Thread by @profjenthompson

So the 2020 Pew Research Forum study on Jewish Americans is about to drop and people are getting anxious. Which people, you might ask? 1/?

The ones who are usually targets for people who want to lob accusations of “badness” at other Jews. 2/?

Intermarried Jews and their families. Non- or anti-Zionist Jews. Secular or unaffiliated Jews. Even Jews of color for some reason, though they are not “guilty” by definition of thought crimes the way the other groups are sometimes viewed to be. 3/?

And given the recent Steven M. C***n rehabilitation tour, there is a 100% chance that this study us going to be used to support harmful attitudes and practices toward Jews in the groups I mentioned above. The rehabilitation tour was all about consolidating power …. 4/?

…and solidarity among people who hold such views or are persuadable. Its explicit goal was to undermine scholars who question retrograde “common wisdom“ about intermarriage, Jewish belonging, continuity, gender roles, &c. 5/?

I’m already frustrated to see Pew 2020 webinars being organized that feature the usual experts and none of the people challenging them. This time it’s not just a qual vs quant issue, though obv as a qualitative scholar I’ll never let that go. 6/?

Disability rights activists have taught over and over again: “Nothing about us without us.” Journalists, please don’t let the same old voices have the last word on Pew 2020. If you want help finding scholars with divergent views, I would love to help you. 😍😍😍 7/?

There are going to be arguments that dehumanize and instrumentalize people—that treat people as bad for not carrying out goals like “Jewish continuity” that someone else made up and determined how to operationalize. Don’t let this slide. 8/?

Fun fact: in my dissertation/book research about intermarriage, I asked a bunch of different rabbis, “when we talk about Jewish continuity, what is it that we’re continuing?” Guess what: there was zero consensus and some didn’t even have an answer. Because the answer isn’t … 9/?

…obvious, as some would have us believe. There are many ways of being Jewish. But if no one tries to pin down what “Jewish continuity” means, we can pretend or be misled into thinking there’s a particular form of it that’s acceptable to the exclusion of most/all others. 10/?

I haven’t seen the 2020 findings yet—my friends who worked on the new study are too ethical to give me advance access. 😒 But the findings don’t even matter, in a sense, bc people will construe them to support their existing narratives. 11/?

Talking to @brieloskota has me thinking a bit more than usual about empathy. That’s often what’s missing in the hot takes on new studies. Let’s try something new. How can we find new opportunities for empathy and widening our circles of concern in whatever Pew 2020 tells us? 12/?

Where might we find unexpected solidarity in a world where that is needed more than ever? 13/?

This is why we need social historians, ethnographer said, and ethicists involved in discussions about Pew 2020 itself as well as critiques of the discussions. Nothing happening in 2020/2021 happened in a vacuum, even though many of our experiences may have been sui generis. 14/?

I don’t want to see discussions of Pew 2020 limited to a bunch of limited and possibly stupid hot takes. There are implications for people’s actual lives at stake, in a lot of different senses. Use your words for good and justice. 15/15 I guess.

“Ethnographer said” should be just “ethnographers” 😬

This thread is based on decades of ethnographic and other qualitative research that I and others have done. I'll link to some of this work below. It'll take a while because I have to teach in 45 minutes.

This book is based on about a decade of ethnographic research. rutgersuniversitypress.org/jewish-on-thei…

On the ways that surveys like Pew's get twisted to serve particular narratives: academia.edu/16549859/_Reac…

On the crucial role of women, even non-Jewish ones, in creating Jewish families, and the real power that lies in women's labor in the home: academia.edu/16550481/_He_W…