Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-9pm4c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T12:46:11.124Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Learning faith: Language socialization in a community of Hasidic Jews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2006

AYALA FADER
AYALA FADER
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Fordham University, 113 West 60th Street, Room 916E, New York, NY 10023, fader@fordham.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite a growing body of cross-cultural ethnographic research in religious enclave communities, we know little about the everyday discursive practices by which women caregivers socialize children to morally reject much of contemporary society. This article draws on ethnographic and linguistic research conducted in a Brooklyn (New York) neighborhood from 1995 through 1997 to discuss how Hasidic women caregivers rehearse a particular stance to faith with young children by examining socialization routines in which Hasidic children display culturally unacceptable ways of speaking: questioning, requesting or challenging authority figures. An unusual consistency of message across a range of socialization contexts supports caregivers' (mothers' and teachers') efforts to teach their children the morality of communal hierarchies of authority and difference. Hasidic women encourage their children to “fit in” to communal hierarchies of age, gender, and religious practice and to reject what they present as “Gentile” ways of behaving and communicating. When children make certain requests, ask culturally unacceptable questions, or challenge caregiver authority, caregivers invoke the moral authority of community practices and social roles. Through appeals to a higher authority, essentializing difference and morality, silence, shaming, or threat of exclusion, Hasidic children are presented with a type of faith which parallels communal authority with divine authority. An approach to religious enclave communities that is framed by the language socialization research paradigm can link everyday micro processes of talk with broader global processes shaping contemporary religious movements.Thanks go to Bambi Schieffelin, Peter Schneider, Samuel C. Heilman, Adam Idelson, Patrick Moynihan, Lotti Silber, Faye Ginsberg, Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, and Jim Wilson for their time, insights, and support (technical and otherwise). This article grew out of a shorter version I presented at an invited session Paul Garrett and I organized for the American Anthropological Association 1997 meetings, at which Elinor Ochs was a valuable discussant. I presented a more recent version at the Michigan Seminar on Social Identity (2003) thanks to Bambi Schieffelin's invitation. The broader research on which this article is based was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, National Science Foundation, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Spencer Foundation, Lucius Littauer Foundation, and National Foundation for Jewish Culture. I am very grateful for the support. Thanks to the teachers, students, and administrators at the Hasidic girls' school, Bnos Yisroel, and the women who invited me into their homes. Special thanks to the first-grade teacher, Mrs. Weiss, whose graciousness makes her a role model for Jews, Gentiles, and everyone else.

Keywords

Hasidic Jewsgenderlanguage socializationmoral discoursereligious enclave communitiesboundary maintenance
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 2006 , pp. 205 - 229
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ammerman, Nancy (1987). Bible believers: Fundamentalists in the modern world. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Baquedano-Lopez, Patricia (1997). Creating social identities through doctrina narratives. Issues in Applied Linguistics 8:27–45.Google Scholar
Belcove, Janet (1989). A quest for wholeness: The Hasidim of Boro Park. Dissertation, Cornell University.
Belcove-Shalin, Janet (1995) (ed.). New world Hasidim: Ethnographic studies of Hasidic Jews in America. Syracuse: SUNY Press.
Bogoch, Bryna (1999). Gender, literacy, and religiosity: Dimensions of Yiddish education in Israeli government-supported schools. In Lewis Glinert & Miriam Isaacs (eds.), Pious voices: Languages among ultra-orthodox Jews. Special issue of International Journal of the Sociology of Language 138:123–160.Google Scholar
Boyarin, Jonathan (1994). Death and the minyan. Cultural Anthropology 9:3–22.Google Scholar
Boyarin, Jonathan (2002). Circumscribing constitutional identities. In Jonathan Boyarin & Daniel Boyarin, (eds.), Powers of diaspora. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dinur, Benzion (1991). The origins of Hasidism and its social and messianic foundations. In Gershon Hundert (ed.), Essential papers on Hasidism: Origins to the present, 86–208. New York: New York University Press.
Dubnow, Simon (1991). The beginnings: The Baal Shem Tov (Besht) and the center in Podolia. In Hundert (ed.), 58–87.
El-Or, Tamar (1994). Educated and ignorant: Ultraorthodox Jewish women and their world. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Ettinger, Shmuel (1991). The Hasidic movement: Reality and ideals. In Hundert (ed.), 226–43.
Fader, Ayala (2000). Gender, morality, and language: Socializing practices in a Hasidic community. Ph.D. dissertation, New York University.
Fader, Ayala (2001). Literacy, bilingualism, and gender in a Hasidic community. Linguistics and Education 12:261–83.Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua (1981) (ed.). Never say die: A thousand years of Yiddish in Jewish life and letters. The Hague: Mouton.
Friedman, Menachem (1986). Haredim confront the modern city. In P. Medding (ed.), Studies in contemporary Jewry, vol. 2. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Friedman, Menachem (1987). Life tradition and book tradition in the development of ultraorthodox Judaism. In Harvey Goldberg (ed.), Judaism viewed from within and from without, 235–56. Albany: SUNY Press.
Friedman, Menachem (1990). Jewish zealots: Conservative versus innovative. In E. Sivan & M. Friedman (eds.), Religious radicalism and politics in the Middle East, 127–42. Albany: SUNY Press.
Garrett, Paul (2000). “High” Kweyol: The emergence of a formal creole register in St. Lucia. In J. McWhorter (ed.), Language change and language contact in pidgins and creoles, 63–101. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRef
Garrett, Paul (2005). What a language is good for: Language socialization, language shift and the persistence of code-specific genres in St. Lucia. Language in Society 34:327–62.Google Scholar
Garrett, Paul, & Baquedano-Lopez, Patricia (2002). Language socialization: reproduction and continuity, transformation and change. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:339–63.Google Scholar
Glinert, Lewis, & Isaacs, Miriam (1999) (eds.). Pious voices: Languages among ultraorthodox Jews. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Special Issue, vol. 138.Google Scholar
Glinert, Lewis, & Shilhav, Yosseph (1991). Holy land, holy language: A study of an ultra-orthodox Jewish ideology. Language in Society 20:59–86.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1972). On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements of social interaction. In Laver &Hutcheson (eds.), Strategic interaction, 319–346. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goldberg, Harvey E. (1987). Introduction: Judaism in Israel. In Harvey E. Goldberg (ed.), Judaism viewed from within and from without, 220–34. Albany: SUNY Press.
Harding, Susan (2000). The book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Heilman, Samuel C. (1992). Defenders of the faith: Inside orthodox Jewry. New York: Schocken.
Heilman, Samuel C., & Friedman, Menachem (1991). Religious fundamentalism and religious Jews: The case of the haredim. In Martin Marty & R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalisms observed, 197–264. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Heilman, Samuel C. (1995). The vision from the madrasa and bes medrash: Some parallels between Islam and Judaism. In Martin Marty & R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalisms comprehended, 71–95. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hundert, Gershon (1991) (ed.). Essential papers on Hasidism: Origins to present. New York: New York University Press.
Isaacs, Miriam (1998). Yiddish in orthodox communities in Jerusalem. In Dov Ber Kerler (ed.), Politics of Yiddish, 85–96. New York: Avon.
Jochnowitz, George (1981). Bilingualism and dialect mixture among Lubavitcher children. In Joshua Fishman (ed.), Never say die: A thousand years of Yiddish, 721–37. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRef
Kahn, Susan (2000). Reproducing Jews. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kamen, Mark (1985). Growing up Hasidic: Education and socialization in the Bobover Hasidic community. New York: AMS.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara (1998). Sound and sentiment. Judaism 47(185):49–78.Google Scholar
Koskoff, Ellen (2001). Music in Lubavitcher life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kranzler, George (1995). The economic revitalization of the Hasidic community of Williamsburg. In Belcove-Shalin (ed.), 181–204.
Kugelmass, Jack (1988) (ed.). Between two worlds: Ethnographic essays on American Jewry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kulick, Don (1992). Language shift and cultural reproduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kulick, Don (1998). Anger, gender, language shift, and the politics of revelation in a Papua New Guinean village. In B. B. Schieffelin et al. (eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory, 87–102. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kulick, Don, & Schieffelin, Bambi B. (2004). Language socialization. In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology, 349–68. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Mintz, Jerome (1992). Hasidic people: A place in the new world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Morris, Bonnie (1998). Lubavitcher women in America: Identity and activism in the post-war era. Albany: SUNY Press.
Myerhoff, Barbara (1978). Number our days. New York: Touchstone.
Ochs, Elinor (1988). Culture and language development: Language acquisition and socialization in a Samoan village. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ochs, Elinor, & Schieffelin, Bambi B. (1984). Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories and their implication. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (eds.), Culture theory: Essays in mind, self, and emotion, 276–320. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Paugh, Amy (2001). “Creole day is every day”: Language socialization, shift, and ideologies in Dominica, West Indies. Ph.D. dissertation, New York University.
Peshkin, Alan (1986). God's choice: The total world of a fundamentalist Christian school. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Poll, Solomon (1962). The Hasidic community of Williamsburg: A study in the sociology of religion. New York: Schocken.
Poll, Solomon (1965). The role of Yiddish in American ultra-orthodox and Hassidic communities. YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Sciences 13:125–52.Google Scholar
Prell, Riv-Ellen (1989). Prayer and community: The Havurah in American Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Riley, K. C. (2001). The emergence of dialogic identities: Transforming heteroglossia in the Marquesas, F.P. Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York.
Rose, Susan (1988). Keeping them out of the hands of Satan: Evangelical schooling in America. New York: Routledge.
Rose, Susan (1993). Christian fundamentalism and education in the United States. In H. Hardacre et al. (eds.), Fundamentalisms and society: Reclaiming the sciences, the family, and education, 493–507. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rosenak, Michael (1993). Jewish fundamentalism in Israeli education. In Martin Marty & R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalism and society, 374–413. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Rosman, Murray Jay (1991). Miedezyboz and Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov. In Hundert (ed.), 209–25.
Rosman, Murray Jay (1996). Founder of Hasidism: A quest for the historical Ba'al Shem Tou. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rubin, Israel (1972). Satmar: Island in the city. Chicago: Quadrangle.
Schieffelin, Bambi B. (1990). The give and take of everyday life. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schieffelin, Bambi B. (1994). Code-switching and language socialization: Some probable relationships. In L. E. Hewett et al. (eds.), Pragmatics: From theory to practice, 20–42. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Schieffelin, Bambi B. (2000). Introducing Kaluli literacy: A chronology of influences. In P. V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 293–327. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Schieffelin, Bambi B., & Ochs, Elinor (1986). Language socialization. Annual Review of Anthropology 15:163–91.Google Scholar
Shaffir, William (1974). Life in a religious community: The Lubavitcher Chassidim in Montreal. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Shaffir, William (1995). Boundaries and self-presentation among the Hasidim: A study in identity maintenance. In Belcove-Shalin (ed.), 31–68.
Sharot, Stephen (1982). Messianism, mysticism, and magic: A sociological analysis of Jewish religious movements. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Sivan, Emmanuel (1995). The enclave culture. In Martin Marty & R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalism comprehended, 11–68, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Soloveitchik, Haym (1994). Rupture and reconstruction: The transformation of contemporary orthodoxy. Tradition 28(4):64–130.Google Scholar
Von Hirsch Erikson, Eva (1995). The Jews of Gateshead, England. Ph.D. dissertation, Durham University, UK.
Weinreich, Uriel (1990). Modern English-Yiddish dictionary. New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.