• Babies and Bathwater
• Harriet Hartman (bio)

Let me begin by expressing my admiration for the passion and coherence with which Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl present their argument, and how they have addressed many of the criticisms of the first publication of this argument, to strengthen its impact even more.¹ I do take issue with some of the steps and assumptions in the argument, as I will detail below. At the same time, I do believe that, in the end, I agree with many of the conclusions that must be drawn from its implications and their implicit call to action.

Let me begin with some disclaimers. I am a woman. Not only that, but I am a woman who, both in collaboration with and independently of my husband, Moshe Hartman, z"l, has engaged in the same kind of fertility and intermarriage quantitative analyses of the NJPS and the ensuing PEW surveys that Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl critique.² In footnote thirty-four of their current article, Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl mention our work, perhaps with some puzzlement and uncertainty about what to conclude from the fact that our analysis was not tied to the communal policy discourses directly. While both my husband and I were very concerned about Jewish continuity broadly (and not only specifically in terms of fertility and intermarriage implications—but not excluding them either), we saw our roles as social scientists to produce the knowledge and let someone else use it as they saw fit. Parenthetically, that kept some "shalom bayit" (household peace) since I doubt that the two of us would have agreed on the same policy recommendations, coming as we did from different religious, national, and gendered backgrounds. So why do I bring it up now? Because I also have come to understand how for all of us, our personal and professional narratives are intertwined, and that it behooves us to weigh that interaction when [End Page 235] we interpret research directions, interpretations, and conclusions. I fully embraced Debra Kaufman's guest-edited special issue of Contemporary Jewry, "Demographers on Demography: The Place of Narrative in Jewish Identity Research"³ on the role of narrative in demography. And that is how I understood Lila Corwin Berman's Speaking of Jews, as well both the current and the earlier essay by Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl referred to above.⁴ All science is driven by some agenda, and the more we are aware of it, the better we are able to fill in the broader picture with either more appropriate data or more appropriate interpretations.

So, I applaud this exposé. But I am also concerned about where it's going. I am concerned because it threatens to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak (and I'm sorry if the metaphor makes someone cringe, but it's apt). I agree that fertility and intermarriage should not constitute the sole or overriding communal approaches to the problematic of Jewish continuity, nor the sole endeavors of social science as it seeks to reveal the truth of a thriving community. But population size is related to fertility, and population vitality is related to population size, as well as morbidity and mortality. Population dynamics contribute to the numbers, energy, and resources of a population and need to be given due attention. We do need data, and careful interpretation of it, to reveal how intermarriage is related to traditional—and non-traditional—practices of Judaism, as well as how this relationship is changing over time.⁵ The national surveys have received appropriate criticism for adhering too closely to traditional religious measures of Jewish engagement (such as keeping kosher, lighting Shabbat candles, fasting on Yom Kippur); we also have data that incorporates less traditional measures, but maybe not enough of it, both qualitatively and quantitatively. And here the bias toward quantitative measures comes under appropriate fire. But it isn't a bias borne out by the wealth of social science published in Contemporary Jewry, the primary venue for scholarly publications in the social science of Jewry, as I discuss below. [End Page 236]

Some of you may be aware that Contemporary Jewry responded to the revelations of Steven M...

• 婴儿和沐浴水
• 哈丽特·哈特曼（生物）

首先，让我对伯曼，罗森布拉特和斯塔尔提出自己的论点的热情和连贯性表示钦佩，并赞扬他们如何解决该论点首次发表的许多批评，以进一步增强其影响力。¹我确实对参数中的某些步骤和假设有疑问，下面将详细介绍。同时，我确实相信，最后，我同意必须从其含义及其隐含的行动呼吁中得出的许多结论。

让我从一些免责声明开始。我是一个女人。不仅如此，而且我还是一个女人，她与丈夫Moshe Hartman（z“ l）合作并独立于其进行NJPS的生育率和通婚定量分析以及随后的PEW调查（与Berman一样） ，罗森布拉特（Rosenblatt）和斯塔尔（Stahl）评论²Berman，Rosenblatt和Stahl在他们当前文章的脚注34中提到了我们的工作，也许对我们得出的结论感到有些困惑和不确定，因为我们的分析并不直接与公共政策话语联系在一起。虽然我和我丈夫都非常关注犹太人的连贯性（不仅在生育率和通婚方面特别关注，但也不排除在外），但我们看到了我们作为社会科学家的作用，以产生知识并让其他人使用他们认为合适。附带说明，这保留了一些“ shalom刺饵”“（家庭和平），因为我怀疑我们两个人会同意相同的政策建议，就像我们来自不同的宗教，民族和性别背景一样。那么为什么现在提出呢？因为我也来了为了理解我们所有人的个人和专业叙事是如何交织在一起的，当我们解释研究方向，解释和结论时[End Page 235]，我们应该权衡这种互动。我完全接受Debra Kaufman特邀编辑的特辑当代犹太人问题》，“人口统计学上的人口统计学家：叙事在犹太人身份研究中的地位”，第^3期，关于叙事在人口统计学中的作用，这就是我对莉拉·科温·伯曼（Lila Corwin Berman）讲犹太人的方式的理解。，以及上述Berman，Rosenblatt和Stahl撰写的当前和早期论文。⁴所有科学都是由某个议程驱动的，我们对它的了解越多，我们越能用更合适的数据或更合适的解释来填充更广阔的前景。

因此，我为这次展览感到鼓舞。但是我也很担心它的发展方向。我很担心，因为它有可能用洗澡水把婴儿扔出去，可以这么说（对不起，这个比喻使某人畏缩了，但这很恰当）。我同意生育和通婚不应构成解决犹太人连续性问题的唯一或压倒性的共同方法，也不应构成试图揭示繁荣的社区真相的社会科学的唯一努力。但是，人口规模是涉及到生育和人口活力是与人口规模以及发病率和死亡率有关。人口动态影响人口的数量，能量和资源，需要给予应有的重视。我们确实需要数据，并需要对其进行仔细的解释，以揭示通婚与犹太教的传统和非传统实践之间的关系，以及这种关系如何随着时间而变化。⁵全国调查因对犹太人参与的传统宗教措施过于严格而受到适当的批评（例如保持犹太洁食，点燃安息日蜡烛，对赎罪日斋戒）；我们也有包含较少传统指标的数据，但定性和定量方面的数据可能不够用。在这种情况下，对定量措施的偏见正受到适当的抨击。但是，这并不是由《当代犹太人》（Jewry）所发表的社会科学财富所证实的。[结束页236]

你们中有些人可能知道当代犹太人回应了史蒂文·马修（Steven M ...