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Investigates the making of post-World War II Jewish politics in Argentina. Factors that contributed to the establishment of Jewish communal politics in the country; Conflict between Zionists and progressive Jews in the country; Response of the left-wing Jewish community to the crisis of the Six-Day War; Active Jewish institutions in the country during the period.

This paper offers three economic arguments for ending discriminatory religious law in Israel. First, current subsidies have created massive poverty and welfare dependence in the Israeli Haredi community. With men remaining in Yeshiva till an average age of forty and the Haredi population doubling each 16 years, that community is dangerously dependent on subsidies and charity, which are unlikely to increase fast enough to support it. Previous work developed a model to explain why fathers with families in poverty choose Yeshiva over work. This paper explores policy implications of that analysis, stressing the extremely inefficient economic incentives in subsidizing membership in a community that requires personal sacrifice. Subsidies are largely dissipated by the induced increase in sacrifice. A second argument for ending discriminatory religious law is that monopoly status granted to a religious denomination limits competition in the religious services market, resulting in low quality services for the remainder of the Jewish population. Finally, by allowing discriminatory subsidies, the State encourages political-religious parties to organize. These have destabilized Israeli politics. The paper proposes equitable reforms which compensate the Haredi community for lost subsidies and religious monopoly status by expanding needs-based social programs. These reforms would foster a self-sufficient Haredi community, benefit a wider disadvantaged population, help restore a functioning political system and encourage a healthy relationship between branches of Jewish tradition within Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model distinguishing between Jews and non-Jews is developed to analyze the benefits and costs of Jewish assimilation and hence the economic incentives affecting Jewish continuity. Judaism and Jewish communal life are viewed as a single self-produced good, for which production efficiency can be enhanced by investing in Jewish-specific human capital. Non-Jews produce an analogous good with the aid of human capital specific to their own group. Groups are formally distinguished from each other by the specificity of their human capital, the level of group-specific investment, and the degree of complementarity between group-specific and general human capital. The group production functions also permit interactions between individuals to generate bandwagon and club effects. It is argued that the high human capital intensity of Judaism per se (esp. Torah and related study) raises rates of return to other forms of human capital and thus generates secular rewards. Whether or not this leads to assimilation depends on the characteristics of the general society and of the non-Jewish group. It is also argued that Judaism's structure of commandments and proscriptions (especially Shabbat and kashrui) effectively tax religious heterogeneity within the family, supporting group survival with strong incentives in the marriage market. Some historical evidence is introduced, and it is argued that specifically Jewish human capital is typically the dominant factor in Jewish continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the mainstream of nineteenth-century liberal thought, a constitutional order should protect the individual from a monopoly of sovereign power conducive to arbitrary government action and despotic encroachment; it should guarantee freedom of religion, speech, and assembly, respect the inviolability of property, and condone the greatest possible latitude for individual economic initiative consonant with the peace and security of society. There are, to be sure, other political meanings which have been attached to the term liberal such as the use of the power of the state to attain greater collective freedom or a dedication to measures intended to bring a more egalitarian democracy. In this article, however, liberalism mainly refers to the nineteenth century variety. As elsewhere in Europe for much of the nineteenth century, such a usage of liberalism in tsarist Russia was not a conservative but a radical political position, it negated the absolute sovereignty of the autocrat and, was, therefore, truly "revolutionary."

For almost as long as there has been an organized Jewish community in North America, there has been debate about the extent to which that community is, can, and should be governed democratically. Such discussion has often been polemical rather than analytical. As applied to Jewish communal life, "democracy" can be operationalized in terms of seven political processes: (1) access; (2) participation; (3) representation; (4) debate; (5) accountability; (6) communication; and (7) political development. In general, the Jewish community is governed by a trusteeship rather than by formally representative institutions. The system, however, is not designed to be exclusionary, and leaders are broadly representative in their attitudes of the Jewish populace as a whole. Recent developments have made Jewish communal governance somewhat more democratic by bringing in new leadership elements and broadening the agenda of public action. Nevertheless, many problem areas remain, and there is some doubt about whether the Jewish community ever can or should be as democratic as its critics urge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Jewish Population Study (1970-71) was a landmark study that systematically gathered data from the U.S. Jewish population using survey research techniques. It laid the framework for many of the local studies that have been initiated during the past ten years to describe local Jewish population characteristics in order to support more informed social planning. Since 1975, thirty-nine federated communities have undertaken such studies. While that represents only 20 percent of all federated communities, the studies cover nearly 80 percent of American Jewry. Sixteen of the eighteen Federations in cities with the largest concentrations of Jews have conducted such surveys over the past decade. The proportion of communities undertaking such studies decline with population size, reflecting the fact that smaller communities do not have the resources to conduct or utilize population studies.

The article presents an introduction to the Jewish liberal politics. Despite claims of a massive shift to the right among American Jews, reflecting them affluence and their having come of age politically, the vast majority of American Jews continue to register and vote Democratic and continue to support most liberal causes. Even in Israel, where one might expect the Jews to develop a normal politics, Jewish politics does not seem to follow the rules. The major right wing party is in fact populist and the socialists are supported by the middle class. When challenged for taking a seat on the left in the Austrian Parliament in 1848, a right wing orthodox delegate commented that the Jews have no right. Certainly in the galut it is hard to find a Jewish right winger who at the same time remains within the Jewish community. Right wing politics became for some the instrument of assimilation while for others it was left wing polities. For the last century or more, Jews have been trying to figure out what is a Jewish politics which would make sense to them as a world people and as individuals with particular social and economic concerns. In the U.S. for a certainty and probably in other western countries as well, the liberal tradition became the Jewish tradition with prophetic utterance advanced as proof-text.

The article reports on a research project on American Zionist history conducted at the Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The project is under the direction of Ben Halpern, Richard Koret Professor in Judaic Studies. A general analysis of the period up to the late nineteen-thirties is to be prepared by Professor Halpern, relying on preliminary studies. The major analytical issue involved in the project, and faced in different specific combinations by each of its contributory studies, is that of determining the differential impact of complex, interrelated social environments and reference groups affecting the individuals and groups studied.