This book contains a collection of chapters about the Jewish family across different parts of the world, with contributions representing Africa (Ivory Coast and Ethiopia), Latin America, Australia, Europe (Germany), Russia, Israel, Canada, Indian families in Canada, and a comparative chapter of Ba’a lot Teshuva in the US and Argentina. Where much existing research and literature on the dynamic process of intermarriage and (Jewish) family life has taken primarily a historical approach, here the authors together present a broad, global, comparative approach.
The book uses an open systems model to organize comparisons between Jewish families the world over. Each case study focuses on Jewish family life in a particular country or region of the world and, taken together, cover an extensive range of topics – including but not limited to: demographic and socio-economic description of the Jewish families; immigration patterns; family roles; family engagement in Jewish life; marriage formation; interfaith families; same-sex couples/parenting – surveying the extant research and/or reporting on new research about contemporary families, within the historical context. The book therefore presents a novel framework for understanding the variations in Jewish families to highlight what Jewish families the world over have in common (whether within the microsystem of the family or in the family’s relationships with the environment), as well as using the open systems model to explain main types of difference between the various regions.