Author: George Kranzler
Publisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated
ISBN: 1461734541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Hasidic Williamsburg recounts the dramatic emergence of this unique community in the face of major crises. It is the story of the loyalty of its members to their rebbes and their teachings and to the milieu they created in an old Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Based on his previous book Williamsburg: A Jewish Community in Transition, which reported the transformation of this moderately Orthodox Jewish community and its rise to prominence after the influx of numbers of refugees from Nazi persecution and the Holocaust, George Kranzler presents the findings of a decade of research into the survival and life-style of Hasidic Williamsburg as a functioning community. Hasidic Williamsburg portrays the desperate struggle and relentless efforts of its leaders, foremost among them the Rebbe of Satmar and other prominent hasidic rebbes, to stem the progressive disintegration of the Jewish neighborhood. It presents their valiant attempts to provide the vital resources for its survival in the face of persistent poverty and other grave problems and to develop programs that would secure the future of this unique hasidic community. Kranzler concludes with the assertion that at the beginning of the '90s its inhabitants are hopeful of being able to weather the present crisis and to continue to function as one of pluralist America's viable religious communities.
Hasidic Williamsburg
Author: George Kranzler
Publisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated
ISBN: 1461734541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Hasidic Williamsburg recounts the dramatic emergence of this unique community in the face of major crises. It is the story of the loyalty of its members to their rebbes and their teachings and to the milieu they created in an old Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Based on his previous book Williamsburg: A Jewish Community in Transition, which reported the transformation of this moderately Orthodox Jewish community and its rise to prominence after the influx of numbers of refugees from Nazi persecution and the Holocaust, George Kranzler presents the findings of a decade of research into the survival and life-style of Hasidic Williamsburg as a functioning community. Hasidic Williamsburg portrays the desperate struggle and relentless efforts of its leaders, foremost among them the Rebbe of Satmar and other prominent hasidic rebbes, to stem the progressive disintegration of the Jewish neighborhood. It presents their valiant attempts to provide the vital resources for its survival in the face of persistent poverty and other grave problems and to develop programs that would secure the future of this unique hasidic community. Kranzler concludes with the assertion that at the beginning of the '90s its inhabitants are hopeful of being able to weather the present crisis and to continue to function as one of pluralist America's viable religious communities.
Publisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated
ISBN: 1461734541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Hasidic Williamsburg recounts the dramatic emergence of this unique community in the face of major crises. It is the story of the loyalty of its members to their rebbes and their teachings and to the milieu they created in an old Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Based on his previous book Williamsburg: A Jewish Community in Transition, which reported the transformation of this moderately Orthodox Jewish community and its rise to prominence after the influx of numbers of refugees from Nazi persecution and the Holocaust, George Kranzler presents the findings of a decade of research into the survival and life-style of Hasidic Williamsburg as a functioning community. Hasidic Williamsburg portrays the desperate struggle and relentless efforts of its leaders, foremost among them the Rebbe of Satmar and other prominent hasidic rebbes, to stem the progressive disintegration of the Jewish neighborhood. It presents their valiant attempts to provide the vital resources for its survival in the face of persistent poverty and other grave problems and to develop programs that would secure the future of this unique hasidic community. Kranzler concludes with the assertion that at the beginning of the '90s its inhabitants are hopeful of being able to weather the present crisis and to continue to function as one of pluralist America's viable religious communities.
A Fortress in Brooklyn
Author: Nathaniel Deutsch
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300258372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423
Book Description
The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn "A rich chronicle of the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg. . . . This expert account enlightens."—Publishers Weekly “One of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States.”—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University The Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is famously one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy groups of people in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of the toughest parts of New York City during an era of steep decline, only to later resist and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of the neighborhood. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a group of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely opposed the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg’s Hasidim rejected assimilation while still undergoing distinctive forms of Americanization and racialization, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300258372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423
Book Description
The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn "A rich chronicle of the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg. . . . This expert account enlightens."—Publishers Weekly “One of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States.”—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University The Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is famously one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy groups of people in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of the toughest parts of New York City during an era of steep decline, only to later resist and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of the neighborhood. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a group of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely opposed the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg’s Hasidim rejected assimilation while still undergoing distinctive forms of Americanization and racialization, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.
American Shtetl
Author: Nomi M. Stolzenberg
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691199779
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soil Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. This book tells the story of how this group of pious, Yiddish-speaking Jews has grown to become a thriving insular enclave and a powerful local government in upstate New York. While rejecting the norms of mainstream American society, Kiryas Joel has been stunningly successful in creating a world apart by using the very instruments of secular political and legal power that it disavows. Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers paint a richly textured portrait of daily life in Kiryas Joel, exploring the community's guiding religious, social, and economic norms. They delve into the roots of Satmar Hasidism and its charismatic founder, Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, following his journey from nineteenth-century Hungary to post–World War II Brooklyn, where he dreamed of founding an ideal Jewish town modeled on the shtetls of eastern Europe. Stolzenberg and Myers chart the rise of Kiryas Joel as an official municipality with its own elected local government. They show how constant legal and political battles defined and even bolstered the community, whose very success has coincided with the rise of political conservatism and multiculturalism in American society over the past forty years. Timely and accessible, American Shtetl unravels the strands of cultural and legal conflict that gave rise to one of the most vibrant religious communities in America, and reveals a way of life shaped by both self-segregation and unwitting assimilation.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691199779
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soil Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. This book tells the story of how this group of pious, Yiddish-speaking Jews has grown to become a thriving insular enclave and a powerful local government in upstate New York. While rejecting the norms of mainstream American society, Kiryas Joel has been stunningly successful in creating a world apart by using the very instruments of secular political and legal power that it disavows. Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers paint a richly textured portrait of daily life in Kiryas Joel, exploring the community's guiding religious, social, and economic norms. They delve into the roots of Satmar Hasidism and its charismatic founder, Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, following his journey from nineteenth-century Hungary to post–World War II Brooklyn, where he dreamed of founding an ideal Jewish town modeled on the shtetls of eastern Europe. Stolzenberg and Myers chart the rise of Kiryas Joel as an official municipality with its own elected local government. They show how constant legal and political battles defined and even bolstered the community, whose very success has coincided with the rise of political conservatism and multiculturalism in American society over the past forty years. Timely and accessible, American Shtetl unravels the strands of cultural and legal conflict that gave rise to one of the most vibrant religious communities in America, and reveals a way of life shaped by both self-segregation and unwitting assimilation.
Unorthodox
Author: Deborah Feldman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439187010
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
The instant New York Times bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman's escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel and Carolyn Jessop's Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author. As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah's desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439187010
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
The instant New York Times bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman's escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel and Carolyn Jessop's Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author. As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah's desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape.
New World Hasidim
Author: Janet S. Belcove-Shalin
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791496201
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Hasidim has long been the subject of historical, philosophical, and literary accounts, but it is only in recent years that it has begun to attract the close attention of social scientists. This book highlights contemporary ethnographic perspectives that convey the richness and complexity of Hasidic life. Political engagement, gender roles, ritual life, proselytizing activities, and community revitalization are just some of the topics covered in this study that casts light on one of the more enigmatic religious communities of contemporary America.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791496201
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Hasidim has long been the subject of historical, philosophical, and literary accounts, but it is only in recent years that it has begun to attract the close attention of social scientists. This book highlights contemporary ethnographic perspectives that convey the richness and complexity of Hasidic life. Political engagement, gender roles, ritual life, proselytizing activities, and community revitalization are just some of the topics covered in this study that casts light on one of the more enigmatic religious communities of contemporary America.
Becoming Eve
Author: Abby Stein
Publisher: Seal Press
ISBN: 1580059171
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?
Publisher: Seal Press
ISBN: 1580059171
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?
Mitzvah Girls
Author: Ayala Fader
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830990
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Mitzvah Girls is the first book about bringing up Hasidic Jewish girls in North America, providing an in-depth look into a closed community. Ayala Fader examines language, gender, and the body from infancy to adulthood, showing how Hasidic girls in Brooklyn become women responsible for rearing the next generation of nonliberal Jewish believers. To uncover how girls learn the practices of Hasidic Judaism, Fader looks beyond the synagogue to everyday talk in the context of homes, classrooms, and city streets. Hasidic women complicate stereotypes of nonliberal religious women by collapsing distinctions between the religious and the secular. In this innovative book, Fader demonstrates that contemporary Hasidic femininity requires women and girls to engage with the secular world around them, protecting Hasidic men and boys who study the Torah. Even as Hasidic religious observance has become more stringent, Hasidic girls have unexpectedly become more fluent in secular modernity. They are fluent Yiddish speakers but switch to English as they grow older; they are increasingly modest but also fashionable; they read fiction and play games like those of mainstream American children but theirs have Orthodox Jewish messages; and they attend private Hasidic schools that freely adapt from North American public and parochial models. Investigating how Hasidic women and girls conceptualize the religious, the secular, and the modern, Mitzvah Girls offers exciting new insights into cultural production and change in nonliberal religious communities.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830990
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Mitzvah Girls is the first book about bringing up Hasidic Jewish girls in North America, providing an in-depth look into a closed community. Ayala Fader examines language, gender, and the body from infancy to adulthood, showing how Hasidic girls in Brooklyn become women responsible for rearing the next generation of nonliberal Jewish believers. To uncover how girls learn the practices of Hasidic Judaism, Fader looks beyond the synagogue to everyday talk in the context of homes, classrooms, and city streets. Hasidic women complicate stereotypes of nonliberal religious women by collapsing distinctions between the religious and the secular. In this innovative book, Fader demonstrates that contemporary Hasidic femininity requires women and girls to engage with the secular world around them, protecting Hasidic men and boys who study the Torah. Even as Hasidic religious observance has become more stringent, Hasidic girls have unexpectedly become more fluent in secular modernity. They are fluent Yiddish speakers but switch to English as they grow older; they are increasingly modest but also fashionable; they read fiction and play games like those of mainstream American children but theirs have Orthodox Jewish messages; and they attend private Hasidic schools that freely adapt from North American public and parochial models. Investigating how Hasidic women and girls conceptualize the religious, the secular, and the modern, Mitzvah Girls offers exciting new insights into cultural production and change in nonliberal religious communities.
A Sukkah is Burning
Author: Philip Fishman
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
ISBN: 1938223314
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
PHILIP FISHMAN grew up in the Brooklyn Jewish neighborhood of Williamsburg during the 1950s, when the community experienced a large influx of Hasidic Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and the neighborhood evolved from a multi-ethnic Jewishly heterodox community similar to "Jewish" areas in other parts of New York City into a tightly knit re-invention of an ultra-pious East European shtetl. The culture and values of the new arrivals often conflicted sharply with the older community. The fault lines of this kulturkampf were the context of his childhood-and these memoirs vividly describe the personal, familial, and communal tensions associated with this social transformation. Williamsburg's metamorphosis into an exclusively haredi enclave was the first of its kind in the United States, but this neighborhood's profound makeover, with the associated community discord, was soon echoed in many other American locales and is occurring in many Israeli communities. The post-war transformation of Williamsburg foreshadowed a dramatic and ongoing transformation of American Orthodoxy and-more broadly- American Jewish life in the 21st century.
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
ISBN: 1938223314
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
PHILIP FISHMAN grew up in the Brooklyn Jewish neighborhood of Williamsburg during the 1950s, when the community experienced a large influx of Hasidic Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and the neighborhood evolved from a multi-ethnic Jewishly heterodox community similar to "Jewish" areas in other parts of New York City into a tightly knit re-invention of an ultra-pious East European shtetl. The culture and values of the new arrivals often conflicted sharply with the older community. The fault lines of this kulturkampf were the context of his childhood-and these memoirs vividly describe the personal, familial, and communal tensions associated with this social transformation. Williamsburg's metamorphosis into an exclusively haredi enclave was the first of its kind in the United States, but this neighborhood's profound makeover, with the associated community discord, was soon echoed in many other American locales and is occurring in many Israeli communities. The post-war transformation of Williamsburg foreshadowed a dramatic and ongoing transformation of American Orthodoxy and-more broadly- American Jewish life in the 21st century.
Unchosen
Author: Hella Winston
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807036277
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
An exploration of Hasidic Jews struggling to live within their restrictive communities—and, in some cases, to carve out a new life beyond them When Hella Winston began talking with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn for her doctoral dissertation in sociology, she was surprised to be covertly introduced to Hasidim unhappy with their highly restrictive way of life and sometimes desperately struggling to escape it. Unchosen tells the stories of these “rebel” Hasidim, serious questioners who long for greater personal and intellectual freedom than their communities allow. She meets is Malky Schwartz, who grew up in a Lubavith sect in Brooklyn, and started Footsteps, Inc., an organization that helps ultra-Orthodox Jews who are considering or have already left their community. There is Yossi, a young man who, though deeply attached to the Hasidic culture in which he was raised, longed for a life with fewer restrictions and more tolerance. Yossi's efforts at making such a life, however, were being severely hampered by his fourth grade English and math skills, his profound ignorance of the ways of the outside world, and the looming threat that pursuing his desires would almost certainly lead to rejection by his family and friends. Then she met Dini, a young wife and mother whose decision to deviate even slightly from Hasidic standards of modesty led to threatening phone calls from anonymous men, warning her that she needed to watch the way she was dressing if she wanted to remain a part of the community. Someone else introduced Winston to Steinmetz, a closet bibliophile worked in a small Judaica store in his community and spent his days off anxiously evading discovery in the library of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, whose shelves contain non-Hasidic books he is forbidden to read but nonetheless devours, often several at a sitting. There were others still who had actually made the wrenching decision to leave their communities altogether. In her new Preface, Winston discusses the passionate reactions the book has elicited among Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike. Named one of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Religion Books of 2005. Honorable Mention in the 2012 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807036277
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
An exploration of Hasidic Jews struggling to live within their restrictive communities—and, in some cases, to carve out a new life beyond them When Hella Winston began talking with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn for her doctoral dissertation in sociology, she was surprised to be covertly introduced to Hasidim unhappy with their highly restrictive way of life and sometimes desperately struggling to escape it. Unchosen tells the stories of these “rebel” Hasidim, serious questioners who long for greater personal and intellectual freedom than their communities allow. She meets is Malky Schwartz, who grew up in a Lubavith sect in Brooklyn, and started Footsteps, Inc., an organization that helps ultra-Orthodox Jews who are considering or have already left their community. There is Yossi, a young man who, though deeply attached to the Hasidic culture in which he was raised, longed for a life with fewer restrictions and more tolerance. Yossi's efforts at making such a life, however, were being severely hampered by his fourth grade English and math skills, his profound ignorance of the ways of the outside world, and the looming threat that pursuing his desires would almost certainly lead to rejection by his family and friends. Then she met Dini, a young wife and mother whose decision to deviate even slightly from Hasidic standards of modesty led to threatening phone calls from anonymous men, warning her that she needed to watch the way she was dressing if she wanted to remain a part of the community. Someone else introduced Winston to Steinmetz, a closet bibliophile worked in a small Judaica store in his community and spent his days off anxiously evading discovery in the library of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, whose shelves contain non-Hasidic books he is forbidden to read but nonetheless devours, often several at a sitting. There were others still who had actually made the wrenching decision to leave their communities altogether. In her new Preface, Winston discusses the passionate reactions the book has elicited among Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike. Named one of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Religion Books of 2005. Honorable Mention in the 2012 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism
Jews, God, and Videotape
Author: Jeffrey Shandler
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814740871
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
A pioneering examination of the impact of new communications technologies and media practices on the religious life of American Jewry Engaging media has been an ongoing issue for American Jews, as it has been for other religious communities in the United States, for several generations. Shandler’s examples range from early recordings of cantorial music to Hasidic outreach on the Internet. In between he explores mid-twentieth-century ecumenical radio and television broadcasting, video documentation of life cycle rituals, museum displays and tourist practices as means for engaging the Holocaust as a moral touchstone, and the role of mass-produced material culture in Jews’ responses to the American celebration of Christmas. Shandler argues that the impact of these and other media on American Judaism is varied and extensive: they have challenged the role of clergy and transformed the nature of ritual; facilitated innovations in religious practice and scholarship, as well as efforts to maintain traditional observance and teachings; created venues for outreach, both to enhance relationships with non-Jewish neighbors and to promote greater religiosity among Jews; even redefined the notion of what might constitute a Jewish religious community or spiritual experience. As Jews, God, and Videotape demonstrates, American Jews’ experiences are emblematic of how religious communities’ engagements with new media have become central to defining religiosity in the modern age.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814740871
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
A pioneering examination of the impact of new communications technologies and media practices on the religious life of American Jewry Engaging media has been an ongoing issue for American Jews, as it has been for other religious communities in the United States, for several generations. Shandler’s examples range from early recordings of cantorial music to Hasidic outreach on the Internet. In between he explores mid-twentieth-century ecumenical radio and television broadcasting, video documentation of life cycle rituals, museum displays and tourist practices as means for engaging the Holocaust as a moral touchstone, and the role of mass-produced material culture in Jews’ responses to the American celebration of Christmas. Shandler argues that the impact of these and other media on American Judaism is varied and extensive: they have challenged the role of clergy and transformed the nature of ritual; facilitated innovations in religious practice and scholarship, as well as efforts to maintain traditional observance and teachings; created venues for outreach, both to enhance relationships with non-Jewish neighbors and to promote greater religiosity among Jews; even redefined the notion of what might constitute a Jewish religious community or spiritual experience. As Jews, God, and Videotape demonstrates, American Jews’ experiences are emblematic of how religious communities’ engagements with new media have become central to defining religiosity in the modern age.