GENERATIONAL SHIFTS IN THE CONTENT OF JEWISH IDENTITY
A Jewish identity for the network society? Trends among younger Jews
By Shlomo Fischer and Suzanne Last Stone
The Jewish people today are mostly divided into two
subpopulations: the Jews of Israel (~43%) and those in the
Diaspora (~47%). They differ not just in the content of Jewish
identity but in its very structure. Jewish identity in the
Diaspora consists of voluntary religious and ethnic
identification and solidarity.
Alternatively, in Israel, while Jewish identity is of core
importance, it is largely automatic. Its major implications have
to do with language, territory, citizenship, and political
membership. Reigning patterns of Jewish identity are now challenged by dissenting conceptions and
emerging new forms. In order to make effective policy, decision makers must deepen their
understanding of Jewish identity in each of the two main centers and confront the challenge of forming
a common language to bridge these two disparate conceptions of Jewish identity.
Jewish identity and identification in the Diaspora
For the last century the form and structure of modern Jewish identity was stable. This mainstream
Jewish identity – ‘Jewish civil religion’ – is increasingly challenged, from one side, by the growing
Haredi form of Jewish identification and, from the other, by increasing numbers of secular Jews,
intermarried Jews, and those who claim not to identify as Jewish at all. Challenges to modern
mainstream Jewish identity are also emerging as a result of a rupture between generations. Strong
established Jewish organizations continue to support mainstream patterns of identity. Yet, a younger
generation, coming of age in a society dramatically affected by new technologies, is exhibiting
radically new configurations of Jewish identity: highly individualized, fragmented, or entirely selffashioned.
Trends among younger Jews
There is a marked generational shift in Jewish identification from religious to secular, ethnic to cultural,
community-oriented to individualistic and universal. Younger people choose how to express their
identity and this is frequently individual and idiosyncratic, often with musical, artistic, and literary
materials.
Younger Jews frequently embrace the particulars of Jewish culture but reject tribal "us/them"
configurations of ethnicity. Is Jewish identity losing its normative character as a result of these
developments?
The orientation toward global social justice is related to this issue. The classical Jewish civil religion,
while liberal in political orientation was almost exclusively concerned with Jewish defense and
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