When a yarmulke Stands for All Jews

Navigating Shifting Signs from Synagogue to School in Luxembourg

Bibliographic Data

ID2068629
AuthorsAnastasia Badder (0000-0003-0688-4348, University of Luxembourg, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume44
Issue1
Pages63-81
Publication date2024-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueContemporary Jewry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0147-1694 • E-ISSN: 1876-5165
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s12397-023-09524-8
OpenAlexW4391312135
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited48

In the lives of students in Luxembourg's Liberal Jewish complementary school, flexibility and mobility are highly valued as key characteristics of modern living. Complementary school students feel they easily meet these criteria-they are multilingual, cosmopolitan, and their approach to Jewish life is flexible, and equally importantly, they look, dress, and comport themselves "like everyone else." These factors are understood to facilitate multiple movements and belongings in the contemporary world. The students directly contrast their ways of being with those of more observant Jews whom they refer to as "religious"; the material, embodied, and visible nature of observant Jewish life is perceived to be an impediment to participation and success in the secular sphere. However, when Jewishness appears in these students' secular school classrooms, it is most often represented by Orthodox-presenting men-often a man in a yarmulke. Further, these men and their yarmulkes are taken to represent all Jews, framed as a homogeneous group of religious adherents. For many complementary school students, these experiences can be jarring-they suddenly find themselves on the "wrong" side of the religious-secular divide and grouped together with those from whom they could not feel more distant. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a material approach to religion, this article argues that the yarmulke comes to point to different levels and modes of observance and identities and enable different possible belongings in the secular public sphere as it travels across contexts that include different definitions of and attitudes toward religion and Jewishness

Sociology of religion · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society

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