Wrestling with Tradition: Reconstructing Jewish Community through Negotiating Shared Purpose
This article analyzes how congregants in a lay-led Reconstructionist synagogue discursively contest and perform sharedness through active engagement, interpretation, and public disagreements about how to create and sustain Jewish community. I argue that such "wrestling with tradition" - th...
| Published in: | Religion and society |
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| Subtitles: | "Special Section: Reimagining Sharedness" |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Berghahn
2021
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| In: |
Religion and society
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| Further subjects: | B
Practices
B American Jews B spiritual community B Beliefs B Halakhah B Synagogue B Reconstructionist movement B sharedness |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article analyzes how congregants in a lay-led Reconstructionist synagogue discursively contest and perform sharedness through active engagement, interpretation, and public disagreements about how to create and sustain Jewish community. I argue that such "wrestling with tradition" - that is, questioning, negotiating, and (re)creating traditions in the context of countercultural and eclectic Jewish community - is achieved through collaborative and often conflictual discursive engagement with Jewish tradition. "Wrestling with tradition" does not involve shared beliefs, shared Halakhah (Jewish laws and rituals), or even a shared spiritual practice. Instead, it is in the discursive "wrestling" - for example, in debating rather than necessarily following Halakhah - that a communal enactment of sharedness persists in affective and intellectual engagement with Jewish tradition. |
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| ISSN: | 2150-9301 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion and society
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3167/arrs.2021.120114 |