ULTRA-ORTHODOX JUDAISM in CONTEMPORARY BRITAIN Oliver Antony Valins Thesis Submitted for The
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IDENTITY, SPACE AND BOUNDARIES: ULTRA-ORTHODOX JUDAISM IN CONTEMPORARY BRITAIN Oliver Antony Valins Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Department of Geography & Topographic Science University of Glasgow October, 1999 • ■ ■' \ . V i. © OhvefV&fms, 1999 ProQuest Number: 13818714 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 13818714 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT Using theoretical concepts concerning space, identity and boundaries, this thesis examines a contemporary ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Broughton Park, Manchester (located in the north of England). The thesis discusses how these Jews practise and understand their lives within the context of a (post)modem world. Demographically, the overall population of Anglo-Jewry is declining (by as much as a third in the past forty years), with fears expressed about its future survival. Socially, there are major schisms between the different branches of Judaism, with increasing concerns about a polarisation between religious and secular. These factors provide the background to this thesis, which examines arguably the most extreme and still rapidly growing form of Judaism. The thesis uses a theoretical framework which takes seriously post-positivist understandings of space and identity, in which movement, inter-connections and, in particular, processes of hybridity are recognised. Same and Other are never pure. Nonetheless, such theoretical conceptions tend to deny particular people’s situated attempts to defend, institutionalise and ‘slow down’ identities and spaces, which are, I argue, key factors in understanding people’s everyday lives. While such stabilisations can be described as reactionary, I suggest that they may also be celebrated (although in complex and ambivalent ways) as resistances to forces of homogeneity. Through the empirical materials collected in Broughton Park, a discussion of the institutionalisation of space detailed in the sacred text of the Talmud, and a reconsideration of post-positivist theories to do with identity and space, the thesis draws upon and extends critiques of hybridity as always a (positive) force of resistance, and boundaries as necessarily reactionary and aligned with powers of domination. Overall, it offers a theoretical and methodological framework with which to interrogate ‘geographies of Jewry’, taking seriously those calls for ‘geographies of religion’ to makei.use ©flptfsipositivist understandings of space and identity. CONTENTS Abstract ii Contents iii List of Figures iv Preface V Acknowledgements vii Declaration viii Chapter One Situating this study: Histories, Geographies and 1 Politics of Judaism. Chapter Two Researching Anglo-Jewry and Orthodoxy. 29 Chapter Three Identity, Space and Boundaries. 63 Chapter Four Geographies of the Talmud. 92 Chapter Five Methodology, Positionality and Ethics. 114 Chapter Six Orthodox Material Space in Broughton Park. 163 Chapter Seven Imaginations of Place and Community. 191 Chapter Eight Living (in) a Jewish Landscape. 223 Chapter Nine Conclusions: Bounding Orthodoxy. 256 Appendix Percentages of Jews Living in Broughton Park. 278 Glossary 281 Bibliography 289 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Percentage of Jewish voters in Barnet. 35 Figure 2.2 Concentration of Jews in Barnet. 35 Figure 2.3: Economically active percentages in Barnet. 37 Figure 6.1 Street map of Broughton Park. 165 Figure 6.2 Institutional map of Broughton Park. 166 Figure 6.3 Percentage of Jewish houses in Broughton Park. 168 Plate 6.1 Cardiff Street. 170 Plate 6.2 Wellington Street. 170 Plate 6.3 Machzikei Hadass synagogue. 177 Plate 6.4 Satmar shteible. 177 Plate 6.5 Jewish shops on Leicester Road. 179 Plate 6.6 Cubley Road eruv. 179 Plate 6.7 Lubavitch sign on the comer of Leicester Road and 183 Bury Old Road. Plate 6.8 Horidenka shteible. 183 iv PREFACE Several months into my PhD I went home to Manchester and, with my parents, visited some old family friends for dinner. During the meal, the conversation drifted onto the subject of ultra-Orthodoxy, with various people (who are all Jewish, but not religious) discussing what ‘they’ are like: ‘Do you know there is a time during the summer when they don’t wash, and they really start to smell’; ‘they’re all on state benefits and they know how to work the system’; ‘they’ve got enormous families, God knows how the women cope’; ‘you know they won’t allow televisions’. Listening to these comments, I was reminded of David Sibley’s Geographies of Exclusion: Society and difference in the West (which I had just read) in which he discusses the stereotypes by which Gypsies are often understood: they are dirty, amoral, exotic and most definitely ‘other’. Such stereotypes ‘fix’ people within particular categories, providing (potentially) negative understandings through which ‘we’ (whoever that may be) understand ‘them’ (see Bhabha, 1994; Sibley, 1995). Ultra-Orthodox Jews look different. Men are (stereo)typically dressed in dark jackets, dark trousers (sometimes three-quarter length and tucked into white stockings), black hats or streimals (wide fur hats), white shirts and long ear-locks, while women abide by strict codes oftznius (modesty) so that arms, legs and necks are not exposed and hair is covered by either a kerchief orsheitel a (wig). These images of ultra-Orthodoxy seem to determine and reinforce exoticised stereotypes, feeding into wider discourses concerning relations between religious and secular, especially in Israel. The secularists display two sets of reactions to the [ultra-Orthodox]: contempt, revulsion or hatred; and nostalgia, curiosity in the exotic. These reactions color relations between the two groups ... At the emotional level the [ultra-Orthodox] are demonized and given an image that is far from reality.’ (El-Or, 1994: 209) One of the key aims of this thesis is to help counter such myths, mis-understandings and half-truths, doing so through a detailed (primarily) ethnographic account into a v community of ultra-Orthodox Jews living in Broughton Park, Manchester. The aim is not to justify or defend ways of life that in many ways I find troubling, but rather to unlock the particular characteristics of ultra-Orthodoxy as practised in the context of Manchester, doing so in an ethically and politically informed way. Nonetheless, making sense of ultra-Orthodoxy requires much more than a descriptive account of the ‘way it is’, a characteristic of a number of academic (and non-academic) studies written about these Jews (which have thus tended to further exoticise ‘them’). This thesis provides a theoretical and methodological framework through which to understand Broughton Park ultra-Orthodoxy, one which challenges neatly bounded conceptions of a ‘them’, recognises the (seemingly) inevitable flows and hybridisations that characterise (post)modem society, but which is also sensitive to particular people’s situated attempts to stabilise, institutionalise and to bound their identities and spaces. Through this, the thesis provides a ‘geography of (ultra- Orthodox) Jewry’ which can also be drawn upon by those studying other religious groupings, and indeed by social and cultural geographers (and other social scientists) more generally. Moreover, the thesis also ‘looks back’ onto theoretical concepts of identity and space, suggesting that in the rush to celebrate movement and hybridity, the importance of boundaries should not be forgotten. The thesis is arranged into two halves. In the first half of the thesis I provide four contextual ‘cuts’ into understanding ultra-Orthodoxy: a historical geographic background to ultra-Orthodoxy; a review of academic literature on Anglo-Jewry and ultra-Orthodoxy; a theoretical framework based on the concepts of identity, space and boundaries; and an analysis of the institutionalisation of space detailed in the ancient sacred text of the Talmud. This first half of the thesis is linked to the second by chapter five, which discusses methodologies and methods, providing a reflexive account of my fieldwork. The second half of the thesis contains the empirical materials of Broughton Park, examining material spaces, imaginations of place and community and the spatial practices of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The thesis is woven together in chapter nine via a discussion of the proposed Manchestereruv , a spatial device constructed of poles, wires and pre-existing features that encircle areas, re classifying space and allowing objects to be carried by religious Jews on the Sabbath. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In writing and ‘doing’ this thesis many thanks are due: without the assistance and kindness of a number of people this PhD would, quite simply, not have been possible. A number of organisations have provided financial support over the past three years to which I am immeasurably grateful: the Anglo-Jewish Association, the Ian Karten Charitable Trust, the Fred and Pat Tuckman Charity Foundation and the Urban Studies Journal. Thanks also to Laura Valins for financial help in my first year, and to the department here in Glasgow for the numerous hours of paid teaching. Writing the PhD has frequently been financially fraught, but the assistance of the above has allowed me to keep my head above water (if sometimes only just!). A big thanks also goes to those who gave their time to be interviewed by me, to act as guides in the various synagogues and other religious institutions I visited, who provided me with shabbas dinners, lunches and other hospitality and generally put up with, no doubt, often strange questions and ideas. Particular thanks to Gideon Leventhall for advice and discussion about life in Broughton Park, and to Laura for help in arranging interviews.