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A survey of small-town Jews indicates that they generally conceive their relationship to their communities in terms of personal relations rather than economic factors; that they regard the general populace rather than the Jewish community as their primary reference group; that they incorporate to a considerable degree the small-town Weltanschauung; that they tend to be ’localites’ rather than ’cosmopolites’; that they view non-Jews in universalistic rather than particularistic terms; that they join organizations, both Jewish and non-Jewish, which stress status and exclusiveness; and that there is no significant difference in number between their Jewish and non-Jewish friends. The data lead us to the conclusion that small-town Jews are in general ’residents’ rather than ’strangers.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family as an institution may change, but usually this is a slow and to the members of society partly unnoticeable process. Explicit decisions to change or abolish the family as a social institution has occurred very seldom. Exceptions are the Soviet-Union policy for some years after the revolution, and the establishment of the Kibbutzim in Israel. Since the existing family order is often taken for granted, one do not always find that prevailing ideologies account for the family as such, either in a supportive or in a rejecting way. In the Scandinavian countries, as in most Western societies, the Christian value system may be said to be as an ideology, the most ardent supporter of the traditional family. One may note in passing that the inheritance of the old Hebraic patriarchal family pattern as the ideal family to be defended by the Christian churches has left a very special mark on the Catholic as well as the Protestant views on the family institution, not to speak of the Jewish ideas about the family.