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Religious "Jewishness": Biographical narrative in a closed group
Author(s): Ostrovskaya, Elena
Date: 2016
Topics: Interviews, Main Topic: Other, Oral History and Biography, Methodology, Orthodox Judaism, Religious Belief, Religious Observance and Practice
Abstract: "Religiosity" is one of the most popular and frequently used concepts in contemporary professional discourse of the sociology of religion. However, the study of this phenomenon is usually reduced to some quantitative surveys involving a multidimensional measurement model of religiosity or to polls concerning religious affiliation. Meanwhile, the content and structural components of religiosity of different groups elude the researcher's attention. Inclusion of biographical narratives in the methodological toolkit makes it possible to identify collective and individual components of religiosity. However, its use in studies of religious groups and actors involves a number of methodological difficulties, which are not always explained in corresponding manuals. This article offers a detailed analysis of the most complex aspects of the methodology of the biographical narrative: search for respondents, method of conducting such interviews, stages of interviewing. Each stage of explanation is illustrated by examples from the author's research of the religious Jews of St. Petersburg (2015). The analysis of biographical narrative procedures draws on the daily life of Jewish religiosity, the specific chronotope of its manifestations and the "us-them" disposition.
Religious Identity of Modern Orthodox and Hasidic Jewry in St. Petersburg
Author(s): Ostrovskaya, Elena
Date: 2016
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Revival, Jewish Identity, Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Chabad-Lubavitch, Orthodox Judaism, Religious Observance and Practice, Religious Belief, Interviews, Oral History and Biography
Abstract: This article describes the results of field research into religious Jewry of St. Petersburg. I analyze biographies of Modern Orthodox and Hasids of Lubavitcher traditions (or the Chabads as they call themselves), who in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s disintegration in the 1990s chose observance as their self-identity and lifestyle. The paper is aimed at answering the following questions: how do modern Jewish identities differ from one another among the St.Petersburg observant Jewry raised in non-religious families and Soviet schools? How do they coordinate their collective identity with other Jewish communities around the world? To conceptualize my research, I have used Giddens and Beck’s theories of modernity, while my methodology draws on the use of biography and biographical narrative in ethnographic studies. I argue that individual reflexivity gained new importance for both Modern Orthodox Jews and the Chabads in the post-Soviet religious liberation and the arrival of new religious influences. However, whereas Modern Orthodox Jews emphasize the autonomy of their subject position and stress the meaning of individual dogma, the Chabads foreground the primacy of tradition when reflecting on their identity as religious Jews.
Tradition as a Homeland to Return to: Transnational Religious Identity of the Post-Soviet Orthodox Jewry
Author(s): Ostrovskaya, Elena
Date: 2021
Topics: Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Orthodox Judaism, Religious Observance and Practice
Abstract: This article highlights the outcome of a long-term field research into the transnational identity of the post-Soviet Orthodox Jewry. It analyzes biographical interviews taken between 2015 and 2018 in St. Petersburg and Minsk to define the religious identity and day-to-day practices of post-Soviet Orthodox Jews. In this article, I argue that the modern post-Soviet Jewry is a new socio-cultural phenomenon with no historical prototypes. As to the research methodology, it was a combination of the transnational approach, random choice case-study targeting post-Soviet Orthodox communities of Orthodox Jewry in large cities, and the biographical method. The backbone of the post-Soviet Orthodox communities of different strains of Judaism was formed in 1990–2008. It is made up of three generations of men and women born in the late 1940s–1960s, mid-1960s–early 1970s, and the 1980s. Each of these generations is characterized by its own unique pattern of observance, the formation of which is directly conditioned by the circumstances of involvement in religious Jewry. The transnational pattern of observance of the Post-Soviet Orthodox Jews involves the model they confronted at the very beginning of their journey, the model they learned in overseas educational institutions or through incoming envoys and rabbis in the country of residence, and the model of balance between the required and possible in the modern post-Christian and post-atheist environment.
Media Practices of Russian-Speaking Orthodox Jews: Women’s Groups and Rabbis’ Blogs on Facebook and Instagram
Author(s): Ostrovskaya, Elena
Date: 2021
Topics: Jewish Women, Main Topic: Other, Orthodox Judaism, Internet, Media, Social Media, Rabbis
Abstract: This article focuses on the media practices of Russian-speaking Orthodox Jews seeking patterns of observance relevant to secular modernity. The author applies the conceptual framework of “communicative figurations” to describe the process of everyday Torah observance in post-Soviet countries, Israel, the United States, and Western Europe. Empirical research on media repertoires reveals that members of post-Soviet Orthodox communities use Facebook and Instagram to maintain closed women’s groups and rabbis’ blogs focused on observance. Women’s groups frame everyday observance in terms of modesty, family purity, the kosher home, and the like. Personal rabbis’ blogs introduce practices of “digital Judaism” that include Torah lessons, the daily page of the Talmud, question and answer exchanges, and so forth. Content-based textual analyses uncover thematic intersections, the circulation of stories, and reciprocal hyperlinks between both types of groups. The media practices of women’s groups and rabbis’ blogs link the local Russian-speaking Jewish communities with a transnational Orthodox constellation.