Abstract
The religious Zionist collective in Israel combines modern habitus with life according to the strict Jewish law (Halacha). The constant efforts to combine the two do not prevent anxieties in regard to its very survival, stemming from the embeddedness in the nonreligious collective and close contacts with it. This chapter looks into one of the major loci of concern the moral of the Jewish family as inculcated to teenage girls in a special class on education for family life called Kedusha (holiness class). The ethnographic research was carried out in a class which took place in a religious boarding school for girls. The article ethnography depicts the production of attractive, up-to-date pedagogy directed at motivating the adolescent girls, to internalize the normative Jewish ideal of womanhood, sexuality, and family life. It reveals two major practices used in the classes Modeling and Deconstruction of Modern Discourses. Both practices dismantle and invalidate secularism and modernity while simultaneously co-opting modern, secular themes in the construction and reproduction of religious womanhood. Anticipating marriage and childbearing, the students tend to the embrace the messages conveyed by the teachers about religious Jewish womanhood and motherhood, expressing little resistance to their ideal representation by the teacher.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Gender, Religion and Education in a Chaotic Postmodern World |
Publisher | Springer Netherlands |
Pages | 151-170 |
Number of pages | 20 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9789400752702 |
ISBN (Print) | 9789400752696 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2013 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013.