NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

Jewish Youth and Cultural Change: A Conference Rethinking

American Jewish History

Melissa R. Klapper,  Rowan University

Klapper Calls on SHCY Members to Publicize Our Organization to Other Groups

On Sunday, October 26, 2008, “Jewish Youth and Cultural Change: A Conference Rethinking American Jewish History” was held at the Center for Jewish History in New York.  This conference brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to consider the impact that young people have had on the development of American Jewish history and the multiple ways that the American Jewish community writ large has both embraced and expressed concern about its special relationship with youth.  As the official conference program explained, participants asked “How do we tell the history of American Jewish life when we focus on youth?  How did young Jewish men and women translate cultural change into American Jewish life?  What are the differences between the 21^st century and earlier eras?  How does cultural memory shape these conversations?”

The conference was open to the public and attracted participants beyond the presenters and organizers.  During the day program, panels focused on “The American Jewish Historical Narrative and Youth,” “Young Immigrants and America,” “Acculturation and Anxiety about Youth,” “Post-War Youth and Culture,” and “Research on Contemporary Jewish Young Adults.”  Some speakers focused on issues of balancing American and Jewish identity, such as Emory’s Eric Goldstein, who spoke about early 20^th-century American Jewish youth’s struggle over Yiddish and English linguistic identity.  Some speakers examined the Jewish community’s responses to American ideas about youth, such as Rowan University’s Melissa Klapper, who analyzed late 19^th century anxieties about the Jewish “girl of the period” in the American Jewish press.  Others dealt with such topics as life cycle issues and the internationalization.  For example, Rutgers University’s Jeffrey Shandler explored the development of Holocaust education as a rite of passage for post-war Jewish youth, while ACLS postdoctoral fellow Emily Katz discussed the ways in which pen pal relationships brought American Jewish youth closer to Israeli Jewish youth following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.  An entire panel was devoted to a social scientific consideration of contemporary Jewish youth, drawing conclusions both optimistic and pessimistic about the future of the American Jewish community.  The evening program offered a multi-generational mix of scholars, community activists, and observers of Jewish life reflecting on a century of community concerns about Jewish youth.

Many of the senior and junior scholars who participated are doing the must cutting-edge work in American Jewish history.  The importance of childhood and youth to all fields and disciplines of history and the social sciences was on full display at this conference.  Unfortunately, however, based on this writer’s informal survey, awareness of SHCY among the participants was relatively low despite the widely shared interest in age as a category of analysis.  We members might want to think about ways to publicize SHCY within all our other professional organizations.

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