Category: Building Jewish Identity (Winter 2009)

The author coins, defines and researches a new concept, entitavity – the extent to which people feel that they are part of an entity larger than themselves. Dr. Hagit Hacohen Wolf is a lecturer at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University, teaching courses related to psychological aspects of Jewish identity and Jewish Peoplehood.

“All Jews are responsible for one another. To what may this be compared? To a ship in which one stateroom has somehow been breached and is taking on water through the side. We don't say: ‘One stateroom has been breached.’ Rather, we say: "The ship has been breached.” (Tana Devei Eliyahu Raba, 11)

So said our Sages, but as everyone in the Jewish world is certainly aware, the bond between the Jewish people can no longer be taken for granted. Findings from several studies indicate that Jews in Israel no longer view their bond with world Jewry the way they once did, and that Jews all over the world, especially the young generation, are much less attached to Israel and Israeli Jews than they once were (Liebman, 1996; Rosenthal, 2003; Cohen & Kelman, 2007).

Demographic changes during the past years have led to the emergence of the two largest Jewish communities in the world in Israel and in North America. Since its establishment, the State of Israel has played a significant role, ideologically and in ongoing practice in the Jewish education of Diaspora Jews. In addition, Jewish organizations and educational institutions have made many efforts to strengthen the Jewish identity of the next generation by increasing its attachment to Holocaust remembrance and by increasing its commitment to synagogues and to Jewish philanthropy.

The limited success of these efforts is reflected in The 2005 Annual Assessment Executive Report of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI). This report summed up the situation of the Jewish People today in the following way: "In sum, today's Diaspora Jewry is wealthy, becoming increasingly unaffiliated with their Jewish roots and marrying non-Jews, and shrinking in size. Starting in 2006, most of the world's Jewry will live in Israel, where the rate of Jewish Day School attendance is 97 percent and the rate of intermarriage is 5 percent."

In the findings of the JPPPI report cited above, it would appear that in contrast to the increasing assimilation of Diaspora Jewry, Jewish identity of Israeli Jews in Israel – as measured by Jewish Day School attendance and the rate of intermarriage – is stable and strong. But do these two measures accurately reflect the reality of the situation in Israel?

A comprehensive study conducted by the Guttman Center of the Israel Democracy Institute in 2000 of religious beliefs, observances, and values of Israeli Jews in Israel (Levy, Levinsohn and Katz, 2002) pointed to the complex phenomenon of the identification of Jews in Israel with Judaism and the Jewish people. The study established that, on the one hand, many Israeli Jews who define themselves as “secular” seem to ascribe low centrality (importance) to their Jewish identification and see their Judaism as having a negligible impact on their daily lives, yet these same Jews observe Jewish traditions and customs and frequently report a sense of connection with and affinity to the members of the Jewish people.

The Guttman report and other studies (Levy et al, 1993, 2002; Liebman & Don Yehiya, 1983; Oron, 1993) indicate that neither the degree of professed religiosity levels, nor behavioral involvement in observing Jewish commandments or customs, are sufficient to explain the wide range of patterns that characterize the identification of Jews in Israel with their Judaism or with the Jewish People. In other words, these studies fail to fully explain the wide variation of identification levels among traditional and secular Jews in general, and within each of these sociological groups in specific.

The Guttman report also identified an ongoing deterioration of the quality of the relations between different groups in Jewish-Israeli society – i.e., there is a continuous erosion of feelings of inter-Israeli unity. Additional findings of the report indicate that there is an increasing perception among Israeli Jews that Jews in Israel and Jews in the Diaspora are two separate entities. Thus, there is also a decline in feelings of all-Jewish unity.

“Jewish Peoplehood” is a relatively new concept that has become increasingly central in discourse about Judaism, Jewishness, and Jewish identity in Israel and the Diaspora in recent years. An attempt to summarize the different interpretations and levels of meaning that this term contains in the various contexts in which it is used brings to the forefront three types of definitions:

1. Emotionally, “Jewish Peoplehood” is a sense of belonging to the Jewish Nation, or to a wide Jewish circle, that extends beyond a specific geographic location or a specific period of time.
2. Cognitively, “Jewish Peoplehood” is a basic belief in the existence of a Jewish Nation beyond a certain geographic area and a certain period of time – an existence that is based on shared content concerning religion, history and culture.
3. Behaviorally, “Jewish Peoplehood” is defined as fulfilling reciprocal relations between Diaspora Jews from different countries throughout the world (e.g. encounters, common projects aimed at realizing Jewish values such as social justice, mutual assistance, and more) (Hacohen Wolf & Horenczyk, forthcoming).

A recent research study we carried out (Hacohen Wolf & Horenczyk, forthcoming), may shed a light on the complex phenomenon of Jewish identification in Israel as well as in the Diaspora, and to clarify the link / connection between Jewish identity and Jewish Peoplehood

In this study, which is based on a social psychological perspective, we tried to examine whether the rather implicit, subconscious theory held by Israeli Jews adds a unique contribution to the explanation of the variability in Jewish identification in Israel, above and beyond the contribution of well-known variables of behavioral involvement and level of religiosity which are insufficient in encompassing the full complexity of the phenomenon.

Social psychology is full of examples showing that people hold intuitive implicit, subconscious theories and use them to understand events and to make inferences about the world around them. People are capable of believing deeply in implicit theories of which they are entirely unaware, but which nevertheless exert tremendous influence on their thoughts, feelings, and behavior (Hong, Levy & Chiu, 2001; Lickel, Hamilton & Sherman, 2001).

Such implicit, subconscious, naïve theory might be influencing the way people think, feel, and behave with regard to their identity. The intuitive implicit theory that we examined is the theory of entitativity (from the word “entity”), which means the extent to which a social aggregate is perceived to be a coherent, unified, and meaningful entity (Campbell, 1958). In other words, we could define it as an unconscious theory that one holds about the “groupness” of the group (Sherman, Hamilton & Lewis, 1999).

It seems that the cognitive component of Jewish Peoplehood, as we defined it above, is to a large extent, the entitativity of the Jewish people as perceived by individuals – a basic faith in the existence of the Jewish people beyond a specific geographical location and beyond a certain time or era. People differed in their perceived extent of entitativity of the Jewish people as reflected in their answers to the question we presented in the research:

Some people regard the Jews as a collection of individual persons and not as a unified group. Other people regard the Jews as a unified group and not as a collection of individual persons. What do you think?

Although research in this field of entitativity began to develop only a few years ago, it has gained great momentum and today it constitutes one of the central domains in psychological-social research. The importance of entitativity in social-psychological research of recent years is rooted in its influences on social perception in terms of processing, recall and interpretation of information. Lately, researchers have begun examining the links between entitativity and other variables, among them the level of identification with the group.

In the research we defined the constructs of identification and entitativity as multi-dimensional variables from both theoretical and empirical points of view. As a result, research instruments were developed to measure perceived entitativity of the Jewish people and of the Israelis, and to measure multi-dimensional Jewish identification in Israel. The use of these tools revealed three main dimensions that affect perceived entitativity regarding the Jewish people. Each dimension is a continuum between two opposite attitudes towards a certain characteristic. An examination of each dimension is as follows:

1. The Common Traits dimension, which is based on the similarity between the members of the group, includes the following parameters: (a) Uniformity (Jews are very similar to one another versus Jews differ greatly from one another); (b) Informativeness (knowing that someone is Jewish is very informative, tells us a lot about that person and allows people to make many judgments about him/her versus knowing that someone is Jewish is NOT informative); (c) Inherence (the Jewish People has an underlying reality or sameness despite differences on the surface versus the Jewish People has NO underlying reality or sameness); (d) Necessity (One cannot be Jewish without necessary characteristics versus there are NO necessary characteristics for being Jewish); (e) Prototype (There is a prototype of a Jewish person, thus, it is possible to compare each Jew to this prototype (in order to know the extent of his / her "typicality as a Jew") versus there is NO specific prototype of a Jewish person, to which one can compare other Jews).
2. The Interaction dimension, which is based on interaction between members of the group, includes the following parameters: (a) Mutual influence (there is a high degree of mutual influence among Jews versus there is a low degree of mutual influence among Jews); (b) Interdependence (there is a great interdependence between Jews ((they need each other in order to achieve goals that are related to their Jewishness)) versus there is a low interdependence between Jews); (c) Importance (Jews attribute great importance to their Jewishness versus Jews attribute little or no importance to their Jewishness).
3. The Essentialism dimension, which is based on the essentialist nature of the group, includes the following parameters: (a) One-way (there is only one way to be Jewish versus there is more than one way to be Jewish); (b) Stability (the Jewish People characteristics have changed substantially or the Jewish People characteristics have NOT changed much); (c) Exclusivity (Being Jewish excludes belonging to other categories or Being Jewish does NOT exclude belonging to other); (d) Discreteness (one's belongingness to the Jewish People is clear-cut, definite, an "either/or" variety, versus belongingness to the Jewish People is "fuzzy" and indefinite).

In addition, four dimensions of Jewish identification were found by the multi-dimensional research tool of Jewish identification in Israel – affective identification (feelings towards Judaism and the Jewish nation), cognitive identification (centrality of Judaism in life), ideological identification (ideology regarding the essence of Judaism), and Jewish identification outside of Israel.

The results of the study show that the entitativity variable contributes to the prediction of the level of identification of Jewish Israelis with Judaism and the Jewish people above and beyond the more commonly known variables such as an individual’s level of religiosity and behavior or observing of Jewish commandments and customs (“behavioral involvement”).

The findings also indicate that an individual’s perceived entitativity of the Jewish People contribute to the prediction of his or her sociological affiliation – in other words, to the individual’s self-determination of belonging to “secular” or “traditional” sectors. Thus, sociological affiliation is predicted by entitativity, which goes beyond the conventional predictions based on the level of the individual’s identification with the Jewish people and his/her behavioral involvement (observance of commandments or customs).

In addition, the study findings show that the entitativity variable explains some of the variations in the identification profile beyond the classic variables of religiosity and behavioral involvement, and distinguishes between people with low identification (both affective and cognitive identification), and those with mixed identification (high affective identification with low cognitive identification).

Thus, the exploration of the implicit and intuitive lay theories held by Israeli Jews regarding the entitativity of the Jewish people illuminated the processes and phenomena that have characterized Israeli society in recent years. For example, the entitativity variable allows for making a clear distinction between traditional and secular Jews, beyond behavioral involvement. This theory helps to understand the psychological basis for the differences in these sociological affiliations and to deepen the study of the “traditionalist” phenomenon. This may contribute to the enriching of the public discourse on Jewish identity and identification in Israel and in the Diaspora when we go beyond the timeworn variables of religiosity and behavioral involvement.

What are the operational implications of these findings regarding the contribution of the perceived entitativity of the Jewish people to Jewish identity and identification?

Jewish educators all over the world are struggling with questions like: How can the Jewish identity of young Jews be strengthened? How can the ties between Israelis and Jews elsewhere be improved? How can the growing decline in the feeling of all encompassing Jewish unity be stopped?

It is important to discuss the educational implications of the identification of the components of the perceived entitativity of the Jewish people as found in the research ­– Common Traits, Interaction and Essentialism. Educators may use these dimensions and components in order to increase the perceived entitativity – "groupness" of the Jewish People in the eyes of their students.

We have to find new and creative ways to strengthen Jewish identity by transforming implicit and unconscious theories regarding the Jewish People to explicit concepts in the Jewish education curriculum.

References

Campbell, D. T. (1958). Common fate, similarity, and other indices of the status of aggregates of persons as social entities. Behavioral Science, 3, 14-25.

Cohen, S. M. & Kelman, A. Y. (2007). Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and Their Alienation from Israel. The Jewish Identity Project of Reboot, Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philantropies.

Hacohen Wolf, H. & Horenczyk, G. (forthcoming). Perceived Entitativity of "Jews" and "Israelis" by Israeli Jews. Megamot.

Hacohen Wolf, H. & Horenczyk, G (forthcoming). Perceptions of Jewish Peoplehood. In A. Maoz and A. Hacohen (Eds.), Jewish Identity in a Multicultural Society. Law, Society and Culture, The Buchman Faculty of Law Series, Tel Aviv University.

Hong, Y., Levy, S., & Chiu, C. (2001). The contribution of the Lay theories approach to the study of groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 98-106.

Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) Annual Assessment (2005). Facing a rapidly changing world, Executive Report.

Levy, S., Levinsohn, H. and Katz, E. (1993). Beliefs, observances, and social interaction among Israeli Jews. Jerusalem: The Louis Guttman Israel Institute of Applied Social Research and AVI CHAI. (Jerusalem and New York.

Levy, S., Levinsohn, H. and Katz, E. (2002) A Portrait of Israeli Jewry: Beliefs, Observances and values among Israeli Jews 2000. Jerusalem: The Guttman Center of the Israel Democracy Institute and AVI CHAI.

Lickel, B. Hamilton, D.L. & Sherman, S.J. (2001). Elements of Lay theory of groups: Types of groups, relational styles, and the perception of group entitativity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 129-140.

Liebman, C. S. & Don Yehiya, E. (1983). Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State, Berkeley.

Liebman, C. S. (1996). Restructuring Israeli-Diaspora Relations. Israel Studies 1.1, 315-322.

Rosenthal, S. T. (2003) Irreconcilable Differences?: The Waning of the American Jewish Love Affair with Israel. Boston, Mass: Brandeis University Press.

Sherman, S. J., Hamilton, D. L., & Lewis, A. C. (1999). Perceived entitativity and the social identity value of group memberships. In D. Abrams & M. A. Hogg (Eds.), Social Identity and Social Cognition (pp. 80-110). Oxford: Blackwell Publications.