Contesting religious space: spatiality, religion, and identity-making among Jews in Trondheim
Author(s)
Publication Name
Publication Date
Abstract
Building on current research into space and religion, this article explores how religious identity is negotiated in the small Modern Orthodox Jewish community in the Norwegian city of Trondheim. The focus is on Jews who question the synagogue as an Orthodox site with its strict definitions of who has access to the religious services and sections of the synagogue, which reflects the ongoing construction of Jewish identity among Jews in Trondheim. Three significant factors constitute this negotiation: loyalty towards the first generations of Jewish immigrants who established the Orthodox tradition in Trondheim and founded an Orthodox congregation, the desire to create a congregation that lives up to the contemporary ideal of gender equality, the desire to be affiliated with a congregation for those who identify as Jews. This article argues that the way religious space is contested has much to say about the way Jewish identity is currently understood in the Nordic countries. A focus on space and place also proves useful when analysing religious identity in Europe more generally.
Topics
Synagogues Jewish Space Jewish Identity Jewish Community Main Topic: Identity and Community Orthodox Judaism
Genre
Geographic Coverage
Copyright Info
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativesLicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, andreproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon inany way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository bythe author(s) or with their consent
Original Language
DOI
Bibliographic Information
Contesting religious space: spatiality, religion, and identity-making among Jews in Trondheim. 2024: https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1080/13537903.2024.2355785
