New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies

03/17/2017

Sarah Bunin Benor will be giving a public lecture at Fordham (near Lincoln Center) next Thursday evening, 3/23, at 6pm. The title of her talk is "Competing ideologies of Hebrew Use at American Jewish Summer Camps." All are welcome to attend, and forward to colleagues and friends who may be interested.

More info:

Thursday, March 23, 2017, 6 p.m. | 113 West 60th Street, Lowenstein LL 523
"Competing Ideologies of Hebrew Use at American Jewish Summer Camps"
Sarah Bunin Benor

What is the role of Hebrew in contemporary American Jewish life? This talk focuses on one type of Jewish educational institution: summer camps, which incorporate Hebrew to varying degrees, ranging from a few Hebrew words and songs to Hebrew immersion programs. At many of these camps, staff members hold conflicting ideologies about how much Hebrew to use and whether it is acceptable to use only borrowed nouns rather than full Hebrew sentences. Grammar sticklers at several camps criticize the use of clippings, like meltz (wait tables) from Hebrew meltzar (waiter) and blends, like t’floptions (tefillah [prayer] options). This talk analyzes these competing stances in light of research on language ideology and language socialization and discusses how the discourses are influenced by the historical revernacularization of Hebrew and the influx of Israeli staff members.

Sarah Bunin Benor is Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (Los Angeles) and Adjunct Associate Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012), as well as many articles about Jewish language, Yiddish, and American Jews. Professor Benor is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and creator of the Jewish Language Research Website and the Jewish English Lexicon.

A joint event of the Anthropology Department and Jewish Studies at Fordham University.

11/01/2016

Fordham University’s Jewish Studies Program is pleased to announce a Short-Term Research Fellowship opportunity for scholars from outside the New York metropolitan area, engaged in social scientific research on Jewish Orthodoxy at the graduate, post-doctoral, or more senior levels. Scholars planning to conduct on-site research in New York, preferably ethnographic, and those who can make use of the resources of Yeshiva University’s library, archives, or museum, are particularly encouraged to apply.

Each fellow is expected to be in residence for the duration of the fellowship. Fellows will also participate in at least one meeting of the 2017 New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies (https://wp.nyu.edu/nywgjo/schedule/) and present their research in the Working Group’s final symposium on May 5th. Fellowship stipends are $1,000 per week for a minimum of two and maximum of four weeks, and a subsidy for travel may be available.

To apply: send a CV, cover letter, a maximum 3-page research proposal describing intended research, use of collections during the Fellowship period, the duration and timing of the stay, and the names and contact information of three references to Professors Magda Teter and Ayala Fader at [email protected] by December 1, 2016. Results will be announced in January.

Eligibility: the fellowship is limited to scholars affiliated with an accredited institution of higher education.

05/24/2016

Dear colleagues,

We are excited to announce the launch of the New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies during AY 2016-2017, generously supported by the American Academy of Jewish Research, Fordham University’s Program in Jewish Studies, and New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. The working group will be hosted by Fordham University’s Jewish Studies Program and Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lincoln Center.

The Working Group is convened as a response to the growing number of social scientists, particularly in the New York region, conducting research with Orthodox communities (Hasidic, Lithuanian-Yeshivish, Syrian, etc.) at a historical turning point in North American Jewish life: While communities are becoming increasingly Orthodox, Orthodoxy itself is undergoing rapid sociocultural and political change.

The New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies invites social science researchers with a diversity of methodologies and analytic tools to participate in five meetings over the upcoming academic year. Each of the first four meetings will focus on a particular theme and will be a venue for sharing work in progress within an active network of scholars. The final meeting will culminate in a public all-day symposium, leading to a collaborative publication in a major journal venue. Meetings are scheduled from 9-11:30 am on the following Fridays: October 14, 2016; December 2, 2016; February 3, 2017; March 24, 2017; May 5, 2017 (symposium).

We are interested in hearing from junior and senior scholars as well as graduate students. As an interdisciplinary working group with a special interest in developing comparative theoretical frameworks for analyzing religious and cultural life, we also encourage applications from social scientists engaged in research in non-Jewish orthodox or nonliberal communities in the United States, such as Evangelical Christians, Amish and Mennonites, Mormons, Muslims, etc.

Please submit a letter of interest to Ayala Fader ([email protected]) and Isaac Bleaman ([email protected]) by June 30, 2016. More information and updates can be found on our website: https://wp.nyu.edu/nywgjo/

The New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies is an interdisciplinary community of scholars engaged in social scientific research on Orthodox communities (Hasidic, Lithuanian-Yeshivish, Syrian, etc.). The goal of the group is to develop comparative theoretical frameworks and methods for studying…