Language Choices and Language Ideologies among Hasidic Jews in New York

Gabi Abramac, New York University (Thursday 13:00-13:30)

This research addresses language attitudes, choices, ideology and policy in Hasidic communities in New York. It is situated at the intersection of the sociology of religion, anthropology, and sociolinguistics. The methodology is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hasidic communities of New York from 2012 to 2017, on digital ethnography, qualitative in-depth interviews with community members, and discourse analysis of Hasidic press.

At the core of Hasidic seclusion is the idea of sheltering oneself from the contamination of the secular world. In the attempt to preserve their pious state of existence, Hasidim uncompromisingly rejects the potential changes in ritual, language, education and the established way of life. The ideology of seclusion has also reinforced preserving the Yiddish language and using it in all possible domains. Seemingly stable and unchanged, the Hasidic community have been going through a lot of changes, especially since the advent of digital media. Three major factors are reshaping American Hasidic communities: Hasidic demographic expansion, neoliberal political economy, and the Internet. This has created fluidity and discontinuity in the midst of which Hasidic society seeks to integrate notions associated with mobilities, movements and flows on the one hand with notions of fixity, groundedness and situatedness in particular settings (Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2013: 375). The exposure to modernity is also changing the language use and the perception of sociolinguistic ideology, bringing about the diversity of genres, styles, and registers.

I show how Hasidim creatively restructure their social practices and adapt to new and overlapping linguistic spaces, and how the speakers evaluate and negotiate their identities, positioning themselves against the background of both Jewish ultra-orthodox communities and the world at large. My research also includes an in-depth examination of the multilingual processes by which Hasidim who leave the fold construct the social landscapes and build conceptual common ground. Investigating contemporary diversity in Hasidic communities can contribute significantly to modern theories of multilingualism and can enhance our understanding of relationships between religion, ethnicity, and language use.

References

Greiner, Clemens and Patrick Sakdapolrak. Translocality: Concepts, Applications and Emerging Research Perspectives, Geography Compass 7/5 (2013): 373-384.