In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Continuity Crisis:The History and Sexual Politics of an American Jewish Communal Project¹
• Lila Corwin Berman (bio), Kate Rosenblatt (bio), and Ronit Y. Stahl (bio)

For decades, rumors about the sexual impropriety of certain high-profile men in Jewish studies and Jewish communal institutions circulated through whisper networks. In the ferment of #MeToo, a movement that erupted in the fall of 2017 to tackle rampant but unaddressed sexual harassment and assault, these hushed voices became louder.² Amplified by a public chorus of people fed up with silence around sexual violence, women in Jewish studies began to speak out.³ The following summer, in July 2018, investigative journalist Hannah Dreyfus reported that eight women had accused sociologist Steven M. Cohen of sexual harassment.⁴

Much like in other #MeToo cases, the immediate response to the allegations against Cohen drew focus to individual misconduct and traumas. Missing from this outcry was an examination of the broad historical structures and narratives that enabled the harassment of Jewish women by other Jews in Jewish communities (academic and otherwise) to flourish. We—three historians—collaborated on an opinion piece, published in the Forward the day after the Cohen story broke. Foregrounded in [End Page 167] the breaking news and Dreyfus's extraordinary reporting, our article sought to open new conversations by highlighting "the troubling gender and sexual politics long embedded in communal discussions of Jewish continuity and survival."⁵

We welcome the invitation to revisit our Forward article here not because we wish to rehash a painful moment in many individuals' lives, but rather because we believe that power, expertise, and gender norms are operative and entangled forces in Jewish studies and Jewish communal life deserving of historically grounded analysis. Undoubtedly, a full accounting of individual perpetrators and harms is necessary, but it is not sufficient. In the wake of our opinion piece, some critics charged us with confusing the misdeeds of one individual with the workings of an entire communal structure. We believe this is far from the case. Indeed, our analysis of the historical context in which this particular episode occurred reveals the shortsightedness of an individualized and ahistorical approach. Here we have expanded our historical discussion to demonstrate more clearly how American Jewish continuity discourse was embedded within patriarchal and misogynistic structures.⁶

A Jewish continuity paradigm emerged forcefully in the 1970s as a set of expert pronouncements and community policies that treated women and their bodies as data points in service of a particular vision of Jewish communal survival. As social scientist Michal Kravel-Tovi proposes, contrary to imagining numbers and data as "dry"—"objective, straightforward, and factual"—we would do better to acknowledge their "wetness": the "affective work invested by the leaders of the American Jewish community in the production and distribution of population statistics."⁷ Condemning intermarriage and decrying low child-bearing rates became signature features of the affective work of Jewish communal research. As it moved toward paradigmatic status—encapsulating and naturalizing a way of thinking and capable of controlling discourse and resources—Jewish continuity fixed its normative and affective power on [End Page 168] women and their bodies. According to this paradigm, a thriving Jewish future required surveying, judging, and directing (or redirecting) women's marriage and fertility choices, regardless of the nature of these choices or whether they were choices at all. Instead, the continuity paradigm gained vital communal investment and made its patriarchal and misogynistic structures appear necessary and, often, unremarkable.

In reflecting on the charged and critical responses we received to our Forward piece, we recognize the importance of revealing the construction and tenacity of the continuity paradigm and its deep entrenchment in the politics of Jewish social research and communal priority-setting. In so doing, we also identify its connections to and resonance with American political culture's twentieth-century emphasis on the family and "family values." In this article, we trace the emergence of the continuity paradigm to document its multiple contexts and historical contingencies. We conclude with an analysis of the criticism of our Forward article, arguing that some of this criticism made manifest the exact patterns we sought to document.

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Neither the ideological framework of continuity nor...

中文翻译：

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连续性危机：美国犹太社区项目的历史和性政治

代替摘要，这里是内容的简要摘录：

• 连续性危机：美国犹太社区项目的历史和性政治¹
• Lila Corwin Berman（生物），Kate Rosenblatt（生物）和Ronit Y. Stahl（生物）

几十年来，关于在犹太研究和犹太社区机构中某些知名男性的性不当行为的传闻通过耳语网络流传。在2017年秋天爆发的旨在应对猖but但未解决的性骚扰和攻击的运动#MeToo中，这些低沉的声音变得更大了。²犹太人研究中的妇女因公开的人们对性暴力感到厌烦而声名狼藉，因此开始大声疾呼。³次年的2018年7月，调查记者汉娜·德雷福斯（Hannah Dreyfus）报道说，有八名妇女指控社会学家史蒂文·科恩（Steven M.Cohen）性骚扰。⁴

就像在其他#MeToo案件中一样，对针对Cohen的指控的立即反应将注意力集中在个人的不当行为和创伤上。这场大声疾呼中缺少的是对广泛的历史结构和叙事的考察，这些历史结构和叙事使犹太社区（学术界和其他方面）的其他犹太人对犹太妇女的骚扰得以蓬勃发展。我们三历史学家，合作上的评论文章，发表在转发当天科恩的故事传出后。在[End Page 167]最新消息和Dreyfus的非常规报道的基础上，我们的文章力求强调“长期以来在犹太人的持续性和生存的公共讨论中嵌入的令人不安的性别和性政治”，以开启新的对话。⁵

我们欢迎再次访问我们的转发的邀请本文不是因为我们希望在许多人的生活中度过一个痛苦的时刻，而是因为我们认为，权力，专业知识和性别规范是犹太研究和犹太社区生活中不可或缺的纠缠力量，值得进行基于历史的分析。毫无疑问，有必要对个人犯罪者和危害进行全面核算，但这还不够。在发表我们的观点之后，一些批评家指责我们将一个人的不当行为与整个社区结构的运作相混淆。我们认为，情况远非如此。确实，我们对发生此特定事件的历史背景的分析揭示了个性化和历史性方法的短视性。⁶

犹太连续性范式在1970年代有力地出现，它是一系列的专家声明和社区政策，将妇女及其身体作为数据点提供给特定的犹太社区生存愿景。正如社会学家Michal Kravel-Tovi提出的那样，与将数字和数据想象为“枯燥”（“客观，直接和事实”）相反，我们最好承认他们的“湿润”：“由领导者投入的情感性工作”美国犹太社区的人口统计数据的生产和分配。” ⁷谴责通婚和降低低生育率成为犹太社区研究的情感特征。当它进入范式状态时（封装并归纳出一种思维方式并能够控制话语和资源），犹太人的连续性将其规范性和情感性力量固定在[End Page 168]妇女及其身体上。根据这种范例，蓬勃发展的犹太人未来需要调查，判断和指导（或重新定向）妇女的婚姻和生育能力选择，而不论这些选择的性质如何，或者根本就不是这些选择。取而代之的是，连续性范式获得了重要的公共投资，并使其父权制和厌恶女权的结构显得必要，而且通常不起眼。

在反思我们对前瞻性文章提出的批评和批判性回应时，我们认识到揭示连续性范式的构造和坚韧性及其在犹太社会研究和社区优先权设定政治中的深厚根基的重要性。通过这样做，我们还确定了它与20世纪美国政治文化对家庭和“家庭价值观”的强调之间的联系和共鸣。在本文中，我们跟踪了连续性范式的出现，以记录其多种情况和历史偶然性。最后，我们对“转发”文章的批评进行了分析，认为其中一些批评表明了我们试图记录的确切模式。

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连续性的意识形态框架和...