Jewish Spirituality and Late Capitalism

Abstract

This article, drawing on ten months of ethnographic research, examines two parallel changes occurring in a Manhattan synagogue, B'nai Jeshurun (BJ): an increasing engagement with Jewish spirituality in prayer and structural changes in synagogue institution building. I contextualise these changes in the synagogue within broader economic, political and cultural processes, particularly the upward mobility and shifting professions of residents on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A synagogue ethnography which attends to religious practice and institution building, contextuahsed in broader economic and political processes, can provide insight into the emergent study of Jewish forms of spirituality, and more broadly, how Jewish religious subjectivities are being formed in a late capitalist urban centre.