Calvin Goldscheider

Francis Goldscheider

This book examines the reasons why children ultimately leave home to live on their own and how the pattern has changed throughout the 20th century. The authors make use of data from the National Survey of Families and Households to: construct patterns for when children leave home; and establish the most important criteria for leaving home amongst different groups in the United States - men, women, blacks, hispanics, whites, and different religious groups and social classes.

Leaving and Returning Home

The Changing Transition to Adulthood

Jack N. Lightstone

Simcha Fishbane

This book provides a new conceptual and methodological framework the social scientific study of Mishnah, as well as a series of case studies that apply social science perspectives to the analysis of Mishnah's evidence. The framework is one that takes full account of the historical and literary-historical issues that impinge upon the use of Mishnah for any scholarly purposes beyond philological study, including social scientific approaches to the materials. Based on the framework, each chapter undertakes, with appropriate methodological caveats, an avenue of inquiry open to the social scientist that brings to bear social scientific questions and modes of inquiry to Mishnaic evidence.

Social Scientific Approaches

Exploring Mishnah's World(s)

This volume presents a sociological overview of the American Jewish community in the 1980's.

Social Science Research and Policy Implications

The American Jewish Community

Studying the Jewish Future explores the power of Jewish culture and assesses the perceived threats to the coherence and size of Jewish communities in the United States, Europe, and Israel. In an unconventional and provocative argument, Calvin Goldscheider departs from the limiting vision of the demographic projections that have shaped predictions about the health and future of Jewish communities and asserts that "the quality of Jewish life has become the key to the future of Jewish communities." Through the lens of individual biographies, Goldscheider shows how context shapes Jewish senses of the future and how conceptions of the future are shaped and altered by life experiences. Goldscheider�s distinctive comparative approach includes a critical review of population issues, a consideration of biographies as a basis for understanding Jewish values, and an analysis of biblical texts for studying contemporary values. He combines demographic and sociological analyses in historical and comparative perspectives to dispel the notion that quantitative issues are at the heart of the challenge of Jewish continuity in the future. Numbers are clearly the building blocks of community. But the interpretations of these demographic issues are often confusing and biased by ideological preconceptions. As a basis for studying the core themes of the Jewish future, �hard facts� are less �hard� and less "factual" than interpreters have made them out to be. Population projections are limited by the vision of those who prepare them. Goldscheider concludes that the futures of Jewish communities--in America, Europe, and Israel--are much more secure than has been presented in most scholarly and popular publications, and discussions about the Jewish future should shift to other patterns of distinctiveness. This book will appeal to the general Jewish reader as well as to social scientists and modern Jewish historians. It is appropriate for Jewish studies courses, particularly, but not exclusively, those focusing on Jews in the United States, the American Jewish community, and modern Jewish society, and in courses on ethnicity, multiculturalism, cultural diversity, and ethnic relations.

Studying the Jewish Future

What is the relationship between migration and rural social structure? How does the selective movement out of rural areas affect the economic and social conditions of migrants, their families, and their places of origin? Addressing these and other questions, the contributors to this book consider rural migration patterns in the context of social change and economic development in three less developed nations: Korea, Sri Lanka, and Mali. Through comparative analysis the authors reveal both the diversity and the cross-national similarities of rural migration, offering theoretical bases for its interpretation and pointing to policy implications for developing areas.

Calvin Goldscheider

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