Abstract
This response to Sylvia Barack Fishman’s 2014 Sklare Award lecture acknowledges Fishman’s important contribution to social scientific research about the American Jewish community and discusses four main issues. The first is the need to maintain a clear boundary between popular evaluations based on hopes and fears and professional evaluations based on disciplinary tools. The second is the need to base the assessment about decline or revival on measurable and comparable markers. The third concerns the end of a dichotomy between Jewish and non-Jewish in the American context. The fourth is the need to assess American Jewry in comparison with other Jewish communities globally.
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DellaPergola, S. On Behalf of the Epistemic Community: Contexts and Standards of American Jewishness. Cont Jewry 35, 129–135 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-015-9143-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-015-9143-4