Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ or ASSSJ) was launched and formally met the following year. The group has since organized annual conferences, established the academic journal Contemporary Jewry, founded the ASSJ Newsletter and honors exceptional scholars in the field with the Marshall Sklare Award. While the ASSJ and Contemporary Jewry are dominated by sociologists and sociological studies - all but one of the organization's presidents earned a doctorate in sociology, the other received a doctorate in psychology - the focus has not been restricted to sociology alone. Studies involving other social sciences and history are included as well, and professionals from those disciplines have joined as members, contributors and honorees. General theories American Jewry According to sociologist Samuel Heilman, there are three major theoretical approaches in studying the sociology of American Jewry in particular: Uniqueness of Judaism and Particularism vs. Universalism - a popular theoretical approach towards understanding contemporary American Jewry has been the notion that more than anything else Judaism as a religion accounts for the social situation of U.S. Jews today. The current social and political decisions of the Jewish community are rooted in the response to the inevitable conflict between Jewish religious values on one hand, and secular American life on the other. Others, such as Milton Himmelfarb, focus less on the Jewish religion per se and focus on the tension produced by balancing the particularism of the Jewish tradition vs. the universalism of American modernity. Marginal culture - in the 1940s and 1950s, some scholars, such as Milton M. Goldberg, saw Jewish life in America as a successful "marginal culture," following the "marginal man theory" of Robert E. Park and Everett Stonequist popular at the time Community and organizations - a third approach stems from the work of political scientist Daniel J. Elazar and focuses and the underlying dynamics behind the decision making within Jewish community organizations. While other theoretical approaches have been advanced they have not majorly impacted the discipline's research agenda. Applied sociology Samuel Klausner, a former president of the ASSJ, noted that the sociology of Jewry is more an applied social science than a theoretical one. For Klausner, theories developed in sociology may help explain any society, not just a Jewish one. The contribution of the sociology of Jewry therefore is the application of the science, such as its methodology. Others, however, stress that the subfield is a part