Sklare was a third-generation Jewish American, the grandson of Meyer and Eva Lipman, immigrants from the area of Kovno in Lithuania.
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 served as the second president for the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ) following Dr. Mervin Verbit.
Sklare's "Lakeville studies"[4] was one of the first of its kind exploring the Jewish identities of American Jews in suburbia.
[5] The "good Jew" was essentially an idealized form of Jewish identity as expressed by the Lakeville respondents.