Modern Orthodoxy Research Articles

Аdvertisement of European multiculturalism and its impact on interfaith relations in Ukraine

The article proposes a study of state-church and inter-religious relations in Ukraine during the period of independence in the context of political processes in modern Europe. The modern vectors of state policy in the sphere of religion and freedom of conscience are revealed. The insult in interfaith relations is largely caused by the ill-conceived and inconsistent policy of the government in this area. It has been established that the current political situation in Ukraine indicates a deep crisis in relations in many spheres of social life. Russia's open aggression caused a new wave of aggravation of national self-identification and the church vector in Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to highlight the problem of the political and spiritual influence of Europe on modern Orthodoxy in Ukraine, which is in a state of division into different jurisdictions. It has been proven that the unification of the divided branches of Ukrainian Orthodoxy will contribute to the consolidation of Ukrainian society, especially in conditions of open war. The formation of the United Church should take place on the basis of a constructive dialogue between the authorities, denominations and society.
 The research shows that the branches of the divided Ukrainian Orthodoxy are under the active political influence of the geopolitical confrontation of the European scale. Advertising and promotion of multiculturalism and polytheism, which are characteristic of the countries of Western Europe, require corresponding freedom of religion and the presence of a multi-religious component in Ukraine, which openly demonstrates the chosen vector of European integration.
 On the other hand, it was established that the status of the United Independent Church affects issues of national security, international recognition, geopolitical influence, consolidation of Ukrainian society, unification of self-identification of Ukrainian citizens and is an important conflict-causing factor. Therefore, the issue of establishing the United Independent Ukrainian Church remains topical today.

Visual thought in modern orthodoxy: Art history as theology

In this paper I will discuss the visual category of “reverse perspective”, i.e., the principle of constructing pictorial space in the icon. I will show that in Russia one of the most basic terms in Western art history, i.e., perspective, was thoroughly reworked, even turned on its head as suggested by the terminology, in order to serve a project of modern Orthodoxy. The main proponent of the theory of “reverse perspective” was Florensky, who in his essay of that title, written in 1919, uses several different definitions of the term. In the first section of the paper, I will mention briefly six such definitions, all of which are still current in contemporary scholarship. In the second and third sections, I will suggest a possible theologically-grounded elaboration of one of Florensky’s ideas of what constitutes “reverse perspective”. According to the interpretation proposed here, “reverse perspective” becomes the visual analogue of two basic Christian dogmas – that of a timelessly eternal God and that of “theosis” or “deification”. In the last section, I will give a short background to the relationship between art history and theology, which lies at the heart of my approach.

CLUSTER ELEMENTS TERRITORIAL ADMINISTRATION IN ORTHODOXMODERN

This study is devoted to the proposed approach to the use of information technologies, in particular, computer geometric modeling, to improve the efficiency of management of complex socio-economic systems on the example of modern Orthodoxy. The urgency of the chosen topic is due to the rapid return of a large number of people in our country to eternal Christian values after many years of forced atheism. These facts significantly contribute to the current intensive restoration of religious buildings, the construction of new temples, the revival of monasteries, the improvement of places of pilgrimage, the optimization of proper organizational and territorial church structures, the implementation of spiritual-educational and other charitable activities. Our days are characterized by global social changes, such as the widespread introduction of market relations in all spheres of life, land, medical, educational reform, decentralization of state power and more. The above features reveal the high dynamism in the spiritual and material plan of the current stage of development of Ukraine, which is significantly burdened by the COVID-19 pandemic, the military conflict with Russia and other unfavourable factors. The main purpose of the publication is to highlight the developed mathematical apparatus for the automated reproduction of the organizational-territorial cluster structures of Orthodoxy. This ensures, on the basis of the proposed complex geometric models, the improvement of church governance, for example, regarding the definition of rational territorial boundaries of parishes and dioceses, the determining of the need for their unification, liquidation or the formation of new ones, optimization of the location of temples, chapels, educational institutions, etc. The considered approach allows to save material, financial, human and natural resources, to reduce terms and to improve the quality of acceptance of various decisions. The latter applies to a large number of objects and processes, their various properties. The article also outlines promising directions for further scientific research on the selected topic.

Examining Average Age at First Marriage within Orthodox Judaism: A Large Community‐Based Study

AbstractMarriage trends across global communities are influenced by demographic and cultural factors. The marriage age of secular Americans, and multiple religious groups are affected by gender and religious affiliation, but this has not been examined in Orthodox Jewish subcultures. This study explored how gender, cultural affiliation, and shifting cultural affiliation affect the age at first marriage within Orthodox Jewish subcultures differing in openness to Western culture: Yeshiva Orthodoxy and Modern Orthodoxy. Respondents (n= 3865) provided information about themselves and members of their family but respondents’ information was excluded to increase sample representativeness, focusing instead on the 8856 family members. Gender, subcultural affiliation, and individual cultural shifting were all found to affect the age of the first marriage. We interpreted these results in the context of varying cultural beliefs, education, and a perceived surplus of available women. Further examination of related factors may aid community efforts to support individuals in their pursuit of finding marriage partners.

Women's Tefillah Groups and the Boundaries of Jewish Orthodoxy

This article looks at women's tefillah (prayer) groups (WTGs) as an anthropological case study to consider how an initially radical movement on the margins quickly moved into, and thereby changed, the center of Jewish Modern Orthodoxy. I take up this example in order to reflect on processes of religious transformation, and to think about Orthodoxy as the product of negotiated boundaries between female lay leaders and male rabbinic authorities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the first section gives an account of a WTG service at an American Modern Orthodox synagogue. The following sections document some of the main concerns that motivated and hampered WTG founders and leaders, largely from their perspectives. I examine their establishment of groups in the face of halakhic and institutional opposition, their practical liturgical strategies, and their negotiation of feminist sensibilities and Orthodox piety. The article then offers some concluding thoughts on Orthodoxy as an analytical and theoretical category.

МОБІЛЬНІСТЬ ПРАВОСЛАВ'Я В СУЧАСНІЙ УКРАЇНІ

This article is about modern Orthodoxy in Ukraine. First of all, it shows the way of Orthodoxy in the process of globalization and makes an attempt to describe a position of church in modern conditions. The article appeals to the data of opinion polls which have been carried out within the last 15 years. These data help to understand how opinions of Ukrainian people were changing regarding an idea of a local Orthodox church. At the same time, an attempt of explanation of Ukrainian religious complications is being done. The article attempts to summarize the role of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, to describe its activities in recent years: from the beginning of an independence and opening a free path to other religions – and to modern multi-religious Ukraine, where Orthodoxy still holds the position of the guide of spiritual life. Also the article examines researches of some Ukrainian scientists in different fields and shows future possibilities of the Orthodox church in Ukraine.

Интерпретация канонов в дискурсе маргинального православия

Characteristics of the interpretation of the concept of "canon" in the marginal Orthodox discourse have been considered in the article. Marginal Orthodoxy is understood by the author as a set of ideas and practices characteristic of non-institutionalized movements and groups declaring their orthodoxy and accusing representatives of official Orthodoxy for the departure from tradition. The relevance of the study is stipulated by the need to establish an intra-confessional dialogue in a situation of increasing heterogeneity of Orthodoxy in Russia. The purpose of the article is to determine the role of the canons in the construction of the discourse of marginal Orthodoxy. To attain it the author reveals the features of marginal Orthodoxy discourse; compares the cases of appeal to canons in marginal and official discourses; outlines the specifics of understanding the canons in marginal Orthodoxy. The novelty of the work is conditioned by the examination of the religious space of modern Orthodoxy through the concepts of center and periphery and their relationship. Due to the insufficient theoretical development of the problem, the most resonant texts of its representatives of the first two decades of the 21st century (open letters, recordings of sermons, interviews, video speeches, journalistic articles, etc) served as the basic material for researching the discourse of marginal Orthodoxy. The official and marginal versions of Orthodoxy are considered in the article as competing discursive modes of truth production. Within the framework of the hermeneutic method, using content, discourse, and comparative analysis, the main characteristics of the discourse of marginal Orthodoxy are revealed. It is shown that the texts of marginal Orthodoxy appeal to the canons so often that in fact the entire discourse can be considered as a set of statements about the canonicity or non-canonicity of certain theories, actions and practices. The results of the study show that in marginal discourse the canon is interpreted as non-historical dogma and unconditional prohibition, which allows using it for discrediting official Orthodoxy and mobilizing supporters. The myth-making and ideological grounds of the appeal to the canons are revealed. It is proved that the concept of "canon" is organizing for the discourse of marginal Orthodoxy and without a detailed analysis of its use it is impossible to understand the specifics of this discourse.

To Live is Christ: Exploring the Promise and Limits of For the Life of the World

For the Life of the World represents a landmark discussion of social ethics within the Orthodox academy in the West. This article begins by looking at the document's self-understanding as an exploratory rather than a definitive text that seeks to provoke rather than curtail discussion. The overarching matter of how even the possibility of a viable social ethos is debated in modern Orthodoxy is briefly dealt with through the lens of ethical apophaticism and cataphaticism. The document itself, a cataphatic contribution in this regard, is then examined in terms of its ethical priorities, its tone in addressing these priorities, as well as its overall theological coherence. Potential ambiguities and dissonance in the document are highlighted. A concluding appeal is made for more work on clarifying the Orthodox theological presuppositions that go into crafting Orthodox social ethics, and a positive proposal is offered, centred on an Orthodox ethos of repentance.

Review: Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken

Review: Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken

Tribute to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Tribute to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

The kiss and the slap: Modern Orthodox ambivalence towards evolution 1980s–2010s

ABSTRACT Research has begun to delve into Jewish responses to evolution as one component of a more general rise in interest in the study of religious engagement with Darwinism. This attention is due to a number of factors including revisions to the history of Christian anti-evolutionism, understanding the need to expand research beyond Christianity, and mounting awareness of anti-evolutionism as a growing global phenomenon The current article focuses on American Modern Orthodoxy (AMO) and describes how the Darwin debates have manifested in this particular community at the end of the twentieth century and into the 21st. AMO has a complicated legacy regarding evolution. Accommodationist perspectives from AMO rabbis dominated the first half of the twentieth century; however, more negative rejectionist positions on the part of some religious scientists came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s. This mixed-bag of heritage led the1980s and onwards to be a period of ambiguity and ambivalence.

Starstruck in the Promised Land: How the Arts Shaped Passions About Israel by Shalom Goldman

Reviewed by: Starstruck in the Promised Land: How the Arts Shaped Passions About Israel by Shalom Goldman Jessica Carr (bio) Starstruck in the Promised Land: How the Arts Shaped Passions About Israel. By Shalom Goldman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 256 pp. In Starstruck in the Promised Land, Shalom Goldman recovers many unheralded figures and events that diffused Zionism into United States consciousness, as seen in Chapter Four, "Advocates for Zion: Sinatra, Steinbeck, Baldwin, and Bellow." The book also aims to recover the ways that US celebrities as different as Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, and Madonna have served the State of Israel. Assembling brief reviews of the reception of these personalities allows us to see the role of celebrity, a tactic that Israeli state builders have used to develop strong feelings of love and pride in Palestine/Israel and in the United States. This tactic jettisoned features of the place for emotions and ideas about the place. These state builders, Goldman suggests, knew what they were doing—building national myths—and they tapped American celebrity and the lens of the Bible through which Americans saw "the Promised Land." The greatest contribution of Goldman's work is to demonstrate the similarities between American capitalist marketing strategies and Zionism. The book attends to both "geopolitical factors" and "softer cultural factors" (75). He illuminates the power marketing strategies offered to [End Page 440] Zionists to gain control of the narrative in the United States and the United Nations. In his analysis of the film Exodus, for instance, Goldman brings up its appearance in an early episode of Mad Men. Don Draper tells his Israeli clients, "All I know is the Bible," and Draper's extramarital lover Rachel explains she will not move there because "For me it's more an idea than a place" (79). Goldman includes this scene to emphasize Exodus as similar marketing, but he disagrees. He argues, "But for Draper's Israeli clients, Israel is first and foremost a place, and one that they would like to see promoted in the United States" (79). Goldman brings much to analyzing the iconography of Israel in film by recalling this scene in Mad Men. However, it seems that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing by turning to Draper, who knows that it is emotion, and not a thing itself, that sells. The Israelis intentionally selected a non-Jew with no familiarity with the State of Israel or Jewish Americans to popularize the new nation. Goldman recounts Israeli officials courting "American cultural icons." Ben Gurion, he writes, "developed a strong rapport with many visiting celebrities" (84). The State of Israel made a case for itself via celebrity and celebrities. Goldman shows that politics and theology are always culturally mediated. The book bridges memoir and research, often including Goldman's personal perspective. Yet Goldman does not always climb far enough out of his own background to be critical. Though Chapter Five offers some sense of how religious Zionism moved politically right and theologically toward millennial messianism, it is not "traditional" to seek a Jewish state. Desire for a Jewish nation-state only appeared recently and was controversial among Orthodox Jews. Goldman shifts between historicizing "that potent mix of culture and politics" in transnational Zionism and expressing more emotional dedication to the State of Israel (67). In Chapter Four, he describes his upbringing: "The Orthodox Judaism that my family practiced—a form of traditional Judaism that decades later would be described as 'modern Orthodoxy'—was deeply committed to a religious Zionist ideal that saw the return to the Promised Land as the fulfillment of both biblical prophecy and Jewish millennial hopes" (74). As for many in America, Israel took a larger and larger position in the center of Goldman's sense of Jewishness. He volunteered for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) following the 1967 War. His childhood experiences led him to chafe at some of the presumptions of Orthodox practices, and the opportunities for "secular" Jewishness in Israel as well as his disillusionment with anti-Arab racism in the IDF became formative. He recounts his own military experience and responses from family and Americans in Israel, but it is unclear...

Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff

Reviewed by: Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff Michal Raucher (bio) Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life. By Zev Eleff. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. 311 pp. Boundary-policing has become a defining feature of Orthodox Judaism. Social science research reveals the elusiveness yet realness of these boundaries. Historians have largely presented a picture of Orthodoxy in America as a "slide to the right," wherein Orthodox Jews have moved to more stringent religious attitudes over the last century, thus pushing out many of those who might otherwise consider themselves Orthodox. However, amidst a sustained focus on how American Orthodoxy has changed despite an internal narrative of stasis and adherence to a singular tradition, we can now identify more clearly the many ways Orthodoxy has transformed, responded, and divided over the last century. [End Page 435] Authentically Orthodox demonstrates that throughout the twentieth century, Orthodoxy has not shifted its boundaries to the right but moved them in different directions depending on surrounding cultural and religious factors. Zev Eleff takes a broad view in developing a theoretical framework for thinking about how Orthodoxy has defined itself in twentieth-century America. Diving into nine case studies, Eleff argues that authenticity is what determines whether something—peanut oil, Binyan Blocks, or women's prayer groups, for instance—remains within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. Authenticity is subjective, contested, and a moving target. It is a feeling that is determined by "a web of experiences mediated by any number of cultural forces" (3). Those cultural forces come from a combination of what Eleff terms America's "indigenous religious culture" (by which he often means Christianity), European immigrants, and leading Israeli Orthodox rabbis (22). He argues that this quest for authenticity is what defines the boundaries of American Orthodoxy. Eleff illustrates how American Orthodox Jews have dealt with tensions over authenticity. The first case study concerns the permissibility of eating peanut oil on Passover and the influence of Hasidic emigres from Eastern Europe. The second chapter shows how bat mitzvah ceremonies became an accepted practice within Orthodoxy. The third chapter details the authentication of a religious norm for men—wearing a yarmulka in public. Chapter four focuses on how Modern Orthodoxy enlivened their youth with Mighty Mites, the Yeshiva University quiz squad. Next, Eleff looks at how the Orthodox right produced a faith-based youth culture through the Bracha Bee and rabbi trading cards. Chapter six tracks the rise and fall of Yeshivat Rambam, a Modern Orthodox day school in Baltimore that was ultimately rendered inauthentic because of the "religiously inhospitable soil" of Catholicism and the Orthodox right (143). The next three chapters focus on gendered spaces. Chapter seven explores the struggle over female college students at Yeshiva University. Chapter eight tracks the acceptance of women's Talmud study, as Eleff argues that this counterintuitive authenticity was due in large part to the decoupling of women's Talmud study from feminism. Chapter nine shows how this decoupling was not successful among women's prayer groups, which ultimately led to the elites not granting them authenticity. Eleff does important work in rooting Orthodoxy in its American framework. One powerful example of this can be seen in the chapter on peanut oil. Eleff shows how American consumerism of the early twentieth century "purchased more than a modicum of religious authenticity and helped peanut oil secure its foothold in Orthodox homes" (38). However, Hungarian Orthodox opposition to peanut oil ultimately influenced [End Page 436] American Orthodoxy only because of the conservative turn in American Protestantism. Hungarian Orthodoxy was deemed a more authentic expression of Orthodoxy in America because the American religious context had an anti-modernist, separatist, and conservative trend. The concept of authenticity is a productive theoretical approach to thinking about how boundaries are constructed. The case studies highlight the malleability of the concept. What ultimately authenticates a practice or innovation is not whether it is considered in line with Jewish law. Instead, the book reveals that at times the question was whether something was authentically Orthodox, like a bat mitzvah ritual, while at other times, the question was whether Orthodox Jews could be authentically American, like when they...

CANONICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE AUTOCEPHALOUS SYSTEM OF THE ECUMENICAL CHURCH SN THE ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

The article analyzes the body of legal norms of church law, which regulates the autocephalous principle of the church. The vector of modern transformation of autocephalous issues determines the revision of traditional approaches and reflects the ecclesiological dimension of modern Orthodoxy. The article reveals the essence of the earthly rule of the "heavenly Church", which is subordinated to the church's mission in finding the way to salvation. It is proved that the internal church system is of practical importance for the process of autocephaly of the new national local churches, which gained independence in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article examines that the church canons adopted and endorsed by the emperor in the Code of Justinian the Great in the era of the Ecumenical Councils, are relevant today. These rules, which are universally binding, may be repealed by the new All-Orthodox Council. This is important for a number of modern national churches that defend their canonical rights for independence and universal recognition. The study found that since the Byzantine Empire, state power has imposed its own principle of administrative division and management methods. Already in the II-III centuries a clear hierarchical structure of church management was formed, which led to the formation of ancient patriarchates. However, the founding of the first apostolic communities took place solely on the basis of the autocephalous principle.It is concluded that Orthodox ecclesiology offers an alternative approach to churchadministrative management. It is proved that only the autocephalous system is the only acceptable variant of the existence of the Universal Orthodoxy. Therefore, the struggle of a number of national churches for independence and recognition is fair. The lack of clear regulation of the procedure for proclamation of a new autocephalous church is specified. Therefore, further scientific explorations of autocephalous topics and the canonical work of the Holy Fathers will complement the research.

Rethinking Yang Wenhui’s identity as a ‘Chinese’ Pure Land Buddhist in his polemics against Jōdo-Shinshū

ABSTRACT In this article I would like to re-examine the doctrinal debate that ensued between the Chinese Buddhist layman and scholar Yang Wenhui (1837–1911) and Japanese priests of the Jōdo-Shinshū 淨土真宗 school – notably Ogurusu Kōchō (1831–1905) and Naiki Ryūsen (1861–1922) – between 1899 and 1901. The debate in question has been most often portrayed as a clash between two divergent understandings of Pure Land Buddhism that developed independently of each other in China and Japan. Yang’s arguments have been taken to illustrate larger exegetical and doctrinal tendencies characteristic of the ‘Chinese’ approach to the Pure Land, regarded as quite foreign to Japanese readers. However, as will be argued below, Yang did not participate in this debate merely as a spokesman for a putative generalized ‘Chinese’ Pure Land Buddhism; he was also an apologist who weighed in the ongoing domestic Chinese debates on the Pure Land, and a reformist who played a pivotal role in the process of negotiating a modern orthodoxy for the so-called ‘Pure Land tradition’ of China.

Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken ed. by Adam S. Ferziger, Miri Freud-Kandel and Steve Bayme

Reviewed by: Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken ed. by Adam S. Ferziger, Miri Freud-Kandel and Steve Bayme Lance J. Sussman (bio) Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken. Adam S. Ferziger, Miri Freud-Kandel, and Steve Bayme eds. Boston: Borderlines, 2019. viii + 300 pp. Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken is the most recent book, both academic and popular, on the Greenbergs, Blu and Rabbi Dr. Irving, a scholarly and activist married couple who have profoundly impacted American Judaism for over half a century. The growing list of titles about one or the other of the Greenbergs includes Steven T. Katz and Stephen Bayme's edited collection Continuity and Change: A Festschrift in Honor of Irving Greenberg's 75th Birthday (2011); Darren Kleinberg's Hybrid Judaism: Irving Greenberg, Encounter, and the Changing Nature of American Jewish Identity (2016); and Devorah Zlochower's edited collection You Arose, A Mother in Israel, A Festschrift in Honor of Blu Greenberg (2017). Moreover, both have been the subject of numerous articles in a wide variety of academic and intellectual publications despite the fact, as Greenberg himself states, "Modern Orthodoxy has not taken the road I advocated" (7). Hence the Robert Frost-alluding subtitle of this anthology of scholarly articles. Essentially, Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy is the published record of a 2014 conference attended by "sixteen scholars around the globe gathered at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in the bucolic Yarnton Manor in the Oxfordshire countryside, for the first (now annual) Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism" (1). The book includes twelve articles from the 2014 conference as well as an insightful autobiographical "Retrospective View" by Greenberg. The contributors, some of whom previously contributed to the 2011 festschrift, represent a broad spectrum of scholars, including historians, philosophers, and sociologists. [End Page 636] This new study of Greenberg is divided into two parts: "Law and Theology," which mostly focuses on his thought, and "Past and Present," which expands to include a variety of studies on Modern Orthodoxy in general. The editors' forward succinctly explains that "the current volume offers readers the opportunity to examine in-depth the trenchant and candid efforts of one of the most thoughtful and earnest voices to emerge from within American Orthodoxy to address the theological and moral concerns that characterize our times" (5). Greenberg's opening autobiographical statement, one of several he has shared throughout his long career, is helpful to a scholarly assessment of his self-understanding at the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century. Organized chronologically, it also provides a taxonomy of many the leading issues he has confronted over the decades including, in part, "Growing up in Modern Orthodoxy," "Rabbi Soloveitchik's Influence," "The Holocaust Transforms My Thinking," "The 1960s and Their Impact," "Recoil from the '60s and the Rise of Ultra-Orthodoxy," "Working for CLAL Yisrael as a Modern Orthodox Jew; Losing Ground in Modern Orthodoxy," and "The Decline and Rebirth of (Post) Modern Orthodoxy." The fork in the road in Greenberg's life clearly came in the 1960s and was profoundly conditioned both by the general upheavals of that decade as well as, in academic religious circles, a particular interest in theology that later faded from mainstream American religious discourse. In her insightful contribution to the anthology, Sylvia Barak Fishman places special emphasis on the now well-known April 28, 1966, interview in The Commentator, the Yeshiva University student newspaper, written by Hillel Goldberg and entitled, "Orthodoxy, YU, Viet Nam & Sex" as a turning point in Greenberg's career. However, Greenberg himself points to a 1965 exchange with a Reform theologian, Rabbi Jakob Petuchowski, about the place of women in Jewish law as having "crystallized my nascent pluralism" (18). The 1966 Commentator interview also gave rise to a lengthy response to Greenberg by Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein which is analyzed in the book's final chapter, "'The Road Not Taken' and 'The One Less Traveled': The Greenberg-Lichtenstein Exchange and Contemporary Orthodoxy" by Adam S. Ferziger, one of the book's three editors and author of Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism (2015). Correctly...

Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture by Karen E.H. Skinazi

Reviewed by: Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture by Karen E.H. Skinazi Leslie Ginsparg Klein (bio) Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture. By Karen E.H. Skinazi. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2018. xii + 272 pp. In Women of Valor, Karen E. H. Skinazi challenges portrayals of Orthodox Jewish women in popular culture as meek, oppressed, and dowdy. She contrasts representations of women in literature, visual art, and film with cultural works created by community insiders and with the reality of women's experiences. Using literary analysis, she discusses the lives of Orthodox women and their cultural works to demonstrate that women have voices, express agency and are far more complex than they are often portrayed as being by those outside of their communities. Focusing on Hasidic and Yeshivish women, Skinazi debunks a number of stereotypes. She posits that with rising fundamentalism in the Orthodox world, outside writers and filmmakers have mistakenly presented Orthodox women as too subjugated to tell their own stories. For example, despite a burgeoning Orthodox women's arts scene, secular books and films often present Orthodox female artists as silenced. Likewise, Skinazi points out the misperception in the mainstream media that Yeshivish and Hasidic women are mainly housewives and that working outside the home is a source of conflict. In fact, women commonly work outside the home in these communities, frequently as primary breadwinners supporting husbands who are engaged in full-time Torah study. While acknowledging the greater restrictions some Orthodox communities have placed on women in recent years, Skinazi challenges the idea, believed both in and out of the community, that by increasing strictures and religious observance, these communities are returning to tradition. She shows that contemporary Orthodox society is actually not stuck in the past or traditional at all. Rather, leaders are creating their own alternative modernity which is, in great part, a reaction to secular liberalism. What is truly innovation is recast and legitimized as tradition. For example, Hasidic leaders of one community issued an edict that women were not allowed to drive. Leaders and followers presented this decision as a return to traditional standards of modesty. But Skinazi points out the irony in an interview with a male member of the community, who stated that his mother drives and his mother-in-law drives, but his wife does not, because, "this is our tradition" (7). In addition to innovating for the future, history is often rewritten to support the new "traditions," as I have pointed out in my own research. Skinazi states that while these alternative modernities (plural—they take on different iterations in different Orthodox communities) result in new restrictions impacting men and women, they more often target [End Page 160] women, who "have no say in their making" (168). Indeed, many segments of the Orthodox community are embroiled in culture wars, figuring out their place vis-à-vis the secular world and modernity. In all segments of the population, women are at the heart of these conflicts. As one example, in Modern Orthodoxy, this manifests in the fights over women in clergy roles; as another, in the Yeshivish community, this is evident in the increasingly challenged policy of refusing to publish pictures of women in the media. In all of these cases, tradition is invoked as the value that should determine practice. The author brings examples of women's reactions to prescriptive literature written by Orthodox men for women, specifically regarding women's roles and modesty. There has been a resurgence of this kind of writing in recent years, some of it with misogynistic undertones. Like other prescriptive literature, these writings are not necessarily descriptive. They often do not reflect the actual practice of women, and Skinazi brings several examples of women writing critiques of these new directives. She further shows that Orthodox women have means of self-expression by citing examples of women who have become elected officials in the community's districts, published authors, filmmakers and visual artists. But at times her insistence that Hasidic and Yeshivish women have a voice crosses into overcorrection. Yes, the...

La columna habitada de Louis Kahn. La búsqueda del espacio dentro de la estructura

Canonical Modernism imposed a fluid, extensive and impersonal conception of space, indepedent of the inhabitant and with the final objective of creating an aesthetically and functionally self-absorbed object. Needed neither external references nor user validations. Starting in the 1950s, Louis Kahn will explore a new type of space in which matter, structure and light are closely related and are the elements to create a humanized space, with the user at the center of his work. Kahn’s project process follows a sequence in which matter creates the wall, which dissolves into columns between which light is introduced to make interior space a inhabitable, and therefore human, world. This same process will also apply to the interior of the structural elements, which in themselves will end up being containers of spaces, in a modern re-reading of classic poché. Structure and space are thus inextricably associated, overcoming the canonical premise of modern orthodoxy whereby structure, enclosure, and space were independent categories.

Citizenship or Inheritance? The Phratry in Classical Athens

Abstract This article challenges the modern orthodoxy which states that phratry membership was a necessary precondition of Athenian citizenship in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and argues that the purpose of the phratry was to establish not claims to citizenship, even though membership in a phratry was proof of citizenship, but inheritance entitlements. It questions the widespread assumption that citizens needed to be born of unions legally cemented by engyê. In turn, it challenges a recent attempt to argue that legitimacy of birth and legitimacy in community were one and the same. Finally, in examines passages of orators which show that the concern of the phratry was to establish not the right to participate in Athenian polity, which was the business of the deme to determine, but the right to inherit property, and in the light of those conclusions argues that while membership in the phratry proved citizenship, it was not essential or necessary for each and every citizen of Athens to be a member of a phratry, the chief purpose of which was to establish inheritance claims.

Медиатизация православия — это возможно?

Тотальная медиатизация всех сфер современных обществ ставит социологов перед непростой проблемой необходимости ревизии устоявшихся теорий и подходов. Применительно к отечественной и зарубежной социологии религии это означает ревизию все еще используемой по старинке парадигмы секуляризации. Институционально оформившееся медиаизмерение традиционных религий слабо укладывается в жесткие рамки теорий секуляризации, предписывающих трактовать любые инновации религиозной системы как ее обмирщение и выхолащивание. В такой системе координат плохо помещаются медиатизированные миры традиционных религий, опосредующие выходы религий в публичные социальные пространства. Так, совершенно незамеченным остался прецедент 2015 г., когда православный иеромонах Фотий стал победителем развлекательного шоу «Голос» и концертирующим «Голосом России». В равной степени вне социологической рефлексии пребывает и российское православие эпохи web 2.0 — множественные цифровые церковные СМИ, медиахолдинги, сайты Московского патриархата и синодальных отделов, приходов и православных храмов, православная поисковая система, священнические и монашеские профили в социальных сетях Vk.com, Facebook, Instagram, медийное вещание православных подкастов и спутниковых каналов, видеоблоги и документалистика на платформе YouTube. Меж тем, определенным образом соотнесенные офлайн- и онлайн-измерения современного российского православия конструируют новые идентичности, сообщества, модели национального патриотизма, процедуры цензуры и контроля российских медиа- и интернет-пространств. Настоящая статья предлагает проанализировать медиатизацию российского православия как составляющую процесса его долгосрочной реинституционализации. В качестве методологической рамки исследования автор использует концепции медиатизации общества, предложенные Фридрихом Кротцем, Андреасом Хеппом и Ником Коулдри. Это позволяет рассмотреть уже существующие православные медиамиры и кейс иеромонаха Фотия как маркеры определенных этапов реинституционализации российского православия.
 Благодарность. Исследование выполнено при финансовой поддержке РФФИ, в рамках проекта № 19-011-00871 «Социальные медиа как фактор трансформации православия в современной России».