Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry

by Samuel C. Heilman

Book Overview

An ethnographer's journey into the black-and-white world of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805210075
• ISBN13: 9780805210071
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Schocken Books Inc
• Length: 394 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Gold-standard ethnography

Heilman is a student of Erving Goffman, and offers meticulous and insightful analyses of the haredi rituals he observes. He studies a category of Jews who insist upon their essential difference from the rest of humanity, and yet is able to communicate across these self-erected barriers. Marvelous, marvelous ethnography.

A look into a different world

This book provides a very informative and insightful look into the world of the Hareidim, both from a personal perspective and from Mr. Heilman's trained perspective as a social anthropologist. He explains that he chose to study Israeli Hareidim as opposed to American Hareidim because, even though Hareidi communities in America do walk the walk and talk the talk, they're just too much a part of the modern world, such as in how they ride public transportation, work, and do business with people who aren't a part of their communities. In Israel, the Hareidim have much less contact with the modern secular world, and, on the surface at least, shun almost everything that has to do with it. However, as we come to discover, in spite of how they have clearly defined us vs. them boundaries and believe that there's no turning back if one, for example, goes to a university, with no happy middle existing between completely ultra-Orthodox and completely ultra-secular, they do benefit from the modern world. They rely on doctors to treat them, doctors who were trained in modern secular universities, sometimes have computers in their homes, even if it's just for the purposes of writing a religious newsletter, use specially-approved public buses to go on pilgrimages, the women sometimes wear modern clothes (within the dictates of modesty, of course), and they use modern smaller tefillin instead of the larger outdated impractical ones used by their forebears, feeling that the modern tefillin are superior and that anyone who would want the old kind made would have to be a fool, even in spite of how in many other matters they feel that the ways of previous generations are superior to anything the modern world has to offer. I personally have very mixed feelings about the people described in these pages (except for the Lubavitchers, the most modern Hassidic group). On the one hand, we come to see these people, in all of their various groups (Belzers, Reb Arelach, Satmars, Neturei Karta, Sanzers, Breslovers, Lithuanians, etc.), as almost regular people in spite of the glaring differences, people who live decent upright lives even though they seem like people out of an 18th century shtetl, who are living the only way they know how to live, the only way they can imagine living, who have become so strict in response to what they feel is a corrupting of morals, Judaism, and the world in general, particularly after how their communities were all but decimated in the Shoah. However, as normal and sympathetic as the Hareidim come to seem during the course of this book, it is still unsettling to read the things they say about the modern world, such as how anyone who's not ultra-Orthodox isn't really religious, how a man who rushes to hug and kiss his wife after she's just had their baby is overcome by lust and can't wait to get back into bed with her instead of just being overcome by love and tenderness after such a powerful event, how a woman who doesn't dress the way a

Very good!

This book presented a suprisingly well-balanced view into the world of Israel's Haredim. Written from an outsider perspective, you'd expect the text to be overly critical and harsh. However, I was pleased to find that it wasn't.The author does a good job at portraying the life of the Haredim in a curious yet understanding way, while still being critical at appropriate times. Heilman does not rain down flattery but also does not shy away from asking difficult questions. While keeping an intellectually honest front, Heilman brings out thought-provoking discussions and presents perspectives that the rest of us outsides may not ever agree with, but can -- at the very least -- understand where the Haredim are coming from.There are not a great deal of books on the so-called "ultra" Orthodox Jews available, and many that are are horribly biased against the way of life that seems so extreme to many of us. Heilman's text is definitely one I'd recommend because it keeps middle ground, explores deeply but still manages to be respectful to his subjects.

Surprising

I found this book surprisingly engaging. Here is a group of people I was not very sympathetic towards, but once I followed them with heilman's guidance, I discovered they were surprisingly human and fascinating. This book does what all good anthropology should: it takes the reader to a place he or she might not go alone and lets them sit on the anthropologist's shoulder and see the foreign so that it becomes familiar. A great read from an academic.