility of attaining a global view of the demography of world Jewry. This final objective can be reached only by organizing a national sample, in which all the large communities of the U.S.A. are included, together with a proper representation of smaller communities. The awareness of a need for nation-wide statistical information on the Jewish population may lessen the opposition (voiced in the past by certain Jewish bodies) to questions on religion being included in population censuses.

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