Northern California Jewish Bulletin

This book, in its 113th year, provides insight into major trends in the North American Jewish community, examining Jewish education, New York Jewry, national and Jewish communal affairs, and the US and world Jewish population. It also acts as an important resource with its lists of Jewish Institutions, Jewish periodicals, and academic resources as well as Jewish honorees, obituaries, and major recent events. It should prove useful to social scientists and historians of the American Jewish community, Jewish communal workers, and the press, among others. For more than a century, the American Jewish Year Book has remained and continues to serve, even in the Internet age, as the leading reference work on contemporary Jewish life. This year’s volume, with its special reports on Jewish education and the New York community and its updates on Jewish population statistics, Jewish institutions, and the major Jewish figures who passed in the year past, continues this splendid tradition. Pamela S. Nadell, Chair, Department of History, American University and Co-editor, Making Women’s Histories: Beyond National Perspectives The 2013 volume of the American Jewish Year Book impressively demonstrates that Arnold Dashefsky and Ira Sheskin have restored this important resource in all its former glory. Bruce A. Phillips, Professor of Sociology and Jewish Communal Service, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles Having a current American Jewish Year Book on my shelf is like having a panel of experts on American Jewish life at the ready, prepared to give me thoughtful, accurate answers and observations on the key issues, trends and statistics that define our continental Jewish community today. Well into its second century, the American Jewish Year Book continues to be an essential resource for serious leaders, practitioners and students who seek to ground their work in solid research and up-to-date data. Jacob Solomon, Greater Miami Jewish Federation President and CEO

This book contains entries from thousands of publications whether in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and German—books, research reports, educational and general periodicals, synagogue histories, conference proceedings, bibliographies, and encyclopedias—on all aspects of Jewish education from pre-school through secondary education

In this timely work, Fuchs imagines a new paradigm of fatherhood for a post-patriarchal age, one inspired by the history of Jewish patriarchy. Fuchs argues that the Jewish story sets the precedent for change in the nature of patriarchy today, breaking the evolutionary connection between male dominance and incentives for fatherhood.

The American Jewish Year Book, which spans three different centuries, is the annual record of the North American Jewish communities and provides insight into their major trends. Part I of the current volume contains the lead article: Chapter 1, “Pastrami, Verklempt, and Tshoot-spa: Non-Jews’ Use of Jewish Language in the US” by Sarah Bunin Benor. Following this chapter are three on domestic and international events, which analyze the year’s events as they affect American Jewish communal and political affairs. Three chapters analyze the demography and geography of the US, Canada, and world Jewish populations. Part II provides lists of Jewish institutions, including federations, community centers, social service agencies, national organizations, synagogues, Hillels, camps, museums, and Israeli consulates. The final chapters present national and local Jewish periodicals and broadcast media; academic resources, including Jewish Studies programs, books, journals, articles, websites, and research libraries; and lists of major events in the past year, Jewish honorees, and obituaries. While written mostly by academics, this volume conveys an accessible style, making it of interest to public officials, professional and lay leaders in the Jewish community, as well as the general public and academic researchers. The American Jewish Year Book has been a key resource for social scientists exploring comparative and historical data on Jewish population patterns. No less important, the Year Book serves organization leaders and policy makers as the source for valuable data on Jewish communities and as a basis for planning. Serious evidence-based articles regularly appear in the Year Book that focus on analyses and reviews of critical issues facing American Jews and their communities which are indispensable for scholars and community leaders. Calvin Goldscheider, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Ungerleider Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies, Brown University They have done it again. The American Jewish Year Book has produced yet another edition to add to its distinguished tradition of providing facts, figures and analyses of contemporary life in North America. Its well-researched and easily accessible essays offer the most up to date scrutiny of topics and challenges of importance to American Jewish life; to the American scene of which it is a part and to world Jewry. Whether one is an academic or professional member of the Jewish community (or just an interested reader of all things Jewish), there is not another more impressive and informative reading than the American Jewish Year Book. Debra Renee Kaufman, Professor Emerita and Matthews Distinguished University Professor, Northeastern University

A minority within Judaism, the Karaites are known as a 'reading community'-one that looks to the Bible as the authority in all areas of life, including intimate relations and hygiene. Here Ruth Tsoffar considers how Egyptian Kariates of the San Francisco Bay Area define themselves, within both California culture and Judaism, in terms of the Bible and its bearing on their bodies. Women's perspectives play a large role in this ethnography; it is their bodies that are especially regulated by rules of cleanliness and purity to the point where their biological cycles-menstruation, procreation, childbirth, lactation-determine their place in the community. As Tsoffar notes, the female body itself becomes a richly encoded text that reveals much about the Karaites' attitudes toward the interrelated issues of gender, sex, food, procreation, sacred traditions, time and space, as well as identity. The author illuminates the cultural strategies used by Karaite women to sustain their religious ideologies yet find personally meaningful ways of reading. The Karaites have survived since at least the 8th century by continually contemporizing their culture. Through a study of the rich, animated ritual experience of niddah (menstruation and purity codes in Leviticus), we see how the Karaite women seek to imagine and narrate a new history of purity through their bodies. The Stains of Culture presents issues of meaning and interpretation in a way valuable to students of women's studies, anthropology, minority cultural production, scholars of religion and Judaism, especially to those interested in exploring Judaism's diversity.

The 2012 American Jewish Year Book, “The Annual Record of American Jewish Civilization,” contains major chapters on Jewish secularism (Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar), Canadian Jewry (Morton Weinfeld, David Koffman, and Randal Schnoor), national affairs (Ethan Felson), Jewish communal affairs (Lawrence Grossman), Jewish population in the United States (Ira Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky), and World Jewish population (Sergio DellaPergola). These chapters provide insight into major trends in the North American and world Jewish community. The volume also acts as a resource for the American Jewish community and for academics studying that community by supplying obituaries and lists of Jewish Federations, Jewish Community Centers, national Jewish organizations, Jewish overnight camps, Jewish museums, Holocaust museums, local and national Jewish periodicals, Jewish honorees, major recent events in the American Jewish community, and academic journals, articles, websites, and books. The volume should prove useful to social scientists and historians of the American Jewish community, Jewish communal workers, the press, and others interested in American and Canadian Jews.​

In this provocative and wide-ranging history, Joel Beinin examines fundamental questions of ethnic identity by focusing on the Egyptian Jewish community since 1948. A complex and heterogeneous people, Egyptian Jews have become even more diverse as their diaspora continues to the present day. Central to Beinin's study is the question of how people handle multiple identities and loyalties that are dislocated and reformed by turbulent political and cultural processes. It is a question he grapples with himself, and his reflections on his experiences as an American Jew in Israel and Egypt offer a candid, personal perspective on the hazards of marginal identities.