How the 1950 Census Results Might Contribute to Understanding American Jewish History

On April 1, the National Archives made the data from the 1950 U.S. census available online to the public. Andrew Silverstein explains the sorts of information historians of American Jewry, and genealogists, hope to find therein:

This census is of special interest to American Jews, showing life in the years after the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. It captures recently arrived Jewish refugees from Europe’s displaced-persons camps settling into their new country, while upwardly mobile Jews were moving to the suburbs and populating new Jewish centers in places like California and Florida.

Unlike other genealogical records like birth and death certificates and immigration documents, the census shows people in their everyday lives—except for Jewish Americans in 1950 because that year’s census started on Passover. When mid-century Jewish Americans opened the door to let in the prophet Elijah during their seder, they may have been greeted by a census taker with pen and paper in hand.

Still, many Jewish households would have been tallied during the week following Passover. Answers to the census question “How many hours did he work last week?” could reveal if the respondent took days off for Passover, which could give insight into the irreligious observance and economic position.

Read more at Forward

More about: American Jewish History, Demography, Passover

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society