The Jewish Family in Global Perspective

This book contains a collection of chapters about the Jewish family across different parts of the world, with contributions representing Africa (Ivory Coast and Ethiopia), Latin America, Australia, Europe (Germany), Russia, Israel, Canada, Indian families in Canada, and a comparative chapter of Ba'a lot Teshuva in the US and Argentina. Where much existing research and literature on the dynamic process of intermarriage and (Jewish) family life has taken primarily a historical approach, here the authors together present a broad, global, comparative approach. The book uses an open systems model to organize comparisons between Jewish families the world over. Each case study focuses on Jewish family life in a particular country or region of the world and, taken together, cover an extensive range of topics - including but not limited to: demographic and socio-economic description of the Jewish families; immigration patterns; family roles; family engagement in Jewish life; marriage formation; interfaith families; same-sex couples/parenting - surveying the extant research and/or reporting on new research about contemporary families, within the historical context. The book therefore presents a novel framework for understanding the variations in Jewish families to highlight what Jewish families the world over have in common (whether within the microsystem of the family or in the family's relationships with the environment), as well as using the open systems model to explain main types of difference between the various regions.

Auteur

Harriet Hartman is currently Professor Emeritus at Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ (USA) and part-time faculty at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the co-author of 2 previous books on gender among American Jews, Gender and American Jews: Patterns in Work, Education and Family (Harriet Hartman and Moshe Hartman, UPNE/Brandeis University Press, 2009) and Gender Equality and American Jews (Moshe Hartman and Harriet Hartman, SUNY Press, 1996), has published two other edited books, in addition to her doctoral dissertation which was on a related topic, Women's Roles in Israeli Society, which analyzed the effect of immigrating to Israel on family life and gender roles. As the Marshall Sklare Award honoree (Association of the Social Scientific Study of Jewry) in 2019, her address was on "How Gender and Family Still Matter for Contemporary Jewry," later published in the journal Contemporary Jewry, June 2020. She has published many otherarticles and book chapters related to Jewish families, both American and Israeli, including a chapter on the Jewish Family in the 2016 American Jewish Year Book, which has been widely quoted. She has also presented at many professional conferences on these topics. She received the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Senior Faculty Research Excellence Award in 2019 at Rowan University and an award for Excellence in Support & Advocacy of First-Generation Students in 2022 at Rowan University. She is the current editor-in-chief of Springer's journal Contemporary Jewry, and prior to that was the editor of the Springer book series Studies of Jews in Society. She serves as an advisory board member for the American Jewish Year Book and is on the editorial board of the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. She also serves on the executive board of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry, and previously served as president of the same organization.