Mervin F. Verbit

Last updated
Mervin F. Verbit
Born (1936-11-24) November 24, 1936 (age 87)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Alma mater
Scientific career
Fields Sociology, sociology of religion
Institutions Brooklyn College, Touro College

Mervin Feldman Verbit (born November 24, 1936) is an American sociologist whose work focuses on sociology of religion, American Jews and the American Jewish community. He is currently the chair of the Sociology Department at Touro College.

Contents

Academic background

Verbit was born in Philadelphia in 1936. [1] He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania where he received his B.A. and M.A. Verbit received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. [2] [3] His dissertation studied the religious attitudes of Jewish college students. [4] Verbit was a full-time professor of sociology at Brooklyn College [5] [6] and has been visiting professor at several institutions, among them Bar Ilan University, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Yeshiva University, and Jewish Theological Seminary. [7] [8] Verbit was appointed deputy chair of Touro College's Sociology Department in 2006, [9] and was later appointed as the department chair.

Other areas of academic involvement include serving as Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Contemporary Jewry journal (1977-1980), as a contributing editor for Review of Religious Research (1977-1979), and as a member of the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies' Advisory Board (1990-199?). [10]

Measures of religiosity

Verbit was among the sociologists of religion to explore the theoretical analysis of the sociological dimensions of religiosity. His contribution includes measuring religiosity through six different "components" (similar to Charles Glock's five-dimensional approach (Glock, 1972: 39) [11] ), and the individual's behaviour vis-à-vis each one of these components has a number of "dimensions", making it a twenty-four-dimensional measure of religiosity. [12] [13] [14]

The twenty-four-dimensional religiosity measure

Verbit's six components of religiosity are:

Verbit's four dimensions for measuring the above six components are:

Verbit theorized that each of the six components could be measured along the four dimensions (e.g. ritual is measured by ritual content, ritual frequency, ritual intensity, ritual centrality).

24 Measure
scale of religiosity
Dimensions of religiosity
ContentFrequencyIntensityCentrality
Components of
religiosity
RitualRitual contentRitual frequencyRitual intensityRitual centrality
DoctrineDoctrine contentDoctrine frequencyDoctrine intensityDoctrine centrality
EmotionEmotion contentEmotion frequencyEmotion intensityEmotion centrality
KnowledgeKnowledge contentKnowledge frequencyKnowledge intensityKnowledge centrality
EthicsEthics contentEthics frequencyEthics intensityEthics centrality
CommunityCommunity contentCommunity frequencyCommunity intensityCommunity centrality

Involvement in Jewish academic organizations

Mervin Verbit served as the first president of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ), a cross-disciplinary organization of individuals whose research concerns the Jewish people throughout the world. [15] He was president of the ASSJ from 1971 to 1973. [16] [17]

Verbit is currently a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a Jerusalem-based institute for Jewish policy research. [18]

Verbit served on Technical Advisory Committee for the National Jewish Population Study (NJPS) 2000-2001 national survey of American Jews. [19]

Verbit has organized two academic conferences for university faculty to familiarize themselves with topics relating to Israel. [20]

Sociological research on Soviet Jewry

In 1976, Benjamin Fain initiated a sociological study on Soviet Jewry. After emigrating to Israel in 1977, Fain and Verbit published the study on the Jewish identity of Soviet Jews. The study was published in 1984, through the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. [21] The report recounts the extraordinary faithfulness of Soviet Jews to the surviving remnants of Judaism under the rule of the Soviet Union. [22]

Study findings

The study used data gathered from a 1976 survey organized by Fain. The respondents were some 1,200 Soviet Jews who had not taken any steps to try to leave the country. Fifty three percent of the respondents reported to respect religion though they did not believe, compared with thirty five percent who entertained various negative positions on religion. Eleven percent had more positive attitudes towards religion. [23]

Family

Verbit's daughter, Shira Richman, is a behavior therapy consultant, and the author of two books on autism in children; Raising a Child with Autism and Encouraging Appropriate Behavior for Children on the Autism Spectrum. [24]

Publications

Related Research Articles

The Oxford English Dictionary defines religiosity as: "Religiousness; religious feeling or belief. [...] Affected or excessive religiousness". Different scholars have seen this concept as broadly about religious orientations and degrees of involvement or commitment. Religiosity is measured at the levels of individuals or groups and there is a lack of agreement on what criteria would constitute religiosity among scholars. Sociologists of religion have observed that an individual's experience, beliefs, sense of belonging, and behavior often are not congruent with their actual religious behavior, since there is much diversity in how one can be religious or not. Multiple problems exist in measuring religiosity. For instance, measures of variables such as church attendance produce different results when different methods are used - such as traditional surveys vs time-use surveys.

Jewish studies is an academic discipline centered on the study of Jews and Judaism. Jewish studies is interdisciplinary and combines aspects of history, Middle Eastern studies, Asian studies, Oriental studies, religious studies, archeology, sociology, languages, political science, area studies, women's studies, and ethnic studies. Jewish studies as a distinct field is mainly present at colleges and universities in North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish identity</span> Perceiving oneself as a Jew

Jewish identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a Jew and as relating to being Jewish. Under a broader definition, Jewish identity does not depend on whether a person is regarded as a Jew by others, or by an external set of religious, or legal, or sociological norms. Jewish identity does not need to imply religious orthodoxy. Accordingly, Jewish identity can be cultural in nature. Jewish identity can involve ties to the Jewish community. Orthodox Judaism bases Jewishness on matrilineal descent. According to Jewish law (halacha), all those born of a Jewish mother are considered Jewish, regardless of personal beliefs or level of observance of Jewish law. Progressive Judaism and Haymanot Judaism in general base Jewishness on having at least one Jewish parent, while Karaite Judaism bases Jewishness only on paternal lineage. These differences between the major Jewish movements are the source of the disagreement and debate about who is a Jew.

Religion in Israel is manifested primarily in Judaism, the ethnic religion of the Jewish people. The State of Israel declares itself as a "Jewish and democratic state" and is the only country in the world with a Jewish-majority population. Other faiths in the country include Islam, Christianity and the religion of the Druze people. Religion plays a central role in national and civil life, and almost all Israeli citizens are automatically registered as members of the state's 14 official religious communities, which exercise control over several matters of personal status, especially marriage. These recognized communities are Orthodox Judaism, Islam, the Druze faith, the Catholic Church, Greek Orthodox Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Armenian Apostolic Church, Anglicanism, and the Baháʼí Faith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baal teshuva movement</span> Return of secular Jews to religious Judaism since the 1960s

The baal teshuva movement is a description of the return of secular Jews to religious Judaism. The term baal teshuva is from the Talmud, literally meaning "master of repentance". The term is used to refer to a worldwide phenomenon among the Jewish people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of emotions</span> Branch of sociology

The sociology of emotions applies sociological theorems and techniques to the study of human emotions. As sociology emerged primarily as a reaction to the negative effects of modernity, many normative theories deal in some sense with emotion without forming a part of any specific subdiscipline: Karl Marx described capitalism as detrimental to personal 'species-being', Georg Simmel wrote of the deindividualizing tendencies of 'the metropolis', and Max Weber's work dealt with the rationalizing effect of modernity in general.

Charles S. Liebman was a political scientist and prolific author on Jewish life and Israel. A professor at Bar-Ilan University, he previously served on university faculties in the United States.

Hiloni, plural hilonim, is a social category in Israel, designating the least religious segment among the Jewish public. The other three subgroups on the scale of Jewish-Israeli religiosity are the masortim, "traditional"; datiim, "religious"; and haredim, "ultra-religious" ("ultra-Orthodox"). In the 2018 Israel Central Bureau of Statistics' survey, 43.2% of Jews identified as hiloni.

Doctrine is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system. The etymological Greek analogue is "catechism".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamin Fain</span> Israeli physicist (1930–2013)

Benjamin Fain was an Israeli physicist, professor-emeritus, and former refusenik.

Jack Nusan Porter is an American writer, sociologist, human rights and social activist, and former treasurer and vice-president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He is a former assistant professor of social science at Boston University and a former research associate at Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute. Currently, he is a research associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, where he conducts research on Israeli-Russian relations. Some of his research focuses include the life of Golda Meir, the application of mathematical and statistical models to predict genocide and terrorism, and modes of resistance to genocide. His most recent books are Is Sociology Dead?, Social Theory and Social Praxis in a Post-Modern Age, The Genocidal Mind, The Jew as Outsider, and Confronting History and Holocaust.

The Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ) is a cross-disciplinary organization of individuals whose research concerns the Jewish people throughout the world founded in 1971.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven M. Cohen</span> American sociologist

Steven M. Cohen is an American sociologist whose work focuses on the American Jewish Community. He served as a Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and as Director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at Stanford University before his July 2018 resignation stemming from allegations of sexual harassment.

Marshall Sklare (1921–1992) was an American sociologist whose work focused on American Jews and the American Jewish Community. Sklare was the Klutznick Family Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Sociology at Brandeis University. Because of his contributions to the social scientific study of Jewry, Sklare is known as the "father of American Jewish sociology".

Charles Young Glock was an American sociologist whose work focuses on sociology of religion and survey research.

Chaim Isaac Waxman is an American sociologist now living in Israel.

Shalva Weil is a senior researcher at The Seymour Fox School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. In 2017, she was GIAN Distinguished Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi. She has researched Indian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and the Ten Lost Tribes and specializes in femicide, qualitative methods, violence, ethnicity, education, religion, and migration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of Jewry</span>

The sociology of Jewry involves the application of sociological theory and method to the study of the Jewish people and the Jewish religion. Sociologists are concerned with the social patterns within Jewish groups and communities; American Jewry, Israeli Jews and Jewish life in the diaspora. Sociological studies of the Jewish religion include religious membership, ritual and denominational patterns. Notable journals include Jewish Social Studies, The Jewish Journal of Sociology and Contemporary Jewry.

Norman Friedman is an American sociologist and the former chairman of the Department of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles.

Henry Alan Green is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami, and has taught there since 1984. After completing postgraduate work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Oxford, and the Sorbonne, he received his Ph.D. in Religion from St. Andrew's University in 1982. He is the published author or co-author of four books and numerous articles, and has received recognition for his work on documenting the exodus of Jews from Arab countries after the Second World War.

References

  1. ↑ Who's Who in American Jewry". The University of Michigan. 1980.
  2. ↑ "Mervin Verbit, Ph.D." Lander College for Women. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  3. ↑ "Mervin F. Verbit". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  4. ↑ Verbit, M. F. (1968). Referents for religion among Jewish college students (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University.).
  5. ↑ "Brooklyn College The Strategic Plan 2005 – 2010" (PDF). Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  6. ↑ "The Planning Council and Its Subcommittees" . Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  7. ↑ "Dr. Mervin Verbit Brooklyn, New York Professor of Sociology, Brooklyn College". edah.org. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  8. ↑ "Touro College Appoints Over 20 Undergraduate Full Time Faculty for 2006-07 Academic Year". touro.edu. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  9. ↑ "Touro College Appoints Over 20 Undergraduate Full Time Faculty for 2006-07 Academic Year". Touro College . Archived from the original on 27 November 2014. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  10. ↑ Winter, J. Alan. Swatos Jr., William H. (ed.). "Verbit, Mervin, F." Encyclopedia of Religion and Society.
  11. ↑ Glock, C. Y. (1972) "On the Study of Religious Commitment" in J. E. Faulkner (ed.) Religion’s Influence in Contemporary Society, Readings in the Sociology of Religion, Ohio: Charles E. Merril: 38-56.
  12. ↑ Verbit, M. F. (1970). The components and dimensions of religious behavior: Toward a reconceptualization of religiosity. American mosaic, 24, 39.
  13. ↑ Küçükcan, T. (2010). "Multidimensional Approach to Religion: a way of looking at religious phenomena". Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 4(10), 60-70.
  14. ↑ Küçükcan, Talip. "Can Religiosity Be Measured? Dimensions of Religious Commitment: Theories Revisited" (PDF). ULUDAĞ ÜNİVERSİTESİ İLÂHİYAT FAKÜLTESİ. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  15. ↑ See Porter, J. N. (1974). Politics and the ASSJ. Jewish Sociology & Social Research, 1(1), 5-5.
  16. ↑ "Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ)". Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Archived from the original on 11 October 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  17. ↑ Swatos, W. H., & Kivisto, P. (1998). Encyclopedia of religion and society. AltaMira Press.
  18. ↑ "JCPA - Our Key People". JCPA. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  19. ↑ "NJPS: National Technical Advisory Committee Biographies". Jewish Federations of North America. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  20. ↑ Gerstenfeld, M. (2005). American Jewry's Challenge: Conversations Confronting the Twenty-first Century. Rowman & Littlefield Pub Incorporated. p. 17.
  21. ↑ Fain, B., & Verbit, M. F. (1984). Jewishness in the Soviet Union: Report of an Empirical Survey. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
  22. ↑ Fackenheim, E. L. (1999). What is Judaism?: An interpretation for the present age. Syracuse University Press. p. 295
  23. ↑ Gitelman, Z. Y., Glants, M., & Goldman, M. I. (2003). Jewish Life after the USSR. Indiana University Press. p. 26 n15.
  24. ↑ Richman, S. (2006). Encouraging Appropriate Behavior for Children on the Autism Spectrum: "Frequently Asked Questions". Jessica Kingsley Publishers. pp. 5-6.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.