Brooklyn, NY – It wasn’t easy for Fordham University anthropologist Ayala Fader, Ph.D., to gain access to the Hasidic community in Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood. In many ways, it’s a world unto itself — and not particularly open to outsiders.
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But Fader persisted by getting to know people within the community and eventually she got the kind of access that an ethnographic study invariably requires. And what she was able to document was the remarkable ability of mothers and teachers to refashion the secular world, especially the English language, so as to allow them to build boundaries around their way of life and imbue children with a deep sense of what it means to be a Hasidic Jew.
In fact, although men continue to speak Yiddish into adulthood, Hasidic women stop using it by the time they start school except for certain limited contexts (such as with babies or with men).
Instead, they speak English or a cross between English and Yiddish that Fader calls Hasidic English. One reason for this, Fader said, is because Hasidic women are the ones who are often relied on to engage the wider society by doing such things as taking children to the doctor. In this community, it is men who carry on “tradition” through studying the Torah, and women who protect them. [Fordham University]
A number of women pursue advanced degrees in order to become more accomplished teachers, and they are required to write dissertations, etc.
Better that they should fulfill requirements by researching and writing about some element of their own community rather than go chasing after information about goyish culture.
I think it’s interesting to see these studies from time to time; we just have to remember that they represent a “school project” rather than emes.
the name “ayala” is generally either heimish, israeli, or religous zionist…
Or who had Parents that were the above…
There are plenty of the second generation who have been broghht to this country or grew up here who have no inkling of Yiddishkeit, RL.
A name does not neccesarily mean anything…
the name “ayala” is generally either heimish, israeli, or religous zionist… in no way an outsider….. but then that was just what the author of the article claims ..the author nevem made that claim…..
O. Gevald – I don’t understand what you mean that Fader is a Heimishe name. What is a Haimishe name? There are Jewish names, but you cannot tell from the name whether one is Heimish or not.
it’s called, CHASINGLISH, and when a hungarian speaks it, it’s called HUNGLISH. also when an israeli speaks it, it’s called ENGREW and lastly, the polish, it’s called, well, POLISH!!! have you heard a polack speak Yidish lately??? LOL
Is this Ayala Feder really a Frum girl who only pretended to “penetrate” the Orthodox Jewish community but all the while grew up in one as well???
Just wondering. “Feder” is a heimishe name.
who really cares what these people write? they cannot possibly understand our way of life so they write what is their perception and/or snippets of information they pick up on the street.
What a poor representation of the “Borough Park Community”. The problem is that these studies or the researchers who perform them don’t realize that within the “Borough Park Communities” are many “Subcommunities”, if you will, who do markedly not live and conduct their lives the it is represented in this article. A better way to analyze such communities may be to look individually at hasidic groups or sects, in which way it is far easier to make general representation, such as the author in this case does, which is a more accurate description of their lives and the ways in which they are conducted.
No matter how hard they try, they will never be able to figure us out anyway.