“Holiness class”: “Constructing a constructive woman” in a zionist religious ulpana

Tamar Rapoport*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

5 Scopus citations

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 languageEnglish
Title of host publicationGender, Religion and Education in a Chaotic Postmodern World
PublisherSpringer Netherlands
Pages151-170
Number of pages20
ISBN (Electronic)9789400752702
ISBN (Print)9789400752696
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2013

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013.

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