The American Orthodox Jewish Housewife: A Generational Study in Ethnic Survival

Publication Date: January 1980

Publisher: Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry

Author(s): Blanche Frank

Research Area: Culture and religion

Keywords: American Jews; Demography; Family

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

In Contemporary Jewry 5/2, 55-65.This study has explored the cultural dynamism within American Jewish Orthodoxy via the experiences of three generations of Orthodox house-wives. Examining the force of Americanization on its early period and the revitalization of traditional Judaic commitment in its more recent period, the study concluded that the second generation, in both organizational acumen and effectiveness of third-generation socialization, was pivotal to this unfolding. The Americanization of the second generation did not operate as a deterrent, but as a comfortable context into which the third-generation has maintained a vital, traditional Judaic commitment.