On Jewish Identity Of American Jews

Jewish identity has been regarded as the base of Jewish continuity and survival. And for the whole Jewish society, Jewish family tradition, as well as the Jewish community tradition, is the most important and basic part for the Jewish identity and Jewishness. This paper presents an in–depth sociological and historical reflection on American Jewish family and community, to explore the status of Jewish identity in American Jewish society nowadays.This paper is divided into three parts:The first part begins with a review of scholarly study on Jewish identity and a brief introduction of the necessity of this topic. The Jewish identity has been studied from two different scholarly aspects. One is social demographic study; Another is to study the content ,the influencing factors and the development of Jewish identity.The second part deals with the transformation of the American Jewish family's maintenance on Jewish identity within American Jewish society. Traditional Hebrew family's ideals on marriage and fertility and its impact on maintaining Jewish ethnic identity reinforced uniformity and continuity of Jewish identity.But with the transformation of ideals on family and marriage, and rapid increase of interfaith marriages, maintenance of the Jewish identity has now been facing great challenge. Jewish Feminism's ideas of family and marriage, and the changing role of mother in Jewish family, have challenged the maintenance of Jewish identity within American Jewish family.The third part deals with American Jewish community and its impacts on Jewish identity. Jewish community is the important source for Jewish identity. Perfect community system can provide necessary and powerful support for Jewish culture and tradition to be kept and handed down. And powerful voluntarism, pluralism and fluidity in American society has greatly decreased the power of control and influence of Jewish community, and then weakened Jewish community's influence on Jewish identity.