"Responsibility for those in need" - an ethnography of Jewish mental and social healthcare provision in New York City, USA

My proposal is to perform ethnographic research for 12-15 months with the Jewish Board of Family and Children's
Services, a not-for-profit organisation guided by Jewish values but which offers services to all New Yorkers. During this
time, I will engage in participant observation at key sites outlined in my main research proposal, as well as unstructured
interviews with interlocutors. In particular, I plan to conduct fieldwork in a call centre for Jewish addiction recovery, a
psychiatric clinic, and an Orthodox care home all run under the auspices of the Board, as well as the Board's executive
headquarters. My research questions revolve around care and how care is carried out and received, and how the
religious identity of the organisation impacts this. I am particularly interested in how the notion of Jewish responsibility for
others which the organisation cites as the inspiration for its existence is manifested in the operations of the organisation
and in the lives of its members. This research will sit at the intersection of the anthropologies of Judaism, care and
medicine and has the potential to make a significant contribution to each particularly in this question of responsibility,
which is to my eyes under-explored in both medical anthropology and the anthropology of Judaism.