“How Do I See Myself? It’s Complicated”: Qualitatively Eliciting, Analyzing and Understanding Individuals’ Self-Attitudes towards Identity in an Australian Jewish Community

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well-crafted, lucid, and well-written paper on Australian Jewish identity. I recommend publishing it.

Just one reservation: There is one similar article recently published (2020) in the Journal of International Migration and Integration (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-019-00714-8). I would recommend that the author add a reference to this paper and explain in a very detailed manner how the present contribution differs from this publication and what it adds to it.   

Author Response

Thank you very much to the reviewer for their feedback and kind words. I am familiar with this paper; neglecting to cite this was a poor oversight on my part and I have remedied that in the revised version. The main difference between the two papers is methodological; that 2020 paper draws on ethnographic data and interviews for its observations, whereas this paper elicits a dataset of self-description qualitative data from individuals and makes observations on that (and describes this method in-depth, which is its major novel contribution). I have clarified this (including citation) in the revised text.

Reviewer 2 Report

 

 

This is an interesting article which takes an important and understudied area – Jewish identity in South East Queensland – and offers some insights and reflections on how this identity is shaped and how people express their identities.

 

The article takes on a lot, which is to be commended. However at times it felt as though the author was a bit unsure about what to primarily focus on: whether the article is an examination of Jewish expressions of identity or whether it is an exploration of a methodology for doing research. As a result, both of these facets are discussed but neither is addressed in sufficient depth. From the abstract, it seems that the intention is to really focus on Jewish identities, and so I would suggest that the author strip away some of the methodological discussion and draw out in more depth, and with a more sophisticated account, what these expressions of Jewish identity mean and contain.

 

Moving through the article, it opens with some very general statements. I would encourage the author to get straight into it, rather than opening with vague generalities. The author might want to start with an anecdote from their research, for instance.

 

The outline of Jewish history is incredibly broad brushstrokes, which means that a lot of complexity and debate is skipped over in favour of quite general statements and assertions. It would be better to limit the timeframe being looked at and instead delve into difficult questions in more depth. For instance, what Israel and Zionism means, what ‘continuity’ means, and even what ‘identity’ means, would benefit from being fleshed out more completely and precisely.

 

Particularly given that this research uses ethnographic and qualitative approaches, it takes rather too long to get down into the specifics of the people being discussed and what they reported. The overall framework for the article should better reflect the research being undertaken: closely read case studies would be helpful in being precise.

 

Additionally, it would be interesting to get more of a sense of the different adjectives that people used together. Providing the lists in the way they currently are enables an understanding of the spread of adjectives, but which did people use together? And what can this tell us? While this was hinted at, I found myself wanting to know more about the complexity of identities, and this complexity was largely avoided.

 

Finally, while the analysis drew out some important and useful reflections, substantially more could have been made of this. I would encourage the author to go back to the primary materials, and also to think a bit more what this all means. They cite most of the necessary scholars of Jewish life and history in Australia, but they could have shown a bit more how this research is truly situated within – and challenges – what is known and theorised about Jewishness.

 

This is important research and will make a useful contribution to a body of scholarship. I commend the author on their work and look forward to seeing a revised version published.

Author Response

Thank you so much to the reviewer for their detailed list of questions, suggestions and observations. In particular, your insight has caused me to revisit the way I have positioned this paper and grounded its contribution throughout. Please see the attached file where I have provided detailed responses to each of your comments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf