My name is Charles Terdjman, I am a 3rd year student in Sciences Po Paris, and I would like to present my comparative research about the Jewish Community in the Global Cities. Sincerely interested in the social and political studies, I wanted to analyze a social or religious minority for this research experience, and I quickly decided to focus on this specific community for a couple of reasons. Even though the existing literature on this theme was quite abundant, I felt I had a great opportunity in bringing my work to the understanding of the topic as introducing a comparative element with three Global Cities: Chicago, Mexico City and Paris. This specific community seemed interested as I had to deal with three Jewish communities that are each really distinct from another, and that permitted an enriching analysis on some specific issues as their integration, their acculturation and their assimilation in their societies, as well as the possibility of defining a "Jewish cultural identity". I was led to study on the historical backgrounds of these communities, to understand more precisely their current situation in their States, in terms of economic and social status, but also as actors of their cities, in politics, in arts, or in sciences.
[...] The cultural identity of the Paris community is also the most attached to Israel, via organizations, Zionist structures located in Paris, but it's also the most targeted by anti-Semitism acts between the three cities, probably because of the huge confusion that occurred in France and Paris, between the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the situation of the Muslim and Jewish communities. Mexico City community clearly appears as completely different from the two others, but still, the study of it teaches a lot about the understanding of the others. [...]
[...] Rosenthal speaks about a “Voluntary segregation in a high-status area combined with a modicum of Jewish education that appears to be effective in preventing large-scale assimilation.” This theory is quite interesting comparing to the existing literature because it puts into relief the disambiguation that has to be made between the integration of the Jewish community in the city, and its assimilation in a cultural meaning. After a large-scale integration period, we can notice today with the following map a resettlement of the Jewish community in the Northern limit of the city, which can be understood as a voluntary form of ghetto to make sure that the identity of the minority stays intact. [...]
[...] Today's big challenge for Chicago as a global city is to find a place for a new form of cultural identity of the Jewish community, a new culture that mixes both, creating some new expressions and habits. For instance, we can now speak about Chrismukah, fusion between the Jewish holiday of Hanouka and Christmas, showing a clear evolution towards the interpenetration of both cultures, in everyday life. Representation of the community on TV, especially TV shows is particularly relevant to the U.S. [...]
[...] In Mexico, the Jewish people say that they are integrated, but in a different meaning, that is to say, integrated as an efficient and close community that preserves its culture and identity around the religion, the historical background, the way of life and the social network. We saw that in the United States, intermarriages concerned more than a couple over two, whereas in Mexico City only of the population is concerned by assimilation. In Chicago and in Paris partly, the process of conversion is quite simple because of the large amount of liberal congregations, whereas there, I also found by discussing with some Rabbis from different branches that it was generally difficult to convert to Judaism, and that such people were generally not seen fully as Jewish people. [...]
[...] But this theory is quite interesting comparing to the existing literature because it puts into relief the disambiguation that has to be made between the integration of the Jewish community in the city, and its assimilation in a cultural meaning. Professor Nelson at Fordham University explains that it is commonly thought that, once assimilated into American society, a person's ethnic identity becomes largely irrelevant to his or her political attitudes and behaviour. Then he goes against this concept and study on the link between assimilation, acculturation (with set of data such as residence, evolutions between generations) and political participation, with a special study on the Jewish population. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
