Marshall Sklare

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".

Sklare was born in Chicago on October 21, 1921, and died in Newton, Massachusetts, on March 1, 1992.

Sklare was a third-generation Jewish American, the grandson of Meyer and Eva Lipman, immigrants from the area of Kovno in Lithuania.

Sklare earned his master's degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University under the guidance of Seymour Martin Lipset.

Sklare joined the Brandeis University faculty as a professor of Jewish sociology in 1969, where as the Klutznick Family Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Sociology he was the driving force behind the creation of the University's Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, the first research center on Jewish life in America.

Sklare was president of the ASSJ from 1973 to 1975.

To date, twenty two scholars have received the Marshall Sklare Award.

He was Director of the Center from 1980 to 1986 - a period in which it became a focal point for new scholarship on the history and sociology of American Jews - and also chaired the University's Near Eastern and Judaic department in 1982 and 1983.

Sklare retired from Brandeis in December 1990.

Sklare served as the second president for the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ) following Dr. Mervin Verbit.

Starting in 1992, the ASSJ began the Marshall Sklare Award, an annual honor named in Sklare's memory recognizing "a senior scholar who has made a significant scholarly contribution to the social scientific study of Jewry".

Sklare caught the attention of the American Jewish community with his studies on Jewish identity.

Sklare's "Lakeville studies" was one of the first of its kind exploring the Jewish identities of American Jews in suburbia.

Among other topics explored in Sklare's "Lakeville studies" was Sklare's notion of a "good Jew".

The "good Jew" was essentially an idealized form of Jewish identity as expressed by the Lakeville respondents.