The Second Life of Judaism: A History of Religious Community and Practice in Virtual Spaces

This chapter talks about San Francisco-based company Linden Lab who launched Second Life (SL), which is described as an online digital world that is built, shaped, and owned by its participants. It discloses how SL was seen as the next big internet phenomenon and was the focus of attention by investors and media alike for a short period of time. It also explains SL's complex relationship with 'real life', which is defined both by the encoded parameters of the virtual space and by the social and cultural practices of the people who use the platform. The chapter discusses SL as a broad platform that encompassed many cultural constructions and developed a rich and diverse set of religious cultures. It recounts how dozens of Jewish sites across the grid emerged and were created both by individual users and by offline institutions that established SL presences.

Going Online to go ‘Home’: Yizkor Books, Cyber-Shtetls, and Communities of Location

This chapter focuses on online yizkor and Cyber-Shtetls that give access to the places where Jewish life once flourished and are otherwise inaccessible due to the Holocaust. It discusses how communities of the online yizkor and Cyber-Shtetls draw attention to changes in contemporary Jewish identity formation and the mediation of Jewish social connection in the digital age. It also explores how online yizkor books and Cyber-Shtetls that give people who are searching for 'home' a place to go and provide space that they occupy on the web as a surrogate for the real thing. The chapter mentions Benedict Anderson, who argues that the metropolitan daily newspaper represents a convergence of market capitalism and print technology that emerged at the start of the Industrial Revolution. It discloses the resulting 'communities of location' that are salient in Jewish life and culture that the Yiddish described the people who come from one geographic place as landsman.

Telling Jokes: Connecting and Separating Jews in Analogue and Digital Culture

This chapter talks about the behaviour of 'playing on the computer' that primarily involved sharing jokes in the 1990s. It mentions folklorist Paul Smith who dubbed the computer as the 'Joke Machine' and predicted the exponential growth of its humour-generating function. It also discusses how the internet brandishes the expressive, interactive features or cultural functions of folklore that frequently lodge as commentary on popular culture. The chapter contends how joking became associated with digital transmission and how it serves emotionally and psychologically to respond to anxieties concerning diminished human control and competency for users. It cites Jewish Orthodox groups that claim that the internet and computerized devices should be used for work, and not play.

Propagating Modern Jewish Identity in Madagascar: A Contextual Analysis of One Community’s Discursive Strategies

This chapter introduces a group of 121 women, men, and children on the island of Madagascar that formally converted to Judaism in mid-May 2016. It discusses the Westerners before the conversions that had only vague and second-hand notions about the proselytes' difficulties in maintaining a religiously observant lifestyle in a country that has been plagued with endemic corruption and barely functioning infrastructure for decades. It analyses how the 121 Malagasies relied upon faith in the efficacy of the culture of digital communications, which they had harnessed since 2013 in order to prepare for the conversions. The chapter focuses on kelal yisra'el, the worldwide Jewish community that was facilitated by the globalized matrix of mass communication and enabled the learning of post-exilic Judaism. It identifies the groups of contemporary 'internet Jews' from the developing world, such as the Igbo of Nigeria and the Beth Yeshourun community of Cameroon.

The Jewish Atlantic: Diaspora and Pop Music

This chapter discusses the emergence of pop music as a distinctive musical genre intended for very wide audiences and often controlled by the giants of the music business. It describes how pop is characterized by the specific conditions of religious and cultural minorities that are closely linked to African American history, such as jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll, reggae, disco music, soul, and hip hop. It also mentions the British scholar of cultural studies named Paul Gilroy, who defined the production conditions of hip hop as transnational structures of circulation and intercultural exchange. The chapter examines the relationship between the hip hop world and the real world that changed since Gilroy's observations in the 1990s. It talks about the insistence on the diasporic context of the 'Black Atlantic' and its kinship with Jewish modernity that remains pivotal to any pursuit of the diaspora in popular culture.

Introduction

This chapter disputes the common assumption that media-driven popular culture has weakened ethnic-religious ties of community with each advance in communication technology and has been detrimental to tradition-centred groups such as Orthodox Jews. It mentions popular-culture theorists who have long asserted the notion of popular works against the survival of ethnic-religious groups. It also talks about Russel Nye, who claimed that the idea of popular culture, associated with urbanization and industrialization, depends on artists and agents who exploit media and create cultural standards. This chapter discusses how the process of popularization depends on a mass audience that consumes secularized cultural expressions that became accessible in Western societies through communication media. It analyses the advent of popular culture purportedly that diminishes the need for public space and peer pressure.

Rethinking Jewishness in Networked Publics: The Case of Post-Communist Hungary

This chapter cites scholars that viewed the fall of communism in 1989 as a potential turning point for east European Jewish communities. It explains how political freedom promised new possibilities for organizing religious and secular Jewish life and for representing individual Jewish identities and communities. It also describes what form political change could take that will lead to a new flourishing of Jewish religion and culture. The chapter talks about Hungary's Hungarian-born Jewish population in Budapest that represents the largest community in any central European city and was thought to hold great potential for community building. It discusses how Jews were partaking in new manifestations of cultural ethnicity, such as an interest in Jewish history.

Settings of Silver: The Feminization of the Jewish Sabbath, 1920–1945

This chapter addresses the emergence of Jewish homemaking guidebooks, with particular attention to their description of sabbath preparation, that culminated the feminization of the American Jewish sabbath. It argues that the feminization of the sabbath was seen as necessary to ensure the survival of Judaism in America through a contextualized understanding of the changes in sabbath observance. It also mentions the agency of Jewish Sisterhoods that promoted a female-driven synagogue life, as demonstrated through their self-published guidebooks. The chapter recounts how east European Jews negotiated with German American Jews on facing the diasporic problem of maintaining cultural continuity within a dominant society that held conflicting values and norms. It describes Jewish spirituality saw a drastic shift between 1920 and 1945 due to assimilation pressures.

Social Tensions and Cultural Encounters in Contemporary Israeli Midrash

This chapter investigates the new Jewish–Israeli discourse that has evolved on multiple fronts since the last decades of the twentieth century. It discusses the establishment of pluralistic batei midrash or houses of study in Israel, which were dedicated to the study of Jewish literature, the practice of Jewish rituals, and the formation of local communities. It also discloses the renewal of the Jewish bookshelf as a modern term that refers to traditional Jewish writings and modern works that echo earlier publications. The chapter analyses the modern rereading that involves Rabbi Hiya bar Ashi and his struggle with the yetser hara, which has recently sprung to new life as part of an emerging discussion on the relationship between femininity, sexuality, Jewishness, and Zionism. It covers contemporary readings of Rabbi Hiya bar Ashi's story, which is infused with new substance that mainly involves feminist interpretations and set within modern genres.

The Hidden Legacies of Jewish Traditions and the Global Allure of Psychotherapy: A Case Study of the Israeli TV series Betipul

This chapter considers the Jewish origins of psychoanalysis, which points out Jewish as the preferred ethnicity of the psychoanalyst character for many filmmakers. It focuses on Israeli TV series Betipul as a prime example of an outstanding attempt to enter the reality of the psychotherapy practice. It also explores the symbolic significance of Betipul as an atypical mediation of a Jewish Israeli identity in crisis, including the function and responses to this mediation among Israeli audiences. The chapter describes the many remakes of Betipul in Europe and in the United States that reveal significant cultural differences in the approach to psychotherapy and variation on the representation of the therapist on global consensus. It explains what Betipul adds to the representation of the Jewish psychotherapist in popular culture and how the Jewish aspects of this representation function when they leave Jewish contexts.