The Experience of Being Jewish: Living with Antisemitism

Sari Kosdon, Alex Keller, Jack Berry, David Stiver, Kelly Whiteford, Lynn O’Connor

Abstract


In an anonymous online study of 242 Jewish-identified participants (71 men, 163 women, 8 other; mean age = 37.8 years) living in ethnically diverse communities we found levels of antisemitism significantly associated with depression, survivor guilt proneness, and self-hate. Involvement in the Jewish community was significantly associated with life satisfaction even when adjusting for the effects of discrimination. A subsample of 124 responded to open ended questions with narratives. Thirty percent indicated feeling unsafe when identifying as Jewish.


Keywords


ethnicity, antisemitism, culture

Full Text:

PDF HTML EPUB XML

References


American Defamation League. (2014). ADL GLOBAL 100: AN INDEX OF ANTI-

SEMITISM. Retrieved September 22, 2018, from

https://global100.adl.org/about/global100.

Altman, A. N., Inman, A. G., Fine, S. G., Ritter, H. A., & Howard, E. E. (2010).

Exploration of Jewish ethnic identity. Journal of Counseling &

Development, 88(2), 163-173.

Barocas, H., & Barocas, C. (1980). Separation and individuation conflict in children of

Holocaust survivors. Journal of Contemporary Psychology, 38, 417-452.

Braga, L. L., Mello, M. F., & Fiks, J. P. (2012). Transgenerational transmission of trauma and resilience: a

qualitative study with Brazilian offspring of Holocaust survivors. BMC psychiatry, 12(1), 134.

Byers, M., & Krieger, R. (2007). From ugly duckling to cool fashion icon: Sarah Jessica

Parker's blonde ambitions. Shofar, 43-63.

De Mendelssohn, F. (2008). Transgenerational transmission of trauma: Guilt, shame, and the “heroic

dilemma”. International journal of group psychotherapy, 58(3), 389-401.

Eitinger, L., & Strom, A. (1973). Mortality and morbidity after excessive stress: A follow-up investigation of

Norwegian concentration camp survivors. New York: Humanities Press.

Felsen, I. (1998). Transgenerational transmission of effects of the Holocaust. In Y. Danieli (Ed.), International

handbook of multigenerational legacies of trauma (pp. 43-68). New York: Plenum.

Fischer, A. R., & Moradi, B. (2001). Racial and ethnic identity: Recent developments and

needed directions. In J. G. Ponterotto, J. M. Casas, L. A. Suzuki, & C. M. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of Multicultural Counseling (341–370). Sage Publications, Inc.

Galchinsky, M. (1994). Glimpsing Golus in the golden land: Jews and multiculturalism in

America. Judaism, 43(4), 360.

Greenberg, C. (2013). I’m not White–I’m Jewish”: The racial politics of American

Jews. Race, color, identity: Rethinking discourses about “Jews” in the twenty-

first century, 35-55.

Hirsch, J. M. (2003). Survivor guilt and transgenerational transmission of trauma in Jewish Holocaust survivors

and their children (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (UMI No. 13114120).

Kakhnovets, R., & Wolf, L. (2011). An investigation of Jewish ethnic identity and Jewish

affiliation for American Jews. North American Journal of Psychology, 13(3), 501.

Kosdon, S. M., O’Connor, L. E., Berry, J. W. (2019) The Experience of Being Jewish:

Living with Antisemitism (unpublished doctoral dissertation). The Wright Institute. Berkeley, CA

Langman, P. F. (1999). Jewish Issues in Multiculturalism: A Handbook for Educators

and Clinicians. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc.

Marom, A. (2010). Finding the past within the present: The significance of the Holocaust experience for the third

generation (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (UMI No. 3437949).

Neiderland, W. G. (1968). Clinical observations on the “survivor syndrome.” International

Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 313-315.

Neiderland, W. G. (1981). The survivor syndrome: Further observations and dimensions. Journal

of American Psychoanalytic Association, 29, 413-425.

O’Connor, L. E., Berry, J. W., Weiss, J., & Gilbert, P. (2002). Guilt, fear, submission, and

empathy in depression. Journal of affective disorders, 71(1-3), 19-27.

O'Connor, L. E., Berry, J. W., Weiss, J., Bush, M., & Sampson, H. (1997). Interpersonal guilt:

The development of a new measure. Journal of clinical psychology, 53(1), 73-89.

Phelan, P. (2003). Unmarked: The politics of performance. New York: Routledge.

Rosen, D. C., Kuczynski, A. M., & Kanter, J. W. (2018). The Antisemitism-Related Stress Inventory: Development

and preliminary psychometric evaluation. Psychology of violence, 8(6), 726.

Rubin, D. I. (2017). Whiter shade of pale: Making the case for Jewish presence in the

multicultural classroom. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 19(2), 131-145.

Scharf, M. (2007). Long-term effects of trauma: Psychosocial functioning of the second and third generation of

Holocaust survivors. Development and psychopathology, 19(2), 603-622.

Schlosser, L. Z. (2003). Christian privilege: Breaking a sacred taboo. Journal of

Multicultural Counseling and Development, 31(1), 44-51.

Schlosser, L. Z. (2006). Affirmative psychotherapy for American Jews. Psychotherapy:

Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 43, 424-435.

Singer, J. M. (2008). A hidden minority amidst White privilege. Multicultural

Perspectives, 10(1), 47–51.

Sorscher, N., & Cohen, L. J. (1997). Trauma in children of Holocaust survivors:

Transgenerational effects. American journal of orthopsychiatry, 67(3), 493-500.

Volkan, V. D. (2001). Transgenerational transmissions and chosen traumas: An aspect of large-

group identity. Group Analysis, 34(1), 79-97.

Weinstein, L., & Jackson, C. (2010). College student anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli

sentiment. College Student Journal, 44(2), 565-568.

Whitbeck, L., Adams, G., Hoyt, D., & Chen, X. (2004). Conceptualizing and measuring

historical trauma among American Indian people. American Journal of Community Psychology, 33(3-4), 119-130.

Yehuda, R., Halligan, S. L., & Grossman, R. (2001). Childhood trauma and risk for PTSD:

relationship to intergenerational effects of trauma, parental PTSD, and cortisol excretion. Development and psychopathology, 13(3), 733-753.

Yehuda, R., Bierer, L. M., Schmeidler, J., Aferiat, D. H., Breslau, I., & Dolan, S. (2000). Low cortisol and risk for

PTSD in adult offspring of holocaust survivors. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(8), 1252-1259.

Yehuda, R., Schmeidler, J., Wainberg, M., Binder-Brynes, K., & Duvdevani, T. (1998).

Vulnerability to posttraumatic stress disorder in adult offspring of Holocaust survivors. American Journal of Psychiatry, 155(9), 1163-1171.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Estadísticas
Visitas al Abstract:705
PDF:666
HTML:722
EPUB:37
XML:305


{PSOCIAL} Journal of Research in Social Psychology. Faculty of Social Sciences | University of Buenos Aires (UBA)

ISSN 2422-619X. Semiannual publication (January-June and July-December).
 
Design: Mae Bermudez
 
 Jorunal Indexed and listed in:
  • ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences) [registry]
  • Latindex Catálogo 2.0 (Regional Cooperative Online Information System for Scholarly Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portuga) [registry]
  • DOAJ (Directory Open Access Journals) [registry]
  • MIAR (Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals) [registry]
  • PSICODOC (Online Bibliographic Database Madrid Official College of Psychologists) [registry] 
  • RDIUBA (Institutional Digital Repository) [registry]
  • REDIB (Iberoamerican Network for Innovation and Scientific Knowledge) [registry]
  • Open AIRE (Open Access Infraestructure for Research in Europe) [registry] 
  • Red LatinRev / FLACSO library (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences) [registry]
  • BINPAR (National Bibliography of Registered Periodicals) [registry]
  • LATINOAMERICANA (Association of Academic Journals of Humanities and Social Sciences) [registry]
  • CLASE (Latin-American Citations in Social Sciences and Humanities) [registry]
  • Sherpa Romeo [registry]
  • Basic Nucleus of Argentine Scientific Journals [registry]
  • Mirab@l [registry]
  • Cabells' Journalytics [registry]
  • CIRC (Integrated Classification of Scientific Journals) [registry]
  • AmeliCA [registry]
  • LILACS (Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature [registry]
  • EBSCO (Elton Bryson Stephens Company Information Services) [registry]
  • Malena [registry] 
  • Sara Network [registry]
  • SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) [registry]
  • Redalyc (Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain and. Portuga) [registry]
 

This journal is licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)