Marcin Wodzinski
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190631260
- eISBN:
- 9780190631291
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190631260.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Innovative and multidisciplinary in approaches, the book discusses the most cardinal features of any social or religious movement: definition, gender, leadership, demographic size, geography, ...
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Innovative and multidisciplinary in approaches, the book discusses the most cardinal features of any social or religious movement: definition, gender, leadership, demographic size, geography, economy, and decline of Hasidism, one of the most important religious movements of modern Eastern Europe. This is the first such attempt to respond to those central questions of Hasidism in one book. Recognizing the major limitations of the existing research on Hasidism, the book offers four important corrections. First, it offers an anti-elitist corrective attempting to investigate Hasidism beyond its leaders into the masses of the rank-and-file followers. Second, it introduces new types of sources, rarely or never used in the research of Hasidism, including archival documents, Jewish memorial books, petitionary notes, folk texts, and quantitative and visual materials. Third, it covers the whole classic period of Hasidism from its institutional maturation at the end of the eighteenth century to its major crisis and decline in wake of the First World War. Fourth, instead of focusing on intellectual history, it offers a multidisciplinary approach with the modern methodologies of the corresponding disciplines: social and cultural history, sociology and anthropology of religion, historical demography of religions, historical geography, gender studies, economic history, and more.Less
Innovative and multidisciplinary in approaches, the book discusses the most cardinal features of any social or religious movement: definition, gender, leadership, demographic size, geography, economy, and decline of Hasidism, one of the most important religious movements of modern Eastern Europe. This is the first such attempt to respond to those central questions of Hasidism in one book. Recognizing the major limitations of the existing research on Hasidism, the book offers four important corrections. First, it offers an anti-elitist corrective attempting to investigate Hasidism beyond its leaders into the masses of the rank-and-file followers. Second, it introduces new types of sources, rarely or never used in the research of Hasidism, including archival documents, Jewish memorial books, petitionary notes, folk texts, and quantitative and visual materials. Third, it covers the whole classic period of Hasidism from its institutional maturation at the end of the eighteenth century to its major crisis and decline in wake of the First World War. Fourth, instead of focusing on intellectual history, it offers a multidisciplinary approach with the modern methodologies of the corresponding disciplines: social and cultural history, sociology and anthropology of religion, historical demography of religions, historical geography, gender studies, economic history, and more.
Tricia Colleen Bruce
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190270315
- eISBN:
- 9780190270346
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190270315.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter looks at the implications of personal parishes for building community across difference. It explores how community works within the context American Catholics’ increased mobility, ...
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This chapter looks at the implications of personal parishes for building community across difference. It explores how community works within the context American Catholics’ increased mobility, choice, and differentiation. Personal parishes build local religious community upon similarity. They encourage bonding capital. Bridging capital, or links between dissimilar others, arises out of the interconnections among all parishes in a diocese. Parish matters, but so, too, does diocese. This chapter advances an approach to local religion that is necessarily interdependent and viewed across wider conceptions of space (here, the diocese). Both social and territorial boundaries circumscribe Catholics’ community. This means that Catholic leaders view community across a diocese rather than isolated within individual parishes. Religious institutions make room for diversity by expanding notions of community beyond a single congregation.Less
This chapter looks at the implications of personal parishes for building community across difference. It explores how community works within the context American Catholics’ increased mobility, choice, and differentiation. Personal parishes build local religious community upon similarity. They encourage bonding capital. Bridging capital, or links between dissimilar others, arises out of the interconnections among all parishes in a diocese. Parish matters, but so, too, does diocese. This chapter advances an approach to local religion that is necessarily interdependent and viewed across wider conceptions of space (here, the diocese). Both social and territorial boundaries circumscribe Catholics’ community. This means that Catholic leaders view community across a diocese rather than isolated within individual parishes. Religious institutions make room for diversity by expanding notions of community beyond a single congregation.
