Book follows the journey of ex-Hasidic Jews


LAWRENCE  In her new book, “Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews,” Lynn Davidman, the Robert M. Beren Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, traces the journeys of Hasidim (Ultra-Orthodox Jews) who chose to leave the strict enclave religious communities in which they grew up. Hasidic life is based on strict adherence to the 613 commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures, and it is maintained by the high physical and social boundaries the community establishes as a way of avoiding the polluting influence of the larger society.

This book is due out from Oxford University Press on Friday, Oct. 31. Nevertheless, Davidman’s research and her book already have received national coverage in The New Republic, New York Magazine and the Huffington Post, and it has been favorably reviewed in Publishers Weekly. 

As she did in her first two full-length books, Davidman had an intellectual as well as a personal interest in the subject matter: She herself had rebelled against Orthodoxy when she was 19 and was disowned and disinherited for breaking with family traditions and choosing to live her own way of life. She wrote this book partly as a way of exploring whether others’ experiences were similar to hers and to better understand her own.

“Becoming Un-Orthodox” is based on a series of self-reflective interview conversations between herself and 40 ex-Hasidim. Davidman sought to understand how this transition takes place and the processes through which her respondents moved from being a Hasid to becoming an “ex.” Although each individual story varied in some ways from the others, Davidman nevertheless discerned a common trajectory among her respondents; their exit narratives depicted the same distinct stages in their identity transformation.

“The book chapters represent the slow, hesitant stages through which my respondents left their enclave religious communities and created new lives in the larger society,” Davidman said. “They are organized in chronological fashion, although these stages are not always discrete.

“The process of exiting typically began with childhood experiences that revealed a discrepancy between their lives and the ideal model of Hasidic family and community life. The Hasidic way of life is based on strict obedience to all 613 commandments in the Hebrew scriptures. Being subject to physical, emotional and sexual abuse led some young women to see the hypocrisy in their pious communities and to raise fundamental questions about the Hasidic way of life. Other defectors had parents whose differing level of religious adherence confused the children about whose religious understandings they should follow. Still others described meeting their secular cousins, who seemed to have great lives and, unlike what the exes had been taught, were not being punished by God.”

As the defectors continued to ask questions whose answers did not quell their doubts about Hasidic life, they decided to experiment with violating one of the commandments. The very physical nature of Orthodox religious life — such as the dietary laws controlling what Hasidim may eat, and the strict prescriptions concerning dress, hair and other details of comportment — led the exiters to rebel in an embodied way.

“There are no commandments in the Hebrew scripture about what a Jew must believe,” Davidman said. “Instead there are prescriptions for how Jews should follow God’s commandments and conduct themselves in every moment of their lives.”  Rebelling against Orthodoxy, then, took the form of disobeying rituals of the body such as the commandment to eat only kosher foods. “Some of my respondents went to a restaurant far from their neighborhoods and experimented with eating a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, or a cheeseburger, or chicken that was not ritually slaughtered in an appropriate way, rendering it treyf, non-kosher. Others entered forbidden spaces such as public libraries, dancing clubs and movie theaters, or wore forbidden clothing — such as women donning pants instead of skirts.”  

These transgressions took place in locations far from the watchful eyes of their family and community members, in what the late sociologist Erving Goffman would call “the backstage area,” a space where they were would not be seen by community members. 

When the defectors Davidman spoke with were young, they were taught that if they sinned by violating a commandment, God would punish them. But here they were, in secular libraries, eating un-kosher food, dressing inappropriately, and going to dance clubs, but God was not striking them down. Enjoying these forbidden foods and activities, and emboldened by the lack of any penalty for their deeds, the defectors continued to transgress. 

The transgressions led to new and exciting experiences such that over time, defectors transgressed more freely and began to pass between the larger secular world and their own strictly religious enclaves. They described testing their limits, seeing how close they could get to their homes before they had to re-place their appropriate comportment and dress. But, as Davidman said, “This back-and-forth process, which sometimes took place over several, or many years, led to the deeply uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance, which occurs when a person lives with internal and external contradictions.”

When these incongruities became unbearable, Davidman’ s interviewees bravely stepped out of the physical, social and ideological boundaries of their insular community, and sought to make new lives for themselves in the larger society, despite their lack of knowledge of how others lived. 

This process was highly challenging: They did not know how to find a place to live, or a job, and many were aware they lacked the skills to secure a good salary. Although all children were brought up speaking Yiddish, the men knew even less English, because their studies were entirely in Yiddish or Hebrew. Most had not passed the GED, the high school equivalency exam. And, as they told Davidman, they had grown up with frequent warnings about the dangers lurking in the society outside their religious worlds and had been taught to fear others because they were less moral than the Hasidim.

“The process of creating a new identity is not only cognitive and psychological,” Davidman said. “Rather, this case study of Hasidim reveals that identity transformation can also be  profoundly physical.” In contrast to leaving Protestant religious groups, in which statements about one’s lack of faith constitute a separation from the religious community, Hasidic Jews’ defection is created through the simultaneous process of ceasing to perform the embodied religious rituals and learning a new repertoire of behaviors to take their place. Her interviewees’ stories did not emphasize their loss of faith as much as the physical shedding of their former, internalized ways and habitual religious practices and replacing them with new behavioral patterns learned in the larger secular society.

As a man ceases to wear the uniform of white shirts and black pants, or women cease wearing the required long skirts and begin to wear pants, they are disinscribing — consciously removing — the deeply rooted automatic habits ingrained in them since childhood. Similarly, instead of eating kosher food, they began to eat whatever they pleased. Their adaption of these new bodily routines would make it easier for them to integrate into the larger society. 

Davidman has used her research on Hasidim to make the more general point that changing one’s identity is not only a cognitive and psychological process; it is also deeply embodied. Creating a new self is a process enacted upon, and through the medium of, the body. 

Tue, 10/28/2014

author

Lynn Davidman

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