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How can the organized Jewish community successfully promote educationally effective travel to Israel on the part of Canadian Jewish teen-agers and young adults? This is the central policy question addressed in this report on recent random sample surveys of Canadian Jewish families sponsored by the CRB Foundation of Montreal.

In the decades prior to the Holocaust, East European Jewry was undergoing a rapid transition from comparatively traditional to modern patterns. Concentration in larger cities and the level of secular education increased, and notable occupational shifts occurred. Mortality among the Jews continued to decline rapidly, boosting their natural increase up to a certain stage, although this increase slowed down later owing to the accelerated decline in fertility and the birth rate. The Holocaust reduced the number of European Jews by about two thirds and World Jewry by about one third, affecting notably the previous trends by changes of spatial distributions and changes in age-sex distribution. In Division of Jewish Demography and Statistics Occasional Paper No. 1991-10. 22 p. Institute of Contemporary Jewry.

This article presents updates (as of the end of 1989), on population estimates of world Jewry. Approximately 96 percent of world Jewry is concentrated in ten countries. The aggregate of these ten major Jewish population centers virtually determines the assessment of the size of total world Jewry, estimated at 12.8 million in 1989. During the same year, data collection projects relevant to Jewish population estimates were in planning or already underway in several countries. Two important sources have already yielded results on major Jewish populations: the official population census of the Soviet Union held in 1989, and the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) in the United States, completed in 1990. The respective results basically confirm both the estimates reported in previous American Jewish Year Book volumes and their interpretation of the trends now prevailing in the demography of world Jewry.

This report was produced by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) task force on American Jewish Leadership. Its goal is to encourage serious thought and discussion on leadership issues. The authors state that they do not believe there is an immediate crisis of Jewish leadership. Their principal observation is that the recruitment of leadership is too important to be left to chance. Therefore their focus is not on remedying an emergency, but on calling attention to the criteria and requirements for future Jewish communal leadership.

This essay examines recent fiction which draws on Jewish resources and/or deals with Jewish themes. Special attention is devoted to stories and novels that focus on Jewish religious or spiritual issues. The essay begins with a brief documentation of the broad scope of renewed interest in Jewish topics on the American Jewish literary scene; then it proceeds to an analysis of spiritual American Jewish fiction through a close look at several significant works. Finally, the essay explores possible reasons for the receptivity of reading audiences to particularistic Jewish fiction and suggests potential directions of such literature in the near future.

This article presents updates, as of the end of 1989, on the population of world Jewry. The population estimates given here reflect a prolonged and ongoing effort to study scientifically the demography of contemporary world Jewry. Data collection and comparative research have benefited from the collaboration of scholars and institutions in many countries, including replies to direct inquiries regarding current estimates. During 1989, data collection projects relevant to Jewish population estimates were in planning or already under way in several countries. Some of this ongoing research is part of a coordinated effort to update the sociodemographic profile of world Jewry that was undertaken at the outset of the 1990s.

The author looks at the rise of the American Jewish museum. She states that museums devoted to Jewish content have been multiplying rapidly in the United States, becoming a significant feature of the cultural landscape. While the spotlight of publicity has been focused on the national Holocaust museum rising on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and on similar institutions in New York, Los Angeles, and points in between, these museums are in fact part of a larger phenomenon of Jewish museum growth that has been taking place, largely unheralded, since the end of World War II.

While it is well established that American Jews have strong feelings in favor of Israel, the author contends that less attention is paid to the question of what the specific content of American Jews' Israel-related ideology is. The author analyzes the specific nature and roots of American Jews' feelings about Israel, and contrasts American Zionism to Israeli Zionism. He asserts that American Jews do not see Israel as central to Judaism the way Israelis do. Copyright Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. http://www.biupress.co.il

The author analyzes the place of the United States and of Israel in the new international situation emerging following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He discusses the relationship between the Bush and Shamir administrations in detail. He contends that the United States made a series of blunders surrounding the Gulf War, and that Shamir and Bush are mismatched.

The author discusses the Jewish community of Sao Paulo, Brazil, comprised of 76,000 people. The author review the communities history and origins, its organizational structure, community trends and prospects, and Jewish participation in general Brazilian life.

The author bases his report on the 1990 National Jewish Population Study (NJPS), which he argues clearly documents the cultural assimilation of the American Jewish community. He concludes that the study indicates some major demographic trends within the Jewish community including, but not limited to, the static Jewish core population within a growing society, the soaring rate of intermarriage that almost inevitably leads to non-Jewish grandchildren, and the over one million self-proclaimed secular Jews whose attitudes and practices differ little from the surrounding Christian society.

The author reports results of the first quantitative study of Holocaust survivors in the United States based on a truly random sample of survivors. (Previous studies examined only the population seeking social services, which introduced a bias.) Among the findings: that survivors seek psychiatric help less often than American Jews as a whole; that they have generally succeeded economically and socially; and that they have a higher birthrate and a lower divorce rate than American Jews as a whole. The author further discusses the reasons many survivors chose to come to America rather than Israel, and some characteristics of the survivors' experiences arriving in America.

The author analyzes the difference between the way in which American Jews relate to the issue of religion and state in Israel as compared to the way in which they relate to it in the United States. But much more empirical data is called for, the author contends, before definitive conclusions can be made.