American Jewish Year Book 2020: The Annual Record of the North American Jewish Communities Since 1899

808 Pages·50.735 MB·English

by  Arnold Dashefsky, Ira M. Sheskin

American Jewish Year Book 120
Arnold Dashefsky
Ira M. Sheskin   Editors
American
Jewish Year
Book 2020
American Jewish Year Book
Volume 120
Series Editors
Arnold Dashefsky, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
Ira M. Sheskin, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA
Produced under the Academic Auspices of:
The Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life,
University of Connecticut
and
The Jewish Demography Project at The Sue and Leonard Miller
Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies, University of Miami
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11193
Arnold Dashefsky • Ira M. Sheskin
Editors
American Jewish Year
Book 2020
The Annual Record of North American
Jewish Communities Since 1899
Editors
Arnold Dashefsky Ira M. Sheskin
Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Department of Geography and Sustainable
Jewish Life Development
University of Connecticut University of Miami
Storrs, Connecticut, USA Coral Gables, Florida, USA
With the editorial assistance of
Amy Lawton, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of Connecticut
Storrs, Connecticut, USA
ISSN 0065-8987 ISSN 2213-9583 (electronic)
American Jewish Year Book
ISBN 978-3-030-78705-9 ISBN 978-3-030-78706-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78706-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
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This volume is dedicated to the memory of
Ruth Bader Ginsburg,1 z”l, Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States.
She literally fulfilled the biblical
commandment:
ףודרת קדצ קדצ.
Justice, and only justice, shall you pursue.
(Deuteronomy 16:20)
1 See Chap. 14, Sect. 3, for the obituary of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020).
The Publication of This Volume Was Made
Possible by the Generous Support of
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Connecticut (Dean
Juli Wade).
Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of
Connecticut (Avinoam Patt, Director).
The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies (Haim
Shaked, Director) and its Jewish Demography Project (Ira M. Sheskin, Director);
and The George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies (Haim Shaked, Director).
College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami (Dean Leonidas Bachas
and Senior Associate Dean Kenneth Voss).
The Fain Family Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Miami
(Professor William Scott Green, former Senior Vice Provost and Dean of
Undergraduate Education).
Mandell “Bill” Berman (z”l) and the Mandell and Madeleine Berman
Foundation.
Marvin Horwitz Philanthropic Fund of the Jacobson Community Foundation
of South Palm Beach County.
We acknowledge the cooperation of:
Berman Jewish DataBank, a project of The Jewish Federations of North America
(Mandell Berman (z”l), Founding Chair; Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz,
Director).
The Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (Leonard Saxe,
President).
We acknowledge the contributions of the men and women who edited the
American Jewish Year Book from 1899 to 2008.
Cyrus Adler, Maurice Basseches, Herman Bernstein, Morris Fine, Herbert
Friedenwald, H. G. Friedman, Lawrence Grossman, Milton Himmelfarb, Joseph
Jacobs, Martha Jelenko, Julius B.  Maller, Samson D.  Oppenheim, Harry
Schneiderman, Ruth R. Seldin, David Singer, Jacob Sloan, Maurice Spector,
Henrietta Szold.
vii
Academic Advisory Committee
Calvin Goldscheider and Debra R. Kaufman, Honorary Chairs.
Sarah Bunin Benor, Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics,
Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles.
Carmel U. Chiswick, Research Professor of Economics at George Washington
University and Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Illinois at
Chicago.
Lynn Davidman, Affiliated Faculty, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton
University.
Sylvia Barack Fishman, Editor, HBI (Hadassah Brandeis Institute) Series on
Gender and Jewish Women; Emerita Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life and
Culture at Brandeis University. Recipient of the 2014 Marshall Sklare Award.
Calvin Goldscheider, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Ungerleider Professor
Emeritus of Judaic Studies, and Faculty Associate of the Population Studies and
Training Center at Brown University. Recipient of the 2001 Marshall Sklare Award.
Harriet Hartman, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Rowan
University and Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Jewry. Past President of the
Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ). Recipient of the 2019
Marshall Sklare Award.
Samuel Heilman, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Harold Proshansky Chair in
Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center, and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at
Queens College of the City University of New York. Recipient of the 2003 Marshall
Sklare Award. Former Editor of Contemporary Jewry.
Debra R. Kaufman, Professor Emerita of Sociology and Matthews Distinguished
University Professor at Northeastern University.
Shaul Kelner, Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt
University.
Barry A. Kosmin, Research Professor of Public Policy & Law and Director of
the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College,
Hartford, Connecticut. Former Director of the North American Jewish DataBank.
ix
x Academic Advisory Committee
Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, Senior Director of Research and Analysis and
Director of the Berman Jewish DataBank at The Jewish Federations of North
America.
Deborah Dash Moore, Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and for-
mer Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
Recipient of the 2006 Marshall Sklare Award.
Pamela S. Nadell, Professor and Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s & Gender
History, American University; Past President, Association for Jewish Studies;
America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today
(W.W. Norton, 2019).
Bruce A. Phillips, Professor of Sociology and Jewish Communal Service at
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. Recipient of
the 2016 Marshall Sklare Award.
Riv-Ellen Prell, Professor Emerita of American Studies and past Director of the
Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota. Past Chair of the Academic
Council of the American Jewish Historical Society. Recipient of the 2011 Marshall
Sklare Award.
Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun
Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and Chief Historian of
the National Museum of American Jewish History. Recipient of the 2002 Marshall
Sklare Award. Past President of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS).
Leonard Saxe, Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies, Director
of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, and Director of the Steinhardt
Social Research Institute at Brandeis University. Recipient of the 2012 Marshall
Sklare Award. President of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of
Jewry (ASSJ).
Morton Weinfeld, Professor of Sociology and Chair in Canadian Ethnic Studies
at McGill University. Recipient of the 2013 Marshall Sklare Award.
Preface
The year 2020 will undoubtedly define a period of major change in American soci-
ety, economically, politically, socially, and culturally. Likewise, this year will
demarcate an inflection point that will lead to a new era in the evolution of the
American Jewish experience. These changes are occasioned by the emergence of a
number of plagues, three of which emerged dramatically and visually in the first
half of 2020 in the USA:
1. The COVID-19 pandemic associated with millions of illnesses and hundreds of
thousands of deaths in the USA alone;
2. the economic depression, which further heightened an awareness of the chasm of
inequality;
3. the enduring institutional racism, graphically evident in televised instances of
police brutality. (See the postscript to the preface from the Executive Committee
of the Association for Jewish Studies [AJS], which we editors endorse).
Of course, we could increase the list of plagues that echo a biblical theme in the
form of hurricanes, floods, and wildfires!
Certainly, Jews are familiar with plagues from the annual recitation of the
Haggadah on Passover. As Charlotte Fonrobert (2020), director of the Taube Center
for Jewish Studies at Stanford University, wrote:
Jewish literature from the earliest times reflects intimate knowledge of conditions of epi-
demics. The Talmud, confronting the phenomenon, records a tradition that recommends: “If
there is a plague in the city, gather your feet,” that is, don’t move and stay home. For biblical
support, the Talmud draws on a verse that is part of the…Passover Haggadah: “as it is said
(in Exodus 12:22): and none of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning
(Exodus 12:22).”
Just as plagues in the biblical narrative herald a dramatic economic, political,
social, and cultural upheaval in the form of the Exodus of the ancient Jews from
Egypt, we may anticipate vast changes in these same spheres in North American
society and its Jewish communities.
Already, we have seen Internet postings with the following headlines:
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