Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-312) and index.

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Religious syncretism and religious distinctiveness -- The Kaifeng Jews : a reconsideration of their acculturation and assimilation in a comparative perspective -- Elite religion and popular religion : the example of saints -- Jewish millenarian-messianic movements : comparisons of Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Italian Jews -- Millenarianism among conversos (new Christians) and former conversos (returnees to Judaism) -- The sacredness of sin : antinomianism and models of man -- Formulations of ethnicity and religion regarding American Jews in the writings of American sociologists -- Judaism and Jewish ethnicity : changing interrelationships and differentiations in the diaspora and Israel -- Jewish and other national and ethnic identities of Israeli Jews -- Secularization, neotraditionalism, polarization -- Public religion, privatization, and deprivatization in Israel.