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E-book
Author Finkelman, Yoel

Title Strictly kosher reading : popular literature and the condition of contemporary Orthodoxy / Yoel Finkelman
Published Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2011

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Description 1 online resource (255 pages)
Series Jewish identities in post modern society
Jewish identities in post modern society.
Contents Contents -- Chapter I: ArtScroll Judaism: Haredi Popular Literature in Context -- Chapter II “Ancient Wisdom�: Haredi Popular Literature and General Culture -- Chapter III “Not Absolute Truth�: Haredi Writers Debate Their Own Acculturation -- Chapter IV: “There Was Only One Man in the Shtetl ... �: Haredi Judaism�s Founding Myth -- Chapter V: “Knowledge of the Clearest and Most Objective Kind�: Simple Faith and Haredi Popular Theology -- Chapter VI: “We Have Been Influenced��: The Rhetoric of Haredi Internal Criticism
Chapter VII: Truth, Fiction, and NarrativeEndnotes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index
Summary For centuries, fervently observant Jewish communities have produced thousands of works of Jewish law, thought, and spirituality. But in recent decades, the literature of America's Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] community has taken on brand-new forms: selfhelp books, cookbooks, monthly magazines, parenting guides, biographies, picture books, even adventure stories and spy novels-- all produced by Haredi men and women, for the Haredi readership. What's changed? Why did these works appear, and what do they mean to the community that produces and consumes them? How has the Haredi world, as it seeks fidelity to unchanging tradition, so radically changed what it writes and what it reads? In answering these questions, Strictly Kosher Reading points to a central paradox in contemporary Haredi life. Haredi Jewry sets itself apart, claiming to reject modern secular culture as dangerous and threatening to everything Torah stands for. But in practice, Haredi popular literature reveals a community thoroughly embedded in contemporary values. Popular literature plays a critical role in helping Haredi Jews to understand themselves as different, even as it shows them to be very much the same
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Subject Ultra-Orthodox Jews -- Intellectual life
Popular culture -- Influence
Orthodox Judaism -- Social aspects
Orthodox Judaism -- Relations -- Nontraditional Jews.
Jews -- Cultural assimilation.
Judaism and culture.
Judaism and literature.
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Literary.
Popular culture -- Influence
Orthodox Judaism -- Social aspects
Orthodox Judaism
Judaism and literature
Judaism and culture
Jews -- Cultural assimilation
Interfaith relations -- Nontraditional Jews
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781618111029
1618111027