The concept of ‘boundary work’ generally refers to class, community, gender and ethnicity. This article shows how ‘boundary work’ can be usefully applied to the religious arena as well. Drawing on fieldwork among two religious movements in Israel, I maintain that within Religious-Zionist teshuvah, ‘return to religion’ is construed through a binary with Sephardic-Haredi teshuvah, the former taken as intellectual/rational, the latter as traditional/emotional. The content and mode of action of the movement define the religious-Zionist teshuvah field as intellectual and modern, but this is greatly strengthened by contrast with the more traditional Sephardic-Haredi teshuvah.
AlmondGAApplebyRSSivanE (2003) Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
2.
AmmermanNT(1994) The dynamics of Christian fundamentalism: An introduction. In: MartyMEApplebyRS (eds) Accounting for Fundamentalism: The Dynamic Character of Movements. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 13–17.
3.
Amran M (2007) The media in the service of Ultra-Orthodox community: The use of audiotapes and other media as indicators of continuity and change in the Ultra-Orthodox community. PhD thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (in Hebrew).
4.
AranG(1991) Jewish Zionist fundamentalism: The block of the faithful in Israel (Gush Emunim). In: MartyMEApplebyRS (eds) Fundamentalism Observed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 265–344.
5.
ArjomandSA(1986) Social change and movements of revitalization in contemporary Islam. In: BeckfordJF (ed.) New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change. London: SAGE, pp. 87–112.
6.
AviadJ (1983) Return to Judaism: Religious Renewal in Israel. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
BourdieuP (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
CaplanK (2007) In the Secret of the Haredi Discourse. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar(in Hebrew).
11.
CiminoRLattinD (2002) Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
12.
DanzgerMH (1987) Toward a redefinition of sect and cult: Orthodox Judaism in the United States and Israel. Comparative Research. 10: 113–123.
13.
DanzgerMH (1989) Returning to Tradition: The Contemporary Revival of Orthodox Judaism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
14.
DeebL (2006) An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi'i Lebanon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
15.
DeirosPA(1991) Protestant fundamentalism in Latin America. In: MartyMEApplebyRS (eds) Fundamentalism Observed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 142–196.
16.
DillonM (1999) Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
17.
DiMaggioP (1987) Classification in art. American Sociological Review. 52: 440–455.
18.
DingesWDHitchcockJ(1991) Roman Catholic traditionalism and activist conservatism in the United States. In: MartyMEApplebyRS (eds) Fundamentalism Observed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 66–141.
19.
Dombrowsky M (2010) From seclusion to involvement? Religious-Zionist urban settlements (Gar’inim Toraniyim) as a reflection of sociological and cultural changes in religious Zionism. PhD thesis, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan.
20.
DouglasM (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
21.
EdgellPGerteisJHartmannD (2006) Atheists as ‘other’: Moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society. American Sociological Review. 72: 211–234.
22.
EickelmanDFPiscatoriJ (1996) Muslim Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
23.
EpsteinCF(1992) Tinkerbells and pinups: The construction and reconstruction of gender boundaries at work. In: LamontMFournierM (eds) Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 232–256.
24.
FernandoML (2010) Reconfiguring freedom: Muslin piety and the limits of secular law and public discourse in France. American Ethnologist. 37(1): 19–35.
25.
GeertzC (1968) Islam Observed. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
26.
GierynTF (1999) Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
27.
Goodman Y (2002) Returning Back to Religion and New Religious Identity in Israel in the Beginning of the 2000's. Tel Aviv: the Center of Development for Pinhas Sapir by the University of Tel Aviv (in Hebrew).
28.
HallJR (1988) Social organization and pathways of commitment: Types of communal groups, rational choice theory, and the Kanter thesis. American Sociological Review. 53: 679–692.
29.
HeelasPWoodheadL (2005) The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
30.
HeilmanSC (1992) Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry. New York: Schocken Books.
31.
HeilmanSCFriedmanM(1991) Religious fundamentalism and religious Jews: The case of the Haredim. In: MartyMEApplebyRS (eds) Fundamentalism Observed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 197–264.
32.
HirschkindC (2001) Civic virtue and religious reason: An Islamic counterpublic. Cultural Anthropology. 16(1): 3–34.
33.
HoweN(1993) The cultural construction of reading in Anglo-Saxon England. In: BoyarinJ (ed.) The Ethnography of Reading. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 58–79.
IngelheartR (1990) Cultural Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
36.
Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (2010) Social Survey 2009: Jewish Tradition Observance and Changes in Religiosity of the Jewish Population in Israel. Jerusalem: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (in Hebrew).
37.
KaufmanDR (1991) Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Orthodox Jewish Women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
38.
KefalasMJ (2001) The Last Garden: Culture and Place in a White Working Class Chicago Neighborhood. Berkeley: University of California Press.
39.
LambekM (1990) Certain knowledge, contestable authority: Power and practice on the Islamic periphery. American Ethnologist. 17(1): 23–40.
40.
LamontM (1992) Money, Morals and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper-Middle Class. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
41.
LamontM(2001) Symbolic boundaries. In: SmelserNJBaltesPB (eds) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 15341–15347.
42.
LamontMFournierM (1992) Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
43.
LamontMMolnarV (2002) The study of boundaries across the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology. 28: 167–195.
44.
Lamont M and Small ML (2006) How culture matters for poverty: Thickening our understanding. National Poverty Center Working Paper Series, #06–10.
45.
LamontMThevenotL (2000) Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States. London: Cambridge University Press.
46.
LehmanD (1998) Fundamentalism and globalism. World Quarterly. 19(4): 607–634.
47.
LehmannDSiebzehnerB (2006) Remaking Israeli Judaism: The Challenge of Shas. New York: Oxford University Press.
48.
Leon N (2011) The political use of the teshuva cassette culture in Israel. Contemporary Jewry 31(2): 91–106.
49.
LeonN (2009) Soft Haredi. Jerusalem: Yad Ben Tzvi(in Hebrew).
50.
MahmoodS (2005) Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
51.
MakLF (2002) Islamization in Southeast Asia. Taiwan: Academia Sinica Asia Pacific Research Programme.
52.
PachuckiMAPendergrassSLamontM (2007) Boundary processes: Recent theoretical developments and new contributions. Poetics. 35: 331–351.
53.
RobbinsJ (2001) Secrecy and the sense of ending: Narrative, time, and everyday millenarianism in Papua New Guinea and in Christian fundamentalism. Society for Comparative Study of Society and History. 43(3): 525–551.
54.
RobbinsT (1988) Cults, converts and charisma: The sociology of the new religious movements. Current Sociology. 36(1): 1–25.
55.
Sasson-LevyO (2008) I don’t want an ethnic identity: The marking and erasing of boundaries in contemporary discourses of Ashkenaziyut. Theory and Criticism. 33: 101–129 (in Hebrew).
56.
SchwartzD (2009) Religious-Zionism: History and Ideology. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press.
57.
Sharabi A (2004) Social-drama in the Teshuvah movement: An ethnographic investigation of the conventions of Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak – Focusing on the audience. Master’s degree, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel (in Hebrew).
58.
Sharabi A (2010) Boundary work in the Teshuvah movement. PhD thesis, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan (in Hebrew).
59.
Sharabi A and Guzmen-Carmeli S (Forthcoming) The Teshuva Bargain: Ritual Healing Performances at Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak's rallies. Journal of Ritual Studies.
60.
ShelegY (2000) The New Religious People. Jerusalem: Keter(in Hebrew).
61.
SherkatDEEllisonCC (1999) Recent developments and current controversies in the sociology of religion. Annual Review of Sociology. 25: 363–394.
62.
ShoshanaA (2007) The phenomenology of a new social category: The case of the gifted disadvantaged in Israel. Poetics. 35(6): 352–367.
63.
SinhaV(1999) Constituting and reconstituting the religious domain in the modern nation-state of Singapore. In: Kian-WoonKGuan KwaCWongLYeohB (eds) Our Place in Time: Exploring Heritage and Memory in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society, pp. 76–95.
64.
SivanEAlmondGA (2001) Fundamentalism in the wake of the 21st century. Alpaim. 22: 244–262 (in Hebrew).
65.
SmithCEmersonMGallagherSKennedyPSikkinkD (1998) American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
66.
SnowDA (1993) Shakubuku: A Study of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist Movement in America. New York: Garland–Garland.
67.
StarkR(2009) Economics of religion. In: SegalRA (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 47–67.
68.
SwidlerA (1973) The concept of rationality in the work of Max Weber. Sociological Inquiry. 43(1): 35–42.
69.
TeslerR (2003) In the Name of God: Shas and the Religious Revolution. Tel Aviv: Keter (in Hebrew)–Keter (in Hebrew).
70.
TillyC (2005) Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.
71.
TongCK(1997) The rationalisation of religion in Singapore. In: OngJHSerERTongCK (eds) Understanding Singapore Society. Singapore: Times Academic, pp. 198–215.
72.
TongCK (2007) Rationalizing Religion: Religious Conversion, Revivalism and Competition in Singapore Society. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill.
73.
Weber M (1968) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, eds Roth G and Wittic C. New York: Bedminster Press.
74.
YamaneD (2007) Introduction: Habits of the heart at 20. Sociology of Religion. 68(2): 179–187.
75.
YukichG (2010) Boundary work in inclusive religious groups: Constructing identity at the New York Catholic Worker. Sociology of Religion. 71(2): 172–196.
76.
ZaldMN (1982) Theological crucibles: Social movement in and of religion. Review of Religious Research. 23: 317–336.
