Appropriately Subversive : : Modern Mothers in Traditional Religions / / Tova Hartman Halbertal.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter HUP eBook Package Archive 1893-1999
• VerfasserIn: Hartman Halbertal, Tova,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2003]; ©2003
• Year of Publication: 2003
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (208 p.)

How do mothers reconcile conflicting loyalties--to their religious traditions, and to the daughters whose freedoms are also constrained by those traditions? Searching for answers, Tova Hartman Halbertal interviewed mothers of teenage daughters in religious communities: Catholics in the United States, Orthodox Jews in Israel. Sounding surprisingly alike, both groups described conscious struggles between their loyalties and talked about their attempts to make sense of and pass on their multiple commitments. They described accommodations and rationalizations and efforts to make small changes where they felt that their faith unjustly subordinated women. But often they did not feel they could tell their daughters how troubled they were. To keep their daughters safe within the protective culture of their ancestors, the mothers had to hide much of themselves in the hope that their daughters would know them more completely in the future. Moving and unique, this book illuminates one of the moral questions of our time--how best to protect children and preserve community, without being imprisoned by tradition.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- CHAPTER ONE “I Think I’m of Two Minds” -- CHAPTER TWO Ritual Observance and Religious Learning -- CHAPTER THREE Abdications and Coalitions -- CHAPTER FOUR Teaching -- CHAPTER FIVE The Conflict of Dogmas -- CHAPTER SIX “No Perfect Places” -- Notes -- References -- Index