Article

The View Along the Way: A Longitudinal Study of Jewish Lives

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract

In 2011 we started following a cohort of 1,000 Jewish 11-year-olds as they entered Jewish and non-Jewish secondary schools in Britain. We were interested in finding out about their Jewish behaviors, attitudes and identity, milestones, and significant events. What follows in this article is an analysis of six family stories, which show how we have been charting change over time in three ways—through themes that develop within a single family over time, themes that develop across the sample of six families over time, and themes that resonate with all six families at one moment in time.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

... Longitudinal research that highlights the evolving beliefs and ideas of contemporary Jews has long recognized that the experiences of young Jews is essential for developing a larger understanding of contemporary Jewish life. For example, the groundbreaking work of Ariela Keysar and Barry Kosmin (Keysar 2022a; Kosmin 2000) has tracked young Jews from adolescence through adulthood, demonstrating how Jews develop attitudes and beliefs about both Israel and American Jewish life as they age (Keysar andKosmin 1999, 2020 (Miller and Pomson 2021) began with Jews, age 11, who were enrolled in Jewish secondary schools. Most other longitudinal studies of Jewish populations start even later, when the participants were in high school (e.g., Pomson 2018) or college (e.g., Saxe et al. 2017;Wright et al. 2020). ...
Article
Full-text available
Drawing upon a longitudinal study tracking a group of Jewish children from the start of elementary school (ages 5–6) through the end of middle school (ages 13–14), this article examines how young Jews develop an initial understanding of Israeli politics. It outlines four distinct stages in the development of political understanding. First, in early elementary school, children develop an awareness of civic issues at a stage that might be understood as pre-political. Second, in the upper elementary grades, children develop new knowledge of political issues and political leaders in the USA, but their understanding of the parallels in Israel often lags behind their developmental capacities for understanding political systems. Next, in the transition from late childhood to early adolescence, this gap in children’s understanding begins to narrow as tweens and young teens begin to make sense of politics in Israel and politics about Israel in the USA. Fourth, as children near the end of middle school, many begin to understand the ways that their own personal decisions can also be political, especially as they attempt to navigate how Israel functions in online, often hostile discourse.
Chapter
Drawing on concepts from prior research that identify the various dimensions of family systems in shaping the emerging Jewish lives of young people, this chapter explores specific dimensions of family systems that contribute to and express how the young people in our study think of themselves as Jews. The chapter underlines the role of family ritual in forming and performing who people are as Jews, and how such rituals underpin the tempo of Jewish life in the UK. Unlike the other chapters in this volume which combine both quantitative and qualitative data, this chapter focuses on the multiple interviews conducted with six families purposefully selected to include a wide range of the characteristics of those who participated in the study. The chapter probes the themes that surface when these families’ stories are examined side by side. Because our data encompass a long period when study participants were being raised at home and also the first years when they were living away from home, at university, we explore the ways in which the family’s role in young people’s lives evolves when they are much less frequently present in their parents’ houses.
Chapter
The Covid-19 pandemic touched every aspect of our cohort’s lives. While our work has been oriented by an interest in the long-term processes these young people experience, at almost every phase of our work we found ourselves needing to give attention to how our cohort was living through contemporary events of significance (the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe, conflicts in Israel, political turmoil in the UK). No instance was more dramatic than the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of our cohort members were already at university by this point in their lives. Our data, as reported in this chapter, provide a real time view of what our cohort experienced and of how they perceived Covid-19 would shape their futures. The picture formed gains a special depth against the backdrop of the data we had gathered from the same individuals over the previous four rounds of data collection. We are struck by the resilience of many sample members despite the extent to which their life trajectories have been disrupted. At the same time, we note how those who were already experiencing mental health challenges have been sorely tested. Finally, we draw attention to the extent to which these young adults have been deprived of what are known to be formative experiences that have incubated generations of Jewish leaders. This leaves us to ponder what will be the longer-term consequences for how they will develop as active Jews.
Article
This study explored the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Jewish lives of teenagers in Jewish schools in the UK. We found that young people have been thrown back on the resources they locate under their own roofs. For some, it has resulted in a thin version of Jewish life and a sense of disappointment. For others, the Jewish resources at home have been sufficient. While, generally, the tempo of their public Jewish lives has been disrupted, the Jewish rhythm of their lives at home have continued, if more muted than usual.
Article
Full-text available
This article is a qualitative review of 32 publications appearing since J. Bossard and E. Boll's (1950) seminal work on family rituals was conducted. Definitions are offered whereby a distinction is made between family routines as observable practices and family rituals as symbolic representations of collective events. The relative occurrence of family routines, as described in the literature, appears to follow a developmental course and is affected by the cultural environment. Family routines and rituals were found to be related to parenting competence, child adjustment, and marital satisfaction. The studies were limited by inconsistent methods of assessing family routines, reliance on samples of convenience, and a failure to distinguish between direct and indirect effects. Recommendations are made to better integrate theory with empirical efforts to demonstrate the importance of family routines and rituals in contemporary life.
Article
Full-text available
A groundbreaking study on the impact of Jewish day schools in the lives of parents and children.
Book
In Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor advance a new appreciation for the deep significance of Jewish family in developing Jewish identity. This book is the result of ten years of research focused on a small sample of diverse families. Through their work, the authors paint an intricate picture of the ecosystem that the family unit provides for identity formation over the life course. They draw upon theories of family development as well as sociological theories of the transmission of social and cultural capital in their analysis of the research. They find that family networks, which are often intergenerational, are just as significant as cultural capital, such as knowledge and competence in Judaism, to the formation of Jewish identity. Pomson and Schnoor provide readers with a unique view into the complexity of being Jewish in North America today. © 2018 by Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor. All rights reserved.
Chapter
Life at the beginning of the 21st century is something the social theory of the last century would have found hard to explain. Science, capitalism, and politics are pervasive and powerful in the everyday lives of ever-expanding layers of the world’s population. But so is religion. This book is an attempt to let “everyday religion” raise critical questions about how we understand the role of religion in society. We take pluralism and choice as givens, for instance, but we find “rational choice” theories too thin to explain the religious expressions we document. We look for religion in both “private” and “public” spaces, and ask about the social circumstances of religion’s presence and absence. In the end, we find that no simple theory of secularization or revival can explain how modern religious lives unfold.
Book
This book aims to provide new insights on the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. It presents the main findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion, a research project on the religious and spiritual lives of American adolescents conducted at the University of North Carolina from 2001 to 2005. The survey captured a broad range of differences among U.S. teens in religion, age, race, sex, socioeconomic status, rural-suburban-urban residence, region of the country, and language spoken. The book provides answers to questions about the character of teenage religion, the extent of spiritual seeking among youth, how religion affects adolescent moral reasoning and risk behaviors, and much more. It is hoped that by informing readers about the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers, it will help foster discussions in families, religious congregations, community organizations, and beyond, not only about the general state of religion in the United States, but also about cultural and institutional practices that may better serve and care for American teens.
Book
To understand the way children develop, Bronfenbrenner believes that it is necessary to observe their behavior in natural settings, while they are interacting with familiar adults over prolonged periods of time. His book offers an important blueprint for constructing a new and ecologically valid psychology of development.
Article
There are many points of intersection between parents and the Jewish educational lives of their children. This chapter contains a summary, organized around an ecological framework, of theory and research related to parents and Jewish education. This summary addresses the interrelated topics of demographic trends in the parent population, parents as decision makers regarding the Jewish education of their children, the involvement of parents in various aspects of the school, and parents’ past and current experiences as Jewish learners. Building from a model of reciprocal interaction, this approach also recognizes the potential for a child’s school experience to impact on a parent’s Jewish experience. Implications and suggestions for further research are developed from this model.
Article
This paper explores the notions of time and texture--or the interplay of the temporal and cultural dimensions of social life--as the conceptual foundation for the development of longitudinal qualitative (LQ) methodologies. It illustrates the different ways in which time is theorized among both qualitative and quantitative researchers in order to draw out the creative potential offered by LQ methodologies for understanding the dynamics of everyday life. The paper concludes by exploring how LQ methodologies might be used in the context of childhood research and for revisioning the process of 'growing up'.
Article
This article describes the processes and objectives of qualitative longitudinal analysis in evaluation research, using a recent evaluation study – the evaluation of the Job Retention and Rehabilitation Pilot – as an example. It describes evaluation research as involving an interplay between four domains of change: individual, service, policy and structural, which makes longitudinal qualitative research a particularly rich data source. It outlines different types of change that may be evident: narrative change, reinterpretation by either participant or researcher, and the absence of change. The article describes how the Framework analysis method was used to analyse longitudinal qualitative research. It examines how the data can be read in different ways to combine cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis, and theme, case and group analysis, and discusses the kind of questions that can be asked of change in longitudinal qualitative evaluation studies.
Article
Based on a Ph.D. thesis-1993. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Article
Family rituals, consisting of celebrations, traditions, and patterned family interactions, are defined and illustrated in this paper. The power of ritual practice in families is explained by three underlying processes — transformation, communication, and stabilization — concepts whose roots lie in anthropology and ethology. We propose that all families struggle with finding a suitable role for rituals in their collective lives but their actual achievement varies greatly. Commitment to ritual and adaptability of ritual practice throughout the family life cycle are important considerations. The utility of these concepts in the assessment and treatment of families is discussed.
Office for National Statistics
  • Uk Gov
Families and Social Capital ESRC Research Group Working Paper No 21
  • J Holland
  • R Thomson
  • S Henderson
The life project. Penguin, Random House
  • H Pearson
Jewish familiesI. Rutgers University Press
  • J Boyarin
Britain’s Jewish community statistics
  • D Graham
  • D Vulkan
Qualitative longitudinal research: A discussion paper. Families and Social Capital ESRC Research Group Working Paper No 21
  • J Holland
  • R Thomson
  • S Henderson
The life course perspective applied to families over time
  • V L Bengston
  • K R Allen
  • Bronfenbrenner U.