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eBook details

• Title: Haredi Male Bodies in the Public Sphere: Negotiating with the Religious Text and Secular Israeli Men.
• Author : Masculinities and Spirituality Journal of Men
• Release Date : January 01, 2009
• Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 263 KB

Description

In 1999-2000, the Israeli Haredi community was alarmed at the establishment of a new Haredi Brigade (Hanachal Hacharedi) within the Israeli Defense Forces. Until then, young Haredi men did not serve in the army. (3) The formation of the new unit was received with very vocal protests from all parts of the Haredi community and especially from the more conservative sectors. The common perception of Haredi rabbis of military culture and weapons can be learned from the pamphlet "In the Campaign: Journal of the Torah World", (No. 1 August 1999). This edition is devoted entirely to the "horrors of recruitment" and its terrible implications. The back page of the pamphlet bears a picture of a Haredi child looking admiringly at a Haredi soldier and stretching out his hand to touch the gun he is holding. The picture is captioned: "a pure Haredi child, attending the ceremony at the end of basic military training of the Haredi Nachal unit" [the newly formed unit, Y.H.]. He looks admiringly at the weapons held by the Haredi soldiers. One of the soldiers lowers it and the child strokes the gun longingly, like children who reach out to the Torah scroll when it is removed from the Ark in the synagogue. (4) The faces (of the child and the soldier in the photograph) are blurred for obvious reasons (ostensibly to preserve their anonymity), and thus readers are saved the expression on this pure child's face when first seeing this 'new world', so opposed to the inner atmosphere of the Torah world. What does the child growing up in an atmosphere of holiness think of this encounter?" This short quote illustrates the difficulties that many religious and fundamentalist groups face in attempting to maintain strict adherence to religious positions on all issues, while living in the midst of big, modern and rapidly changing Western cities, surrounded by non-religious majority communities. The Haredi community perceives itself as an alternative to Western culture. Sociologists have described it as a counter-culture (Friedman, 1991) and as an enclave (Sivan, 1991). As part of its attempt to protect itself from outside influences, the community members' bodies are under close surveillance. These bodies are disciplined and controlled according to what is perceived as unchanging religious principles of belief. Every small change in the body's appearance or behavior is perceived as an indication of other, less explicit transgressions, and as a major threat to the community's survival. Since it is also a textual society that lives 'by the book', one would assume that Haredi bodies will indeed reflect these tendencies. In this article I will question such assumptions by focusing on the Haredi male body. I will observe how the Haredi male body is constructed, stressing the points where it conforms to religious dictates and where it transgresses them. This nuanced examination can teach us much about the religious body in other cases where it is constructed in relation to surrounding non-religious bodies.

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