Abstract
While Schmitt’s Political Theology paints modern theories of the state as secularized theological concepts, prominent threads of Jewish religious education in 20th century Jerusalem have moved in a different direction, that is, toward the re-sacralization of such secularized theological concepts. Orthodox Jewish schools in Jerusalem, or yeshivot, take an orthopractic approach to religious education as informing all aspects of life, rather than a delimited set of doctrines or beliefs. As such, questions of security fall within the purview Jewish religious education. To look more closely at the relationship between orthodox Jewish religious education, sanctity and security, I spent seven months enrolled as a student-observer in three Jerusalem yeshivot taking daily field notes, conducting interviews, attending classes, and studying related sacred texts. By examining both Jewish sacred texts and ethnographic data from contemporary Jerusalem yeshivot, this article highlights how geo-political ideals of security in modern Jerusalem are being re-sacralized by contemporizing ancient sacred texts and approaching religious education itself as a means of eliciting divine aid in the securitization process for Jewish Jerusalem.
Highlights
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His means of accessing what he believes to be divine aid in this pursuit is religious education
Summary
In order to understand how the relationship between sanctity, education, and security in Jerusalem affected the lived experience of yeshiva students there, I enrolled as a student-researcher in two orthodox yeshivot in Jerusalem. Merkaz David, I conducted eight interviews with students and another eight with rabbis. In order to stand apart so that all students and rabbis would instantly recognize me as a non-student, I wore a blue tweed suit coat, brown trousers and a blue shirt with a tie This showed, they explained, that I respected the sanctity of the space while communicating that I was not a traditional student. While many of its students had come from abroad to study there for only a year or two, one elite group enrolled for three to four years in a rabbinical ordination program Nine rabbis taught these young men six days a week (excluding the Jewish Sabbath) from six in the morning until late into the night. Students at Or Akiva came from more diverse populations, leading many lessons to be conducted in Hebrew, French, Spanish, and English
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