Americas Jews

10. Conclusion: Diversification without Disintegration

10. Conclusion: Diversification without Disintegration This work began as a challenge to one of the major perspectives in the sociological study of ethnicity which Neil Sandberg has appropriately termed "straight-line" theory (Sandberg, 1974, p. 67). The underlying assumption of the theorists who adhere to that perspective is that ethnic behavior and consciousness decline with each generation and that, inevitably, ethnic groups will disappear into the larger American culture and society. This work also set out to challenge secularization theory within the sociology of religion , according to which the forces of modernity inevitably result in the secularization of consciousness and social structure culminating in the virtual disappearance of institutionalized religion in American society. The history and sociology of American Jews do not fit into either of those theoretical perspectives. From the evidence presented here, several divergent trends manifest themselves within American Jewry at this time. As was projected by almost all students of the thirdgeneration community in the 1960s, there is a clear and apparently dominant trend of accelerated cultural and, to a lesser degree, structural assimilation. While some earlier theorists of ethnicity may not have realized its intensity and complexity, they were correct to some extent in predicting that rapid acculturation, cultural and structural assimilation, would invariably lead to some measure of what Milton Gordon refers to as "identificational assimilation" (Gordon, 1964, pp. 70-71), the loss of identification with the ethnic 225 226 America's Jews in Transition group. Thus predictably some of the fourth generation or their children will no longer be part of America's Jewish population. They will no longer perceive themselves as members of the American Jewish community nor will they consciously attempt to live their lives in any way that would identify them as Jews. Ethnic patterns persist at times, however, even when individuals are not particularly ethnically conscious. Andrew Greeley has found, for example, that different ethnic groups manifest different attitudes toward drinking alcoholic beverages and manifest different drinking patterns even when the individuals involved are unaware of the impact of their ethnicity (Greeley, McCready, and Theisen , 1980). Also, many studies indicate that Jews are much more likely than others to label mental illness and to use psychiatric facilities, and that a disproportionate number of psychiatrists are Jews (Horwitz, 1982, pp. 73, 128-29), and these attitudes toward mental illness and psychiatry probably would not disappear even if the individuals involved have undergone identificational assimilation. The vast majority of the fourth generation, however, have not experienced identificational assimilation, nor is it predictable that their children wilL especially in light of the many studies indicating the persistence of ethnicity in American society even as cultural and structural assimilation prevail. Particularly at this stage in American social history, their identification as Jewish Americans (or American Jews) is likely to prevail because the stigma of ethnicity-which had been a powerful incentive to consciously reject one's ethnic identification-has been greatly alleviated by the prevalent ideology of cultural pluralism. The evidence does suggest divergent patterns with respect to the organized American Jewish communal structure and the American Jewish population. Specifically, on the one hand, the Jewish communal structure has become more organized, more sophisticated, and much more survivalist oriented. On the other hand, there is and there will probably continue to be a growing pattern of nonparticipation in that organized communal structure, for several reasons. To some Conclusion 227 extent, this nonparticipation will probably continue as the American Jewish occupational structure persists in its pattern of increasing professionalism, because the professional lifestyle inhibits extensive communal involvement. Also, as the communal structure becomes more highly organized it tends to become more conservative, more exclusive, and more subject to institutional inertia, while an increasing proportion of the American Jewish population tends to become more acculturated and cosmopolitan and seeks alternative modes of Jewish expression. There is in addition another trend, albeit not as strong, in the opposite direction, a trend that was not anticipated even by many who do not hold to overly simple straight-line assimilation theories. Few students of the third-generation American Jewish community foresaw, or could have foreseen, the possibility of a revitalization of "intrinsic" Jewish cultural patterns at the same time that there has been a virtual disappearance of "extrinsic" Jewish cultural patterns in the fourth generation of Eastern European American Jewry. As Gordon uses these terms, "intrinsic cultural traits" refer to such patterns and traits as "religious beliefs...