Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism:

Defection as Deconversion
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By: Louis Frankenthaler Under the Supervision of Dr. Zeev Mankowitz & Dr. Zvi Bekerman A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Melton Center for Jewish Education School of Education Faculty of Humanities The Hebrew University of Jerusalem June 2004

Acknowledgements There is a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. The implications are obvious: one does not go through life alone and one does not achieve anything on his or her own. For me, my family: Anat, my life partner; our daughter Tal and our son Ido gave me inspiration, support and, most importantly, love. Anat, I love you. Ad Ein Sof. Thank you to my Mom, Dad and brothers and their families and to my mother and father in-law for their support and assistance. Special thanks are owed to my sister in-law, Dalia Lev, without whom I would not have been able to approach the interview transcripts. Without the support and input of Dr. Zeev Mankowitz and Dr. Zvi Bekerman I would not have known how to begin or how to end. Thank you Dr. Mankowitz for suggesting this topic, and to both Drs. Mankowitz and Bekerman for offering intellectual inspiration to explore social theory while remaining grounded in the "real world."

The Melton Centre for Jewish education provided me with an environment of intellectual growth. I learned new things, thought differently and was challenged. Thank you, of course, to Hinda, Anat and Etti. Thank you to my informants for sharing your lives and allowing me a glimpse of what only you can really know. Thank you to Laura Sachs at Hillel and to Hillel, an organization dedicated "to promote the successful integration of people who decide to leave the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) communities in Israel in order to join the modern pluralistic world surrounding them." (www.hillel.org.il). And thank you to an anonymous donor for a generous scholarship.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Theoretical Review

Chapter 2 Methodology

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Chapter 3 Population Survey (Haredi Jewry).

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Chapter 4 Findings

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Chapter 5 Discussion

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Conclusion

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End Notes

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References

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Introduction As I see it, to defect (yetziah lshealah) is to leave a place where they dont ask questions except to quibble [while studying Torah]. They do not ask fundamental questions. To leave means to leave with the question to a question and to ask the question all your life. I do not believe that I will ever find an answer and that, as I see it, is to live with the question (Yoram). This thesis is an examination of a phenomenon commonly known in Hebrew as yetziah lshealah. It is a term that, in Jewish society, is applicable to any process of leaving a religious (Orthodox or ultraOrthodox) Jewish life for what is commonly known as secular (hiloni in Hebrew) society. From this point on I will refer to it in English as defection. This study sees the defector as being involved in a religious-cultural world with which he cannot identify1. Deconversion is the way by which the defector successfully leaves that situation. He abandons an extremely religious environment and establishes a new relationship with his cultural world. The defector no longer believes in the tenets of Judaism according to which he was socialized and renegotiates those connections with Judaism or may even abandon them to various degrees. In this way he does not necessarily abandon this religious-cultural world, because as Silberstein (1999) says the concept of culture refer[s] not to a set of things or objects but rather to a contested process whereby meanings are produced and distributed (211, n. 6). We can, then, look at the concept of defection as negotiating one's way within and, eventually, outside the contested process of ultra-Orthodox Judaism.

This work, like those of Barzilai (2001) and Shaffir (1991,1997) and Shaffir and Rockaway, (1987) is an examination of the phenomenon of leaving ultra-Orthodox Judaism as it applies to what Shaffir and Rockaway called, in their pioneering article, defection from or abandoning ultra Orthodox Judaism. My research in this field suggests that defection from haredi Judaism can be seen as identity change in which the individual challenges and expresses doubts as to the validity of haredi Judaism as his universe of discourse. That is to say, the process of defection "encompassesintellectual doubt, moral

criticism, emotional suffering and disaffiliation from a community" (Barbour 1994, 2). This phrase reflects an understanding of identity that is neither essentialist nor entirely constructed. It is "simultaneously discovered and constructed" (Wilkerson 2000, 266). It is the reinterpretation of experiences and the development of a new identity expression based on the way in which experience was reinterpreted. "This new identity reflects a new and more accurate understanding of who one is in the world and how one can act in the world" (ibid.). The picture that emerges from the narratives presented in this thesis depicts a situation in which the individual defecting haredi Jew has a variety of experiences that become a "source of new knowledge about oneself and one's place in the world" (ibid.). The person, in talking about these experiences, is describing the way in which he or she leaves haredi Judaism and becomes associated with a different, so called, secular world. This new identity similarly does not become immutable. That is, his transformation of identity does not mean that the new identity is any more immutable then the previous one. Holland et al (1998, 5) corroborates this when she writes about identities being "psychohistorical formations that develop over a person's lifetime, populating intimate terrain and motivating social life." Hall (1996, 3) explains identity in similar terms, as a process and as being always in motion.

Together with an examination of defection in terms of identity theory it should also be examined through the lenses of "deconversion" (Barbour 1994). This term is different from conversion in that it does not necessarily imply that the person adopts a new religious expression. Rather it indicates disentanglement from the religious (and cultural) tradition with which the individual was involved and the individual's continuing engagement with that former expression of identity. Similarly the process of deconversion is about a persons learning to interpret, reflect and act on his doubts and to recognize the need for transformation. Deconversion ties into the discussion of defection in terms of identity theory in that deconversion might also be explained as one of the identities that Holland (1998, 5) discusses as "a key means through which people care about and care for what is going on around

them. They are important bases from which people create new activities, new worlds, and new ways of being."

This research examines defection from haredi Judaism as deconversion. This necessarily includes and demands an understanding of conversion in that deconversion is a variation of conversion. Similarly, because deconversion encompasses identity transformation, it is necessary to understand the place of identity theory in this research. It is similarly important to understand the potential defector's intellectual milieu. That is to say that the defector leaves not only a theoretical concept of identity but also a universe of discourse, haredi Judaism, and what makes the transformation complex and radical is that this is a fundamentalist universe of discourse that does not tolerate the type of inquiry present in the defection stories.

This research will first address the central issue of conversion and deconversion in the theoretical review while demonstrating the way that issues of identity and fundamentalism are connected to it. The methodology section will offer an explanation of the way this qualitative research (semi-structured, indepth interviews with ten former members of the haredi community) was conducted as well as provides a brief epistemological justification for this methodology choice. Following the methodology section I will describe haredi society, particularly in relation to what goes on in haredi education. The empirical element of this thesis is an examination of the narratives gathered by this researcher in interviews with individuals who agreed to tell their stories. These interviews are processed and

presented in the findings chapter. The discussion chapter will examine the defectors' narratives. Finally, in the conclusion, I will suggest areas for additional research.

Theoretical Review This section examines conversion and deconversion, the core theoretical concepts that are elemental to the process of defection from haredi Judaism which was first systematically covered by Shaffir and Rockaway (1987) and Shaffir (1991 and 1997) and in a doctoral dissertation by Barzilai (2000). Their research describes a process of awareness, struggle and change. This is most relevant because Shaffir's (1991) study compares defection and the process of return to religious Judaism. His study is based on an analysis of the process as a conversion experience (Shaffir 1991, 191). For that reason, he treats the theoretical aspects of conversion in depth. He notes that both the return and exit are propelled by a series of experiences convincing them to investigate, and ultimately, to adopt and alternate way of life (ibid, 175). In this study he saw that the process involved a period of intense internal debate and reflection and motivated feelings and experiences of intense discomfort with haredi society a common theme revolves around the confining nature of haredi life-style (ibid.).

Conversion and Deconversion The central claim of this thesis is that defection is a form of identity transformation is most accurately understood as deconversion. Deconversion and conversion could be understood as parallel

processes. Conversion, though, is primarily seen as a religious process that involves leaving and a reentering a new religious tradition. Deconversion is primarily about leaving a religious faith. I will first describe conversion and then move into a discussion of deconversion in order to demonstrate how this term is more appropriate for this research. In considering this area it is important to understand that cultural identities are, as Hall (1996) asserts, porous, malleable, fluid and constantly given to change. Initially we can understand identity or "identification as a construction, a process never completed always 'in process' this concept of identity does not signal that stable core of the self, unfolding from beginning to end through all the vicissitudes of history without change Nor if we translate this

essentializing conception to the stage of cultural identity is it that 'collective or true self hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed 'selves' which a people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common' and which can stabilize, fix or guarantee an unchanging 'oneness' or cultural belongingness underlying all the other superficial differences. It accepts that identities aresubject to a radical historicization and are constantly in the process of change and transformation" (Hall 1996, 3 4). In other words, this understanding of identity is applicable even if a claim of essential [Jewish] identity attaches, either at the moment of birth (if the lineage is correct) or at the moment of the performance of a proper and particular ceremony that Judaizes the person and somehow instills in him some sort of unmistakable and unalienable sense of being Jewish.

Shaffir (1991, 174) first noted and treated the connection between conversion theory and defection which "involves a transformation resulting in the adoption of a radically different life style [The experience] can be characterized as conversion in that [it] involves the adoption of a pervasive identity which rests on a change, at least in emphasis from one universe of discourse to another." Shaffir relied on the analysis provided by Richard Travisano (1970) in order to come to an understanding of conversion or identity transformation. Even though conversion, as treated by most theorists, has

religious connotations, it is better understood as identity change that includes expressions of religion. Travisano through his research also came to see conversion as an identity change (594). Because this research involves individuals who were intensively located in one plausibility structure or universe of discourse and subsequently relocated or disassociated from that structure,2 it is appropriate to use the notion of identity change.

Conversion is a shift from one total universe of discourse to another (Travisano 1970: 596) by the individual. In terms of establishing new identities, the crucial point is that one does not take on only an abstract property called an identity, one takes on new definitions of situations and new situated behavior (598). The greater the disruption the more intense the transformation, we can say, 8

complete disruption signals conversion while anything less signals alteration, a less radical form of identity transformation (ibid.). Moving, in my opinion, beyond Hall, this statement is similar to later treatments of identity. Holland (1998, 8) and her co-authors look at the individual's ability to create new cultural worlds and at why and how previous worlds become prisons. These researchers understand cultural identity as a constant process of struggle, not just for meaning, but for expression and the freedom to go beyond the constraints of one's cultural identity that Hall describes. This means that within cultural worlds there are real people contending with the conditions in that world and devising ways to remain inside or creating ways to escape. This discussion then struggles against a notion of identity that seeks to contain the individual within particular identities or spaces (Silberstein 2000, 7). I understand this to mean that one needs to be aware of cultures potential to paint the individual into a corner. Conversion or deconversion then is actually a process of self-extraction from this situation.

Berger (1979, 27) argues that contemporary life forces the individual to make a choice between gods or, arguably, a choice between God and no God. Bergers description of the Jewish situation is appropriate. Pre-modern Orthodox Judaism was a taken-for-granted plausibility structure. Modern Orthodoxy or (ultra) Orthodoxy in modernity is the construction of an artificial shtetl. It is artificial because it is immediately penetrable and exitable. It is a system from which one can defect. To use his words, the Jew in the modern Hasidic shtetl can just get on the subway and get out of his alleged Jewish destiny (ibid, 29-30). Travisano's analysis of conversion is very important particularly if we understand that the defector is leaving an environment that can be seen as fundamentalist. The fundamentalist world is marked by strict adherence to perceived religious truth that is neither open to alternative explanations nor to challenges. The best description of fundamentalism is offered by Martin and Appleby who according to Silberstein (1993, 5) endeavor not to reify or to offer an essentialist understanding of fundamentalism. They say:

We are speaking of religious groups which: (1) arise in response to crises that they perceive as threatening to the identity of the group; (2) see themselves engaged in struggle against various others including secularizers, modernists, secular nationalists, and the established authorities of their own religious community whom they perceive to compromise with modernity and secularization; (3) tend to mythologize/demonize their others; (4) view historical events as part of a cosmic, often eschatological pattern; (5) reject historical consciousness3; (6) establish rigid socio-cultural boundaries to protect themselves from contamination by outsiders; and (7) follow male, charismatic leaders whom they consider to be the authorized interpreters of traditional sacred texts[Furthermore fundamentalism is ] a tendency, a habit of mind found within religious communities and paradigmatically embodied in certain representative individuals and movements, which manifests itself as a strategy, or set of strategies, by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or groupFeeling this identity to be at risk in the contemporary era, they fortify it by a selective retrieval of doctrines, beliefs, and practices. From a sacred past these retrieved fundamentals are refined, modified, and sanctioned in a spirit of shrewd pragmatism: they are to serve as a bulwark against the encroachment of outsiders who threaten to draw believers into a syncretistic, a-religious, or irreligious cultural milieu (Silberstein 1993, 5). Understanding the intensity and the demands that the fundamentalist world makes on the individual and the way that Berger (1979) contrasts this with modernity as marked by the ebbing of traditional society and the collapse of plausibility structures of traditional society, it is possible to see the potential for clash and conflict in an individual that moves or attempts to move between these two worlds. The juxtaposition of the two worlds often existing in the same larger world allows an intimate view of the type of identity change that Travisano calls conversion.

Conversions are drastic change in life. Such changes require a change in the informing aspect of ones life or biography there must be a negation of some former identity Conversion is signaled by a radical reorganization of identity meaning and life [It] involves a change in informing aspectssuch a change implies a change of allegiance from one source of authority to another Alternations [on the other hand] are transitions which are prescribed or at least permitted within the persons established universe of discourse. Conversions are transitions to identities which are proscribed within the persons established universe of discourse and which exists in universes of discourse that negate these formerly established ones. The ideal typical conversion can be thought of as the embracing of a negative identity The person becomes something which was specifically prohibited (Travisano 1970, 600-601, my emphasis).

In his research Travisano found that the Jew who becomes a Christian fundamentalist has negated the values and meanings of his old universe of discourse (601). He has exposed the fallacies or

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distortions that were present in the former universe of discourse. The defector, in our case, or the convert necessarily exposes the false nature of haredi Judaism and leaves. Conversion, says Hans Mol (1976, 52), necessarily involves an exit. The old identity is forcibly obliterated and emotionally defused, in order that a new identity can come to fruition. Conversion first involves a detachment from former patterns of identity.

That conversion involves transformed allegiances or universes of discourse indicates that it is a process of re-suturing the individuals identity to a cultural identity or the joining of a different universe of discourse. When we think of conversion, we may think of Pauls experience on the Damascus Road as paradigmatic: conversion was instantaneous, irrational and determined (Neitz 1990, 95); that is, as a religious epiphany that immediately changes ones life and creates an imperative to go about your life in a radically different manner. Berger and Luckmann (1967, 158) say that to have a conversion experience is nothing much. The real thing is to be able to continue taking it seriously. That is, a switching of worlds that requires a process of resocialization. These processes resemble primary socialization because they radically reassign reality accents and consequently must replicate, to a considerable degree, the strongly affective identification with the socializing personnel that was characteristic of childhood. They are different from primary socialization because they do not start exnihilo, and as a result must cope with a problem of dismantling, disintegrating the preceding nomic structure of subjective reality (ibid, 157).

In order for this process to be successful an effective plausibility structure, that is a social base [needs to be] mediated to the individual by means of significant others (ibid.). Any radical

transformation and radical transformation of subjective reality (includingidentity) requires this (ibid.). When Berger and Luckmann (1967) speak of the transformation of Saul to Paul and say that Paul could maintain this transformation only within the context of the Christian community that recognized

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him as such and confirmed the new beginning in which he now located his identity, (158) they meant that Saul could not have become a Christian and stay located in the Jewish community of that time. This of course assumes that we adhere to a strict concept of plausibility structures. Berger and Luckmann advocate segregation of the transforming individual in order to effectuate the change. That is, remaining with those he formerly associated with will endanger the transformation. This would indicate to us that one in the process of defection or one who is challenging the Orthodox plausibility structure needs to get out in order to actualize their exit. Berger and Luckmann (1967, 159) write:

The alternating individual disaffiliates himself from his previous world and the plausibility structure that sustained it, bodily if possible, mentally if not. In any case, he is no longer yoked together with the unbelievers1 and thus is protected from their potentially reality disrupting influence. The concept of discourse, then, is an important element in cultural identity and in identity change. Discourse is the starting point for understanding the ways in which identities are formed, conceptions of reality shaped and changed, human interaction interpreted, meaning established, institutions legitimated and beliefs and knowledge formulated, disseminated and perpetuated (Silberstein 1996, 329). It is also worth remembering that discourse forms identities which generate, legitimate, support and empower certain kinds of questions, debates and conversations (ibid.). Basically, discourse is the means by which social formation and reproduction occurs. Today the fundamentalist interest is in canonizing certain texts and cultural identity reserving, the right of interpretation and participation in this discourse to a select few. We can say that Jewish fundamentalists are engaged in a struggle over the power to delimit discourse and establish the appropriate meaning and usage of key terms drawn from traditional Judaism (Silberstein 1993, 13). Thus, returning to Berger's and Luckmann's

(1967) discussion, the alternative conversation, as they put it, is one in which reality is dismantled and disintegrated. This is the transformation of subjective reality which is marked by new conversations with new significant others, as they put it (ibid, 159). In effect they picture a process of primary

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socialization all over again. The new emerging conversation or discourse is what reinforces the transformation, particularly in that the new conversation is one that was proscribed in the haredi world.

In comparison to conversion, Deconversion involves doubt or denial of the truth of a system of beliefs. Second, deconversion is characterized by moral criticism of not only particular actions or practices but an entire way of life. Third, the loss of faith brings emotional upheaval, especially such feelings of grief, guilt, loneliness and despair. Finally a person's deconversion is usually marked by the rejection of the community to which he or she belonged. Deconversion encompasses, then, intellectual doubt, moral criticism, emotional suffering and disaffiliation from a community. (Barbour 1994, 2).

Furthermore "a religious conversion is a profound change in belief and action in relation to what a person conceives of as ultimate reality the prefix de before a noun will deprive, divest, free from or get rid of the thing in question. Accordingly I use the term deconversion to designate a loss or deprivation of religious faith (ibid, 2). According to Barbour it is possible to distinguish deconversion from secularization: In the secularized person religion no longer impacts a person's life. For

deconversion, the individual cannot really disassociate from the religious tradition. It no longer informs or controls but it is still influential.

Deconversion involves the loss of faith more so than it involves moving to a new and formally defined universe of discourse which for Travisano seems to be elemental. But this does not remove from the deconversion experience the sense of radical change or reintegration. The key point in understanding deconversion is the process involved. That is to say that in deconversion the individual change is characterized by more than the radical transformation. The relationship is more then a one to one exchange and is not so much dichotomous as it is complex and complicated. This is because it inherently involves a high level of uncertainty.

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"Deconversion is the most radical consequence of doubts and skepticism that I think many believers have about certain aspects of their religious tradition" (Barbour 1994, 5). This may or may not involve a process of joining another religious tradition or it may involve the individual situating himself outside of any or all religious traditions. Barbour's discussion of the narrative of a former Catholic priest who went through a process of deconversion seems to be paradigmatic. For the priest faith began to seem to be a sacrifice of integrity rather than a virtue. This priest not only left the priesthood but also leaves the Church while still maintaining some of his connections to church and religious activity. The issue for him is his intellectual inability to accept Catholicism and its doctrines as infallible, immutable and essential. A part of his transformation, Barbour conjectures, would be in his maintenance of certain moral and political stances that he took as a priest and which brought him into conflict with the Churchs establishment (Ibid, 119-120). In other words, while he rejects any dogmatic, theological or ideological connection with Catholicism he does not reject the way in which he developed and tested an epistemology while part of the Church. This is most notably marked in that the former priest does not adopt atheism nor did he reconstruct his (religious/cultural) identity as a secular person. He sees himself as a restless agnostic who continues to search for whatever knowledge is possible on matters of ultimate concern (Ibid, 120). For him, acting as a priest meant living the double life of a hypocrite, having to represent and advocate things he privately doubts (Ibid, 118-119). This does not preclude his continued dialogue and confrontation with Christianity. He still attends church (Anglican primarily) though he does not participate in sacramental ritual. His academic work (he is an Oxford professor) continues to focus on theological issues. His transformation involved crossing cultural frontiers, not closing them off.

"Among the reasons for which people reject a faith", writes Barbour (1994, 4), "I see ethical considerations as primary, determining not only when religious beliefs or practices are deemed to be harmful or hypocritical but when cognitive uncertainties or doubts become compelling grounds for

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deconversion." That is, the deconversion is about a persons learning to interpret, reflect and act on his doubts and to recognize the need for transformation. Deconversion as Barbour uses it allows us to rise above a disciplined study of conversion and disengagement and cultural identity transformation. He places before us not examined things but stories or literature in which the teller does the work of deconstructing.

Deconstruction thinks that the deep unutterable common faith of the tradition is the result of the fact that the traces of dissenters have been erased by the guardians of truth while the historical tracings that gave rise to the tradition in the first place were erased and the illusion created that we have to do here with ageless essences (Caputo 1989, 264). We see then the importance of reconstruction in which the dissent voiced by the deconversion becomes a part of the discourse on religious studies or, if he is heeded, as part of the religious discourse in that particular tradition or culture. I would add then that in fundamentalism this sort of intellectual examination is necessarily proscribed. Therefore the person who tells his deconversion story exercises an important form of dissent. He reflects an awareness of a need for transformation that is the need to disengage from a certain cultural identity or religious tradition in favor of another or in favor of a continued search. In short, deconversion demonstrates that the person has in effect learned of the/his need for transformation.

In conclusion, Peter Berger (1973, 274) points out that "the subjective reality of individual consciousness is socially constructed." Identities exist and with socialization identities are

internalized. He writes that successful socialization brings about an individual who no longer needs to turn outside himself for knowledge of what is proper about the identities surrounding him (Ibid, 275). Berger is saying that a universe of discourse is constructed by society. And this socially constructed world becomes the only real world (ibid, 275-276). This created world has all the answers for the individual who is socialized (or normalized) into this world. Successful socialization or

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a successful process of causing the individual to cleave to a particular universe of discourse, in terms of this research, might be a Jew who is enmeshed in the haredi world and who will not leave it or ask the type of questions that may disturb that world. Deconversion, on the other hand, is the way or the result of an individual's clash with the cultural or religious identity that may otherwise hold him in place.

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Methodology An individual life, and the role it plays in the larger community, is best understood through story. We become fully aware, fully conscious, of our own lives through the process of putting them together in story form. [Story allows us to] gain context and recognize meaning (Atkinson1998, 7). The research for this project consisted of a series of open ended/semi-structured interviews with ten individuals who had previously been part of the haredi community. The interviews were conducted in my home, the home of the interviewees and at the offices of Hillel, the organization of and for defectors. I approached most of the interviewees while visiting a volunteer training session at Hillel and a weekend retreat organized by Hillel. In addition, friends and acquaintances suggested that I speak with people they knew who were once haredi Jews. Three interviewees came to me as a result of these conversations.

I chose this method because I am convinced that you can learn more about a person by allowing him to tell his story in narrative form as opposed to analyzing responses to the very specific and limited inquiries of a questionnaire. That is not to say that I do not think that survey data is important. It is and can surely play an important part in further research on this topic. For my purposes I felt I needed to listen to the interviewee and read the text that we generated. I think that it represents an effort to participate in and utilize a type of research that is increasingly seen as legitimate inquiry (Lincoln and Guba 185). The narratives that I collected, I believe, expand the range of understanding, voice, and the storied variations in human experience (ibid, 184). To me the narrative represents the complexity of human life in general and of issues such as culture and identity in particular. It allows the subject to speak and tell us what he wants to say rather then what the researcher may want to hear. That is, the person and his narrative are not limited to giving answers that are responsive to the preconceptions of the one who conducts the interview. I think the act of telling and of sitting one across from the other

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allows for an honest exchange of information and knowledge without judgment and without challenging what the informant has to say.

The method I used was the unstructured and semi-structured interview. However, prior to the actual interviews I used informal interviewing in the course of my visits to Hillel volunteer training sessions and social functions. This method is primarily part of participant observation and requires the researcher to remember his conversations and to take notes during the course of the day (Bernard1989, 204). For me, it gave me an idea of what potential interviewees were thinking about and willing to say. It also helped me to determine who would be most willing to engage in an interview. For instance, younger women (early 20s) were least willing to be interviewed while young men were more willing. This may relate to a certain level of discomfort at being interviewed by a male researcher who they do not know. It may also be connected to hang-over identity (Ebaugh 1988) from their haredi life and related to issues of modesty. In any event, I did not pursue individuals who indicated such discomfort. The young men (early 20s) that I spoke with in these informal settings were eager to talk. I felt that many of them would have agreed to an interview at that point, had it been practical. As a result of this dynamic, the women that I interviewed were in their mid 20s to early 30s. Most of the men that I interviewed were in their early to mid 20s. In this sense, it is clear that I saw these encounters as "data sources" through which I "believe data can be generated" (Mason1996, 36).

The distinction between data collection and data generation is a point that Mason (Mason1996, 36) makes and is important to mention in brief. When I think of collecting data, the first image that comes to my mind is my childhood. We would go out at night to collect fireflies, put them in a jar and see if they would light up next to our beds at night (through this data collection we also learned of the importance of punching holes in the lid). "Instead the researcher is seen as actively constructing knowledge about that world according to certain principles and using certain methods derived from

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their epistemological position" (Ibid.). In other words, then, the generation of data means that first of all I needed to decide what type of method to use. It was clear to me that I would use the interview format, and I initially thought that this was an effective method because it would function as a conversation that is non-threatening and humanistic. But after reading, Atkinson, Bernard and Mason, it became clear that thinking of the unstructured or semi-structured interview as a conversation is a mistake. Atkinson (1998, 32) writes that an interview is similar to a conversation but the researcher is doing the listening, creating a beginning and end to the interview and asking questions in greater depth then one would do in casual conversation. This methodology assumes that people's

knowledgeinterpretations, experiences are meaningful properties of the social reality "the researcher is exploring" (ibid, 39).

Epistemologically, this assumes that the researcher sees interaction with people, as well as talking and listening, as the best way to gain access to the data (ibid, 40). Mason calls this "qualitative interviewing" and Bernard divides it to unstructured and semi-structured interviews. The point that Bernard makes in distinguishing between the two types is the accessibility to the interviewees. If the researcher has unfettered access, the unstructured interview is appropriate because you can allow the interviewee to 'open up' and "express themselves in their own terms" (Bernard 1989, 204). The semistructured interview was more appropriate for me because I did not anticipate having more then one chance to interview each individual. It has many of the same qualities of the unstructured interview but relies on an "interview guide" (ibid, 205). This guide is important, Bernard points out, if you want to generate comparative data. Mason (1996, 49) essentially agrees with this (see also Atkinson 1998, 39) and suggests creating an interview card with key subjects. For my first interview I had a number of issues in mind but did not write them down. Following this I entered each interview with a list of topics that I wanted to cover. I essentially checked them off if I felt we reached them and noted the variances of how the person touched on these issues. Bernard (1989, 211) notes that probing is an important

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skill in interviewing and mentions the use of the silent probe, where the researcher essentially waits for the individual to continue with the story. I found that probing, both verbal and silent, were important not only to uncover more information but also to demonstrate my continued engagement.

Having made initial contact with a number of potential interviewees, I scheduled interview times and locations that were comfortable, quiet and convenient for the interviewee. Each interview was taped and the interviewees consent was noted. Following the interviews I made or had a transcript made of the tape. One issue that concerned me, as a result of courses in quantitative research, was that of validity. Atkinson (1998, 60) writes on this issue, "Historical truth is not the main issue in narrative; telling a story implies a certain, and maybe unique, point of view. The storyteller tells his or her story through interpretive eyes to begin with What matters mostis that the life story is able to be deemed trustworthy, more then true." He continues that "coherence", "internal consistency", the extent to which the text stands alone, is more important then an "external criteria of truth or validity" (ibid, 6061).

In interpreting the narratives I chose to deal with them as text and to rely primarily on the written word that was generated. That is to say, I think that this is the best expression of what was relayed by the interviewee. I recognize, as Mason (1996) points out, the limitations of the transcript in that it does not take into account non-verbal utterances. Nor do I think that the transcript is an objective record of the interview because it, too, involves interpretation and in the case of this research, translations. However, I do think that the spoken word of the individual reflects his thoughts at the time and therefore is the best reflection of the interview. From this point, I read the transcripts, found common categories and from there was able to develop a theoretical explanation of the process of leaving haredi Judaism. The result is reflected in the discussion chapter.

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Population Survey (Haredi Jewry) In order to understand defection it is important to understand the world that the defector leaves. According to Friedman (1986) Haredi society is organized as a voluntary association. Cromer (1993, 177) writes that Haredi Judaism is not simply a continuation of traditional religious patterns; it is rather the product of the clash between them and the modern secular world. In the State of Israel this confrontation occurs in three major areas of activity education, parliamentary legislation and extraparliamentary protest. In each of these spheres, haredim adopt two strategies withdrawal and domination (see also Berger and Luckmann 1995, 60). In short, Jewish fundamentalism rejects pluralism. Questions are unacceptable to the leaders and teachers, and acceptable answers are already implanted in the student.

Since defection largely takes place or is conceived of in the course of the defectors' schooling we will examine haredi education. This is important because we are examining the way in which people effectively leave fundamentalist Judaism after having been socialized and educated in haredi institutions. Jarvis (1992, 4) writes that the study of learning must raise questions, since one of its main arguments is that learning begins with a fundamental disjuncture between individual biography and the socially constructed experience. This disjuncture leads people to ask questions and thus sets the learning process in motion.

Haredi education/socialization is structured to flow from childhood through adulthood without a break. It begins in the primary school where their lessons are far more than a literary foray into a text or a recitation of a narrative. They are pretexts for passing along values, tools for deflecting heresies, and, perhaps most importantly, means for helping to give substance to what it meant to be a Jew in the world they inhabited. That is, they are taught that they are all part of a community and to watch out

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not to ask an outsiders question (Heilman 1992, 225). Rosenak (1993, 377) writes, regarding education and Jews: education is an obligation imposed on parents and the community to enable the young person to become an adult capable of studying Torah and carrying out its commandments. That is, traditional Jewish education begins in the home and is bound up with the norms of the family the child learns immediately who has status and authority and why." The education of the Jew is bound up in every day practices and life in the Haredi world. The synagogue is also an educational establishment. Here the child learns who is in and who is out and why. The child learns and is embedded in the language of community life and is considered to be substantially educated. He learns customs as 'iron clad' laws which are precious and indispensable aspects of ones innermost being (ibid, 386).

This means that the education and schooling of children in orthodox religious environments are an effort to embed them in a very particular plausibility structure. Further, If the educational philosophy of Haredi fundamentalism is centered on holy community and transcendence, the hallmark of educational practice is unbending traditionalism Any new idea is seen as a clear and present danger to everything Judaism stands for, a blatant attempt to introduce reform, atheism or Christianity, surreptitiously. The only way to educate is the way it was (presumably) always done (Rosenak 1993, 385). Schools or educational institutions are places to prevent what is feared as the undermining and contamination of the haredi Jew. If communal and family life are the aspects of primary socialization as we understand them, then the school is in a sense a mere cognitive supplement to all this (Ibid, 386). In the haredi elementary school, the curriculum is an arm or extension of the primary socialization in the family or in the community (ibid.). It is the place where what Heilman (1992, 203)

calls traditioning takes place. It is a process of creating a sense of an a-historical consciousness and mixing it with the concept that there is nothing so ancient and archaic in the Jewish past that it does not have its place in the Jewish presentIt means never seeing the past as beyond retrieval but rather experiencing it as an ongoing reverberation in the present (ibid.). History is not something controlled.

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This perspective implies that the human condition is almost static, unlike Halls perspective which sees cultural identities as ever changing or transforming. The haredi concept of a-history has the opposite connotation and rather serves or is intended to embed the Jew in a reified version of tradition and culture.

Haredi education wants children to see the rabbi/teacher as a simple extension of the same socialization that they have received up to that point. Heilman (1992, 184) says that despite the obvious concerns and fears a child has when he first goes to school, he is taking his first steps into a society of scholars where things need to stay the same more than they need to change. This place should not be seen as distinct from the rest of their lives. What is new is not new but already known. There is no room to challenge, just to proceed and to learn in order to reach the Yeshiva. This is the embodiment of the haredi ideal for life, a microcosm of the real world in which the divine presence dwells (Rosenak 1993, 386).

We can say that the haredi curriculum (everything that goes on in the school for the purpose of education) must reflect the constant struggle against the outside world (Rosenak 1993, 388 and see Heilman 1992, 174-176). In a sense, what is sought is the maintenance and purity of the constructed reality. It is a constructed reality that cannot even share its most precious possession, the Talmud, with the outside world (See Rosenak, 1993, 389). Nor can it tolerate the introduction of seemingly harmless institutional or educational innovation or methodologies. Even if some weak souls leave the fold that is a price [that the haredi establishment sees as] worth paying for the Yeshiva ideal (ibid.). That is, the world of the haredi/fundamentalist Jew acts as a filter separating the holy from the profane. Finally, it is important to mention the education of women in the haredi world which was not dealt with in depth in these sources. Womens education is about maintaining a functional level of ignorance. In other words, haredi society may provide an education for women yet its primary aim is to produce an

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individual who is illiterate and unable to decide regarding cultural or religious matters. Therefore the woman is forced into abdicating her autonomy to her husband and/or to the rabbi. El Or (1994, 85) notes education contains the potential for change that is not wanted by haredi society today". Therefore, according to El Or's thesis haredi education for women is primarily designed to create a functional individual who will serve haredi society rather than question it or doubt it.

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Findings As for why I left because of a basic lack of faith (Hannah) This chapter will present the interviewees' narratives. In analyzing the narratives, it becomes clear that there are common threads in the very personal stories of the interviewees. Each narrative is a verbal expression of a difficult process of leaving an untenable existence. The key theme that runs through most of the interviews is that defection is a serious, if not radical, change for an individual as he considers the most appropriate way to live and express him self honestly. These conclusions and other points of discussion will be examined in the following chapter. This chapter will lay out the ways in which the interviewees in this study relate to the issues that are most important in their lives.

Defectors express themselves in a variety of ways but most profoundly in the way in which many of the defectors speak about the importance of going outside the walls of their learning environment in order to quench their thirst for knowledge. Most prevalent in the way they cross this frontier is their utilization of public and university libraries; the internet; and other mediums such as radios, participation in lectures outside of the yeshiva, and studying material, albeit Jewish, that is not part of the official yeshiva curriculum. Similarly, many of the interviewees note that their family or their parents are not what we would think of as typical haredi individuals. They speak of them as not being Israeli, or as having brought secular material, such as newspapers into the home, or of supporting academic studies or of professing a desire to have learned a secular profession. Similarly, a mother of one of the interviewees is a convert who, along with the interviewees father became ultra-Orthodox Jews and immigrated to Israel from the United States. This interviewee herself also was converted to Judaism as a young child. Some of the interviewees speak very clearly of their fear or concern about being thrown out of the yeshiva or the school where they study. Some reflect a desire to leave but on their own terms. Accordingly, they have a clear idea of how their actual defection will take place. This does not necessarily spare the defector hardship or an ordeal as one individual termed it. The narratives are

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reflective of a process of crossing boundaries and of challenging or testing limits. This is often accompanied by critical reflection on their past lives as well as criticism of the entire haredi system on a variety of levels. Some of the defectors also speak of efforts that they make to strengthen their Jewish faith in one form or another. Yet, ultimately, they are breaking out of an enclosure, as they see it, in which questions are limited to prepared answers or answers that do not exist at all. Many of the interviewees also speak of having gone through very profound changes in terms of having come to a realization that their present situation is mistaken leading them to rearrange their lives. At the same time, some of them remain connected in emotional and intellectual ways to their past. Also important is the almost universal expression of a loss of faith not only in the theological efficacy of haredi Judaism but also its social plausibility.

The stories of the individual defectors come together and create a picture of defection from haredi Judaism that, while not homogenous, is certainly representative of the difficulty and of the emancipatory feelings that are involved in a defection. The most important thing to remember is that each individual tells his own story, and only after reviewing them collectively is it possible to extract common elements. What follows is a collective expression of the common categories that arise from the narratives of haredi youth involved in an intensive learning environment. The yeshiva or the girls learning environment is demanding both in terms of time and of energy. Many of the defectors speak of going outside of the walls of the yeshiva and accessing information and satisfying a thirst for knowledge in alternative sources. The primary place in which this occurs is the library.

Hannah, Yoram, Eran and Aaron speak very specifically about the local public library as well as the Jewish National and University Library on Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus, in Jerusalem as places where they sought out and were exposed to different ideas. They do not speak of having wandered into a library and having an epiphany. Rather, their use of the library is part of a process of

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realization. It is a tool or a vehicle for exploration and accessing knowledge and considering their doubts about haredi society. Hannah, for example, speaks of the Jewish National Library at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, saying; In tenth grade I started to ask questions of myself. I went to the National Library and read books on biblical criticism and the more I learned the more questions I had and completely different answers as well. The more I read biblical criticism the less I believed. The learning she did outside of the accepted boundaries of her community raised questions for her. I asked her if she brought these questions and doubts before her teachers or rabbis. She saw the actual asking of questions as a threat. I did not ask the questions out loud. If I would ask question they would kick me out of the school. There is no point in asking and, what, get kicked out of school. In the end I would have lost out. One of the important losses for her would have been the privilege to go wherever I wanted to go like the National Library without anyone checking up on me The library was obviously an important place for her. It was a privilege for her in that she could go there with out being questioned. This was directly related to her decision to keep her questions to her self and to avoid the risk of getting ejected from her relatively safe place in school.

Others related to the library in similar ways, seeing it as a place where they could get away from the restrictions they felt in the yeshiva. For the others who speak about the library, their situation is a bit different. Hannah lived at home and went to school on a daily basis. Yoram, Eran, Aaron, Yosef and others lived at the yeshiva for the most part and were under the constant watch of their rabbis and teachers. That is, all of them speak of their experiences with outside knowledge such as books, radios and other resources as almost sinful. unacceptable. In the eyes of the yeshiva structure such behavior is

Eran, like the others, was a good and well respected student. According to his

narrative he taught younger yeshiva students, delivered complex sermons and was, in many ways, a very promising yeshiva student. But, he also relates that he had ideas and opinions that were considered, in his words, rather heretical. Interestingly his actions were confined, up to this point to

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what he calls societal issues. Even then [age 14-15] I was interested [in other issues] I would read bookson the haredi sector, on the army, and why they [haredi Jews] do not serve. I had serious doubts that were very serious to those who heard them. He goes on to say that now the rule [at the yeshiva] was very strict, you were forbidden to leave the yeshiva. But he states that he would do what he wanted to do. He would go to his lessons and participate in the yeshiva activities. But, then it started to be more prominent. I joined the municipal library which is the sin not to deny God thanks to this I left the yeshiva. He continued, There was also the daily newspaper I would bring the

books back with me and I was not ashamed. Everyone would see me with the books, at least in my room. Perhaps outside of my room I would be careful that they would not see them. But in my room they knew. I guess you can say that was the first sign that began to stand out. I mostly read books on psychology or politics which were very interesting to me. These books were repugnant to haredi Jews.

For him, this was a time when he thought about leaving but was not willing to take it upon himself, so he would start to make it [his actions] more prominent, including his relationship with the library. He illustrates the haredi attitude in this way: You need to understand that to bring a newspaper, any newspaper to the yeshiva is defilement but I would bring newspapers to my room. At the same time he speaks about a decline in his academic excellence at the yeshiva. He attributes this to his needing to read more and I visited the beit midrash (study hall) less I was in the library a lot.

Yoram, who studied at one of the Lubavitch movement's best yeshivas also relates to issues like the act of questioning and intellectual exploration. He says that he was one of the best students and when I started to seriously think about the real essence of life I said wait, why am I doing this? Because of how I was born or because this is what they want me to do and what about what I want to do? So, I would say, an internal process of, excitement or agitation began. I had nobody to ask, because to

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dare to ask questions like this is unacceptable, or better to say, it is forbidden He too speaks of the strictness of the yeshiva setting and the abject lack of privacy. Together with what he saw as a failure to relate to intellectual inquiry in a serious manner on the part of the rabbis and teachers led him to outside sources. I would read books from outside. My yeshiva was a boarding school where we have no privacy, even in your most personal things. They would search all the time. So I just made a hole in my mattress and hid my stuff there. When asked what he would hide he said: Books, I had a library membership. The yeshiva where I learned was considered the best in Habad and I had a library card at the local library so I would take out books. I had no trouble concealing the books because I had that big suit you just put it in your suit. The librarian knew what was going on and knew us and I had other friends from the yeshiva who also would go to the library. She [the librarian] collaborated with us. She knew it was forbidden but she would ignore that. We always worried that the Mashgiach would come; he lived in the town, which was small. It was enough for him to be driving and see you outside of the yeshiva for him to start asking, 'hey why arent you in the yeshiva?' You are supposed to be there 30 days and to leave one Shabbat a month and then come back. So we followed the rules and they never caught on. His relationship to the library from where he would take out books was part of his exit as well. He relates to this issue in this way: There are positive commandments that you can keep or not. But a negative commandment is an offense that you commitBut to really knowingly violate, that was when I brought my books on Shabbat. I would read them on Erev Shabbat So after dinner there is not much to do. I was not going to study or go to sleep. I had forgotten to turn on a light before Shabbat. I did not tremble or fear, it was clear that I had to turn on the light in order to read. He recognizes the conflict that this creates and he deals with it in this way, In my mind to read Nietzsche is more intelligent then reading the Torah that was written by a bunch of idiots, in my opinion. There are so many inconsistencies and they do not know what they are talking about. For Yoram too the public

library is more than a place. He sees the librarian as a collaborator, which indicates that the library is perhaps a vehicle of leaving but certainly it is a place where they are able to solidify their ideas and escape the haredi world for that period of time.

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The library is not the only instrument utilized by a defector to construct a base of support for their departure. That is, as we saw above, the library in and of itself and the variety of knowledge made available to the individual plays an important part in the defection. Many of the defectors seek knowledge and enrichment from different sources, including the internet, alternative religious material, lectures and even participation in a non-Orthodox rabbinical program. In short, the interviewees describe a situation in which they are committed to learning, even to religious learning but the way in which learning takes place in their particular environment does not satisfy them.

Eran related that normally one enters the small yeshiva at the age of 13 or 14 but he arrived there prior to his bar mitzvah. He said that the yeshiva was very closed and I was always naturally a very independent person. At a certain point I could not stay there because there was also intellectual strangulation. That is, I could not think. There were even, I would say, thought police there. Eran tells us that he was not a typical student. He preferred not to study in the traditional yeshiva method in which one studies the classic texts with a partner. I wanted to study alone. I reached a very high [academic] level, but in spite of everything, from the beginning I was well respected. And in spite of this I was called a skeptic. As we saw above Eran was one of the interviewees who frequented the public library and would read outside books. He continuously spoke of his desire to study alone. I would love to learn alone because I had my own train of thought and I found it difficult to contend with another. They always pressured me to study in hevruta but I simply could not do it. Eran is not alone in terms of his self-differentiation. Others similarly create differences or behave in ways that are diverge, in comparison, to what normally goes on in the confines of the yeshiva or school.

Yosef, for example, differentiates himself from the yeshivas standardized regime by focusing chiefly on the study of Hassidic and Jewish thought. Yosef, it is important to mention, remained a religious Jew after his defection from haredi Judaism. His definition of what it means to be religious is one that

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he constructs, but it involves keeping Shabbat, eating kosher, praying and the wearing of a skull cap. For him, part of the problem is that in the haredi world you do not decide anything. The yeshiva for

him is almost a prison. For example he speaks about a very particular prohibition. There are very strict rules there [at the yeshiva] For example there are people there whose job it is to write down what you do all the time. There is a rule that prohibits conversations between three people or more outside of study time. Lets say at break time, if you are three together it is a sign that you are not studying. So they watch over you and every thing is written downyou can get kicked out. They threaten you all the time. This type of threatening is common, he reports. So he devised a way out while remaining in. He speaks about four important outlets: studying the literature of Hassidic masters; Jewish thought; the creation of an imaginary world; and attending lectures at what he calls a white yeshiva.

Studying Hassidic literature was important to him, to which he began to devote more time after the days formal study time ended at 9:30 at night. I would study Talmud but I would keep Hassidic literature under my book and, whenever my study partner would go to the restroom, I would read this material. He also mentions that, at the same time, he began to enter into an imaginary world. This is related to a conversation that he once had with a violin teacher who befriended him and who told him they can take it all from you but not the imagination. His imaginary world was one where, in parallel, he tried to be more righteous. I think that, in a certain way, I decided to be in the imaginary world and not in the [real] world. The world simply did not interest me. Some time later he also mentions that he began to study Jewish thought. I began to get excited by this and I started to ask questions and then I turned into a bit more rebellious I started to express things, to ask questions one day the yeshiva heads son came to me and told me that next year he was going to be my rabbi and he asked me if I was religious, haredi, traditional or just secular. For Yosef he connected this to the types of questions he was raising, such as whether or not to go to the army. He mentions that he found examples of

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inquiry in the Jewish thought that he was reading regularly. He says that I started to be very rebellious in terms of my learning because I would learn a lot, such as ethics [seder musar] which nobody would learn and I would bring this up.

At this time that he was also confronting issues about his individuality. As he got older and continued in the yeshiva world he says I promised myself that the moment I leave the yeshiva, which is a damned institution, where I was for five years, I will be me. I want to be me. I did not know how to say the word me. It is a secular word. Part of this is expressed in his ventures outside of the yeshiva. For instance, he attends lectures at a white yeshiva. The Rav Kook yeshiva in Jerusalem was the yeshiva that he discovered while he studied in an upper level haredi yeshiva in the city. So on Fridays when there were no lessons at the [haredi] yeshiva there were lessons there. I would go to those lessons [at the white yeshiva]. In the beginning nobody [at his yeshiva] knew what to think they knew that I was a character. They liked this because I was a model student. But they knew I was different and they gave me some freedom. Yosef also spoke at some length earlier in the interview about his love for playing the violin. As he progressed in the yeshiva world the violin and music was seen as unfit and not proper. In order to get around this additional prohibition he tells how his friend had cousins who lived ten minutes from the yeshiva and agreed to give him a key and every afternoon he would go there to play his violin. So his daily regiment, in addition to being in the yeshiva was playing violin in the afternoons and studying Jewish thought at night. For Yosef this was part of his exit preparation. It included going to lectures by a modern Orthodox rabbi and gaining exposure to different versions of Orthodox Judaism.

Yankels story is a bit different because he was older when he began to seek his way out of the haredi world and he was already a rabbi. Like the others, his doubts about haredi life came about through his life experience in the haredi world. It came to fruition in a similar search for knowledge and answers

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outside of the haredi world. That is, for him as for the others, there were no satisfactory answers to be had in the haredi world. Similarly, he was also an earnest student, having received his ordination at age 17 instead of 24. He says, I appreciate studying. I think in my mind thats what separates us from the animal. We do not just operate on instinct. We have intellect; how to utilize it, whats the right thing to do that is a different question. Yet throughout his studies he would raise questions about

haredi society. For instance, the culture of constant study was problematic for him; he thought it was important that one be able to make a living. He thought about becoming an attorney. My personal search began when I was I think 15 years old. Maybe before that, I was 13 or 15. I wanted to be a lawyer, my friend. And I was being practical. I said 'listen, you need to make a living one day.' It is nice that I am learning Gomorra, I love it, never want to stop but what am I going to do when I grow up? My father said dont worry about it now. I wanted to go and not necessarily do anything specific but have a way to make a living. And that was not a possibility. The Rebbe allows haredi kids in the United States to study secular education while here in Israel its forbidden. So he continued along the expected path and worked as a congregational rabbi in a number of settings and even became an expert in forbidden foods. He relates that as a rabbi he would find tension in what he called a duality.

People would come to me for a legal decision and I would ask questions that I was taught to ask and I would say yes youre allowed to do it. The following day I would get the same questions and I would ask the same questions, leading questions. And it would seem that it should go the other way, it is not allowed. This duality sent me on a search. The question that occurs to me is as follows. Is there a distinct right and wrong where there is one way to go? And who makes the decision, the Torah or the Rabbi? That was a tough question and one day when I was sitting with rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu discussing halacha, somebody came in so he says to me, what do you think about this halacha and I answer him one way. And then he says what do you think somebody else comes in, similar case, what do you think of this one? I answer and he says youre right. I said you have a contradiction. So he says listen to be a rabbi and always be strict, you do not have to learn. Someone comes in with a question, you tell him no. A rabbi is always supposed to find the exception, like it says in the Talmud. So I said how come we are lenient when it comes to things that are inside the realm of halacha and inside the world of halacha when people come to ask us and they will probably do what we say. But when it comes to Klal Yisrael we are not leading it. He said what do you mean. I said look it says in Rambam, about certain ways the rabbis, the leaders of the generation are allowed and should lead the people. This means you are not allowed to make rules that you know the community is not able to tolerate. And they are not going to listen. Not only are you not allowed to do it. I said lets be realistic. We sit here and we pass judgment for people that listen to us. Who are these people? its a very small

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percentage of Klal Yisrael not too many people. The majority of Klal Yisrael doesnt care about what we have to sayand we are sitting her making strict rules, and calling ourselves the protectors of the rules. Are we not making the laws between us and the rest of the Jewish congregation? He said to me you have a very good question but we are only allowed to make changes or to make decisions within the realm of halacha. I said ok, well what kind of power do we have if we can decide one thing is allowed and one thing isn't? How about things that we are losing most of Klal Yisrael over? So he said to me, everything you are saying is right but what do you expect us to do? I told him, so what you're telling me is the following, a rabbi is a rabbi when he makes a decision it's done right in heaven, that is the answer in heaven and therefore he has the right to say this way or that way. Or all the judgments that we are making we are just playing with ourselves. In other words its casual, it depends on the mood you feel. Either it carries weight and we should utilize this weight for good things also or were just sitting here making believe. This conversation really got me thinking. Yankels way of contending with this was to look elsewhere. Thats what made me go look and I came here to [the non-Orthodox seminary]. He describes it this way, So how did I come to the seminary? A lot of people in my situation, not in my exact situation have a religious crisis He discusses the crisis of faith created by the passing of an important haredi leader who was and is thought to be the messiah by many followers. For him he figured that I had to change something. Somethings wrong for me, so I listened to my good friend the RAMBAM again. He says when you want to make a change you have to change drastically to the other end. [So he decided to go to what is considered a very liberal seminary and not a more conservative one]. I just wanted to go research and hear what other people had to say. Before he continued he reflected on what he saw as a key flaw in the haredi system. Our whole life we lived in a secluded, open yet secluded, society. Open because Ive seen the world. I was a rabbi in Hollywood Florida for a while with a community and secluded because I didnt feel for example that they gave us history or all of the facts we needed to make decisions about what wed like to believe. They omit knowledge systematically So he arrived at the seminary and asked to see a rabbi. And, he emphasizes, I was wearing black. I went and spoke to a rabbi. And its not so much she showed me the light. Its not so much that she told me or taught that there were other ways to be Jewish. What was good about her was that she just listened. And then I decided to be a free listener, to see what they learn and Ill see if anything applies. At that point I didnt even want to take part in the program per se. I just said this is another part of Klal Yisrael, this isn't the enemy. These are the people who are 'worse then goyim?' Its not a joke its a saying of Orthodox Jews. They say these people are untouchable, from disgust. I'm not allowed to talk to them. So I came here and said let's hear what they learn. Because, you know, these people

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are, if not all of them, some of them are for sure Jewish. They are my brothers and my sisters and you know basically there is this big barrier between us. So Yankel found himself here and decided to continue studying for non-Orthodox ordination, which is to leave his haredi world for this drastically different Jewish world. His path to change was functionally different but, like the others, he still relates to the importance of going beyond the confines of the system of which he was a part.

For Aaron, going outside of the yeshiva was crucial for him in terms of his defection. He began his story this way: In principle, since I was young, I simply had it in me to ask questions about the haredi community. Not to agree with everything they say. In the beginning the questions were not about faith, that is, not questions about religion, rather more questions about why the haredi public acts the way it does. Like, why, dont they go to the army or why do they hide instances of rape and drug abuse? Why is there so much corruption in the rabbinical courts? A lot of different things bothered me about the haredi public and began to set off a red light in me. I got to age 16-17 and started to ask questions and I decided to check if God really gave us the Torah and to ask if what I am doing is right. Is this the way that I want to live my life? I reached a conclusion that even if God did give us the Torah he did not intend for us to live the way we are living now. That is, the haredim are an example of extremism. That means that I did not want to be a haredi. I had never accepted haredi life as logical. After that I asked some questions about faith and quickly grasped that I would not get any answers. They only avoided my questions and tried to use demagoguery to sell me this Torah again, the cult, like I call it today, haredi cult. Of course they did not succeed. It took me about two years to grasp that I really do not believe in God and that I do not want to live this life anymore. That is basically the reason why I defected. Aaron came to these beliefs in two important ways that are also connected to the category that weve established of going outside of the walls of the individuals learning environment and community. For Aaron, there were important practical considerations in terms of his defection, mostly related to what took place inside the walls of his learning environment and community. He says:

You get to a point where you ask if it is worth it to leave the haredi world. Even if you do not believe in God, here there is only profit. I get money from the State; I do not go to the army, a lot of things. My question was more about how I would get along alone. I did not want to be a parasite and just take from the State. But at some point the State caused me, because of the education, in that the state did not require the religious institutions to teach me a profession. [The State] turned me into a person with

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no formal education. This makes me unable to manage financially in life. Therefore I would have to think really if I want to get out or stay in the Haredi world. It took me a little bit of time to think that if I want to stay I have to marry a religious woman and play all the games. My children would receive the same education that I did not want for myself. Therefore I decided to leave. Aaron had friends who had previously defected and according to him this sped up my exit by six months. I asked him why and he replied because I went onto the Internet more. I saw more questions on faith; it strengthened the feeling that I am not a lone wolf. It legitimized for me what I was thinking. In the haredi society they try to make you think that no one else thinks like you do and that you are different. It helped me to see that I was right in my opinions. The web site (Daat Emet as opposed to Daat Torah)5 that was most influential for him was one that was created by a former haredi Jew. The site is a repository of articles and opinions that essentially refute religious teachings or the hegemony of a fundamentalist perspective on such teachings.

[I knew I was doing the right thing] because, first of all, like I said that society wants to make you feel like you are doing the wrong thing and that you are an idiot and that your questions are stupid. But there was a web site Daat Emet, that helped me, to understand that what I am doing is legitimate and even normal, and that there are other people doing the same thing. If I was or if I thought that I was alone in doing this it is possible that I would not have gotten out because I would ask myself why I am the only one who thinks this way. In Da'at Emet they show where the mistake is in the Talmudic question You build a complete theory about why there is or is not a God. When I got to a situation in which there is no God for me, because the world can exist without God, that gave me a general feeling that what the haredim say is wrong. Aaron went further in that he actually decided to leave his community and study at a yeshiva oversees, in England. Like Yankel, above, Aaron was seeking a change in his environment to get a different perspective. Like Yankel, his first inclination was not to stop being religious but to go outside the place where he had been for so long. "When I went to Gateshead it was not because I did not believe but because I did not believe in what the haredim are doing. I said to myself I want to ask questions and did not want to be haredi. I wanted to be at least religious, to do what I think we really need to not

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what the haredim say I have to do. Rather, what God really commanded? Therefore I went to Gates Head to be with myself" The fact that \Gateshead is also haredi was not the issue for him.

No one really knows me there. Foreign haredi Jews are better then in Israel. They are more polite and less probing. They are more open in terms of dress and do not hide corruption as much. A court is a court. They do not try to lie like they do here Like I told you, I went to England to learn at a famous yeshiva. I was there for year and it was like I got this tremendous push to ask questions and not only about the haredi public, but also about faith. Because in the haredi world you get a feeling that the world exists only for the haredi/religious community. But when I was in England, I saw that there were goyim [non-Jews] who were born and do not believe in this thing. It is like you see that the world was not created just so that the Jew could perform the commandments I started then to ask a ton of questions and began to really understand that everything is just a big bluff, a huge bubble. But you can pop this bubble if you are honest with yourself.

It is possible to see that Aaron is involved in a process of leaving that involved looking outside the yeshiva as well as outside his very particular haredi world. That is reflected in what he says above. He knows that Gateshead is haredi but it is not in Israel. He mentioned having friends who had left. So, I asked him, you had friends, someone to talk to? He replied, I think that sped up my exit by six months. I asked why that was. And he replied that in the yeshiva they try to isolate the individual who begins to think for him self. Any time I would talk about faith they would argue with me in a way that did not answer questions. They simply laugh at you. They relate to what you say as if it came from a stupid person and create a situation in which you feel stupid about what you said and that you prefer not to have said them. I suspect that this made a lot of less stubborn people not defect. That did not happen to me because I insisted and did not agree with every answer that everyone was giving me and I was not ashamed to say what I said. If I thought something I would say it. It [losing my religious faith] was a process. I had a friend who was very, very talented [in his studies]. I presented my thoughts to him because we were good friends. I wanted to see how he deals with them. I saw that he had no answers, and his grandfather was the head of a very important yeshiva. He asked his grandfather. He told me that even if there were no answers he would remain haredi because he believes and has no rational reason not to. This helped me to understand that my opinions were right. At this point I not only do not agree with what haredi Jews do but also I do not believe that God gave us the Torah and commanded us to observe the commandments.

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Similarly, Rona also speaks of being outside the community and of turning to outside material. As a child convert, with a mother who converted to Judaism after marriage and who, with her parents, became ultra-Orthodox, her story is less typical then other defectors. The way in which she relates to outside material is connected to our next category and therefore I will treat it briefly here. She not only speaks about being in a haredi school but also about being in an isolated ultra-Orthodox community located in the occupied territories. She says, It was very difficult for us because we were outsiders in the haredi schools; we were discriminated against because we came from a hozrim btshuvhah [returnees to Orthodox Judaism] family. It became very clear to us from the first week of high school that we need to keep the hozrim btshuhvah a secret not to mention that we were converts, and this must never ever come out and it was surprising to us because we never thought it was anything to be ashamed of. But it was the basis of some of the prejudice that we were told to keep it a secret. Eventually we were expelled from school. We were expelled because we broke some rules, we were seen in town in inappropriate clothing and they found out we read Shai Agnon. Because I did not realize, you see we did not come from a traditional haredi home so I did not know that Shai Agnon was considered um some thing that one must never read. Or bring into the house. You see I thought that because he had a kippah that it was ok. But he wasnt and we were given an ultimatum to leave home. They thought our parents were a bad influence on us.

She also speaks about her schooling which sheds light on what a defector contends with in many instances. Speaking about education, I want to tell you a story about Beit Yaakov, about Geography lessons. It demonstrates how poorly educated these people are. My sister and I were well read so we knew the teacher was wrong. She had a map of South America on the blackboard. This was in 6th grade. She asked me to trace the border of Brazil, which I did according to the red line on the map. She says Brazil is not that big it is approximately where you see the fold on the map. She could not read a map in other words. Um, and she told us and that in Italy they have red green and white cats, which is why the flag is red green and white. They are ignorant, ignorant people.

In looking at these narratives it becomes apparent that going beyond the yeshiva is an important part of the story of these individuals. They actualize this not only by using the library but also by going to lectures in non-haredi institutions and studying non-approved material when they should be concentrating on the official yeshiva curriculum. The Internet, too, functions in this way, particularly in 38

terms of how one of the interviewees relates to it as an important source of material for refuting haredi claims. This same individual also relates the process of leaving the yeshiva in Israel in order to study overseas in similar terms to the way Yosef relates to attending what he called white (non-haredi) yeshivas for lessons. The manner in which defectors related to these areas reflected their efforts to learn things that were essentially forbidden to them in the Yeshiva. While the interviewees attached much significance to going outside the walls of their yeshiva, school or community, they also speak of their family on many occasions as not being a typical haredi family and of having one or both parents as being more liberal or more open.

Aaron responds to my first request that he tell me about his coming out by saying, Lets start with why. In principle, since I was young, my mom was religious but not completely haredi. He followed this by saying, I simply had it in me to ask questions about the haredi community. This does not mean that his family supported his defection, nor do the others who speak of their family being different reveal that their family expressed understanding or support for their defections. Aaron said look, you go through a difficult process, it is tough to make this decision and my family also gives me a hard time, they call me and argue with me, try to make me feel guilty. And then you also feel guilty regarding the religion and at the same time your family is pressing you, trying to bring you back to religion.

Yonatan speaks about how he saw completing his matriculation exams as a dream and he notes that his parents encouraged me to do the exams. I asked him why and he said, because my parents always valued learning. My father always regretted not having done a degree. So, my parents have much respect for learning Yonatan said that he was born into a Hassidic family so I asked him if his parents were always haredim. He replied, yes but my house, my parents house, is a special house. My parents have elements of liberalism in them, more than is accepted in haredi society. He

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speaks about his being a secular person saying, I do not know why I am so secular. I do not think I am particularly cynical, I dont know. I guess I can attribute it to my education. As a child I was exposed, as much as my parents were haredim, to secular writings as well, which was very influential. Apparently I looked for it and found it. So from a young age I experienced a certain tension that is a component for me. He related that the tension "started at a young age, around 10 when my father brought the Michlal encyclopedia home. It is a socialist encyclopedia from the '50s. I would sit and read it all. This is related to a characteristic of mine that increased as time passed to accumulate knowledge.

Yoram primarily spoke of his family as being haredi. He said I come from haredi origins. I grew up in the Habad movement, my parents are disciples of Habad and of course that does not give many options. I had to continue to learn in HabadBecause no one asked me if I want to be in Habad. Your parents are Habad so you are. It is like if a person is born in France, he is French no matter what. That is how it is for haredim who are born in Habad. Of course, he did ultimately leave, but this demonstrates the difficulties he subsequently encountered. I later returned to the issue of his family and asked him about his father. He replied that his father had been violent towards him and his siblings and that he had even filed a complaint with the police. Like others who said they were influenced by their parents' behavior or origins, he too reports that this aspect of his relationship with his father (with whom he is no longer in contact) clearly made me more willing to rebel and to ask questions. It is a sort of counter measure.

Yankels family background also played a part in his life and says that it may have contributed to his decision to leave although, he initially expressed a reluctance to discuss it. My mother is from a very well known family and my father was an emissary; some people like to call them mercenaries of the Rebbe. My father was known as the traveling emissary. I moved 36 times by the age of 18. Sometimes it was 40

from one end of a city to another, just because the Rebbe said so. He spoke a great deal about his learning and his initial desire to learn law. He does not complain so much about the yeshiva learning, although he mentions the problem of not having received a secular education. He says and overall the mind was expanding. You can come at times to some real good feelings in your heart when you fight and try to do the right thing with your own behavior, how you treat others, how you pray. And how you learn, you sit, you learn, its a very good feeling, you feel elevated. Um, I continued learning like any other yeshiva kid and basically what brought the change on is very simple, it is obviously a lot of things, the family life, the moves what type of person did it make me? It made me adaptable, sure, but did it give me the stability that I needed? Did this help me later, to break and leave the society that I was in? I am not sure. But it definitely is something to consider.

Yosef also points out that his family was different in some ways from other haredi families. We are a Hassidic family, but not a standard family. Because, I think, my father married my mother and my mother is from outside of Israel, from Belgium, which caused change. She also came from a Hassidic family, but that is different because she is modern. She knows about the cinema and literature, she learned secular subjects. Outside of Israel it is different. My father also came to Israel when he was eight years old from Romania. He also had a secular education and served a little bit in the army. After that he even learned in university and earned a BA in accounting. This was influential in that they really respected studying, secular learning. He also speaks of an event that happened as child and associates it with his mothers naivety.

Eran opened our interview by saying that he is a Sephardic boy who learned in a Lithuanian, Ashkenazi yeshiva. He also says that I came from a family that had many secular relatives; my parents were not classic haredim. Erans story is composed of many elements that are similar to other stories. He speaks of the library in similar terms as the others. His family, as he describes it, is not a typical haredi family. His

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mother adds an element of difference in that she is not or was not haredi and is a Bible teacher at a state religious school. He even speaks of there being a religious discourse in his home and even of critical discussion regarding the weekly Torah portions. Friends of his that would visit found this to be different than what they would experience in their own homes. He describes this in this way: All in all, I grew up in an atmosphere that was closer to being secular. Another thing, any other haredi that hears this would be shocked, we would go to the amusement park, which is an obscene place, it is open on Shabbat and we would go there. Or we would very often go on excursions, and so many other things that were not acceptable for classic haredim. Also my father, was in the army, learned in a Torah high school and then in a Lithuanian yeshiva. My father, lets say was very closed regarding his childrens education. But at a certain time he totally changed. He is very open I think, as hard as it is for him to accept things he is very open. For instance, if I would come home for breaks from the yeshiva in a haredi household there are prayer times, like 7:00 in the morning and everyone gets up for it I could sleep as late as I wanted. For haredim that is very unacceptable, I would say. Similarly, my father is a rabbi in the Tzefat rabbinical office and he worked in all sorts of settings so in our house there was more openness. I remember as a child the radio played Hebrew songs all the time. Sometimes I would even be embarrassed to have friends come home.

Ella also mentions that her family is different. For instance, she was born in France and her family immigrated to Israel when she was two years old. Her description of her family is similar to Erans and Yosefs in that, on the one hand, she speaks about the fact that her family would discuss religious issue at home and that like Yosef said, her family is from overseas. This is also similar to Aarons feelings about the difference between overseas and Israeli haredim. She says:

My parents do not come from a particularly religious place they were overseas religious people. My mother was not as strict about her dress as she became when she came to Israel. My father and his brothers became religious when they were little, but they were never religious like in Israel because being outside of Israel is never like being in Israel My father was never like other parents. My parents were very specialIf I would ask my father something about faith, for example, he would explain his approach. Also, every Shabbat we would have discussions about faith and about the weekly Torah portion.

During one of these Shabbat discussions she recalls having possibly said something to her parents about wanting to be secular. It was one of those Shabbat discussions, one of the arguments about God. Every

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Shabbat we had these discussions, about the meaning of life, the Torah portion, about faith, and then I do not remember exactly what I said to them.

Hannah did not speak about her family or her parents as being different. Her grandfather, she said, is a rabbinical court judge and her father arranged an exemption from army service for her without her knowledge or approval. In the end I did not [go to the army]. I did national service. My father had arranged an army exemption. In the rabbinate anyone can go to the army and sign off for the girls so that is what my father did. She did not object to this because my grandfather was a rabbinical judge and to start fighting at this stage was pointless. I do not fight wars that I know I will lose. An additional way in which she relates to her family is that she seems to understand the struggle they are going through in regards to her defection. She says,

They were hurt in many ways. All their friends know that they failed in educating me. And my grandfather is a rabbi so there is an issue of image for them. They saw what I was doing as something dangerous. It was like I was deteriorating into drug use that got more and more serious. It was also dangerous as something that guarantees I will go to hell. It is dangerous to them and they did not know where it would lead because secular society in their eyes is not a healthy society.

Ari is now a doctoral student and an advanced student in Israels Reform rabbinical seminary. He expects to be ordained a rabbi in the Reform movement. His story, particularly in relation to his family, is a bit different in that he is the only one of a number of brothers and sisters who learned in a haredi yeshiva. The remainder of his brothers and sisters studied in various religious frameworks. One of his brothers is a Conservative rabbi in Israel. Ari was the only one who learned in haredi institutions, from childhood. His father, he says always claimed to be haredi but his parents were immigrants from America and always mixed learning with Orthodox life. After seeing how his older brothers and sisters went through religious changes he decided to continue his heder learning where they from first grade through fifth grade learned primarily religious subjects with far less emphasis on subjects like English and mathematics. At

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this point, with my fathers support, I decided to continue in a haredi yeshiva, because only from there will Torah go forth. He eventually left and joined the army, thinking he could remain haredi in the army.

After experiencing the death of a close comrade he abandoned religion and later joined a kibbutz, went on to learn Talmud in university and began his rabbinical studies.

Some interviewees also speak about feelings of fear or concern about being ejected from their school or yeshiva. This is so as they are making inroads into alternative ways of learning, and even preparing themselves to leave. Their concern is less about not being in the yeshiva but rather, about leaving on their own terms and not being forced out. For this reason they describe various ways in which they either do not ask questions or remain some how on the edge of what is acceptable in their community. Hannahs story illustrates this very clearly. I did not ask the questions out loud," she says. If I would ask question they would kick me out of the school. There is no point in asking and, what, get kicked out of school. In the end I would have lost out. She means more than school. You lose out on all the social benefits because you leave in a very bad way. Your friends cannot be your friends because their parents would not permit it and neither would the societal framework permit it. You lose everything the normal continuation of your life. If you do not get kicked out of school it will be fine. If your studies are interrupted you will not get to a better point in life. By a better point in life she meant, It is not just marriage; it is to continue in the elite of the society. Parallel to secular people who study law at Hebrew University or Tel Aviv University are not the same people who go to Hungary to study law. At my school, I do not know what to tell you, but there was a general effort to remain in a good framework. She says that staying in this framework Did not bother me so much because I am very systematic. I had no problem keeping the commandments it was a matter of habit not a matter of faith. Afterwards, matters of principle came up so I would not do them it is very comfortable to keep the commandments. Everyone has their own rituals, everyone is very structured. This is true for secular people. It is not a matter of religion; it is a matter of who determines what you will do. Your parents, society or religion but everyone has their patterns. There is no point in fighting because if you fight you may as well go all the way and then you only lose little things, such as privileges that I had like visiting the National Library without anyone checking up on me

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I pointed out that this might be called living a double life. She said that she would do the ceremonial acts but that she would not pray or even come to public prayer. In ninth grade she began to venture out to the library and decided that when she could take care of herself she would leave the community. Aarons experience with these feelings are also connected to a feeling of uncertainty about leaving and surviving on the outside, especially after going through a yeshiva education. He believes that state negligence in supervising haredi education and the fact that by just staying in the yeshiva he gets money from the state made him into a potential parasite. He did analyze the benefits of staying versus the costs and decided that he was not willing to pay the price of staying. Returning to his discussion on going to a yeshiva in England, he says that he went there and did not stay here where everyone gets into your life and where people reveal your secrets that can get you thrown out of the haredi community which I did not want to happen to me." I asked him if that meant that he wanted to be in control. I do not want someone to come and decide for me about my life. From the moment that he kicks me out, uproots me before I make that decision, then they would be deciding what is happening to me.

Yonatan faced similar fears about lack of control and being expelled from the yeshiva. His first stage in defection was to convince my father that I do not want to go to yeshiva anymore. Because in a society that the only thing that a boy wants is that, God forbid, they wont throw you out of the yeshiva, to get to the point where you tell your father that I do not have a yeshiva anymore and that this is good for me, is very traumatic. I always claimed that one of the things that make the defection easier is to cross the most delicate lines early on. That is the hardest. After you cross the lines, lets say, that after you put on jeans, violating the Sabbath is not what will cause your parents the most grief.

One of the most interesting aspects of the narratives is the way they demonstrate a process in which the defectors are consciously crossing borders and challenging or testing limits. Some defectors

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express this in terms of how they see the institution or its representatives downplaying or rejecting their questions as illegitimate. This is often accompanied by critical reflection on their lives as well as criticism of the entire haredi system on a variety of levels. At the same time, some of the defectors also speak of efforts that they made to strengthen their faith in one form or another. We see that tenacity is an important trait on the part of the defector. A significant element in this category is reflected in the way they discuss their identity as Jews, Israelis or just human beings. This category is also connected to the earlier category in which we discussed the way in which some of the defectors venture outside the walls of the community to accrue knowledge.

Aaron, after saying that his mother was different, said that the reason he defected was that he was always critical and inquisitive about the haredi community. He said that he progressively arrived at a point where his doubts crossed from the societal to the theological realm. In other words, he questioned haredi tendencies, as he saw them, to hide drug abuse and violence as well as the religious basis for the haredi way of life. After two years of asking questions and getting replies that smacked of demagoguery, as he described it, he grasped "that I really do not believe in God and that I do not want to live this life anymore. That is basically the reason why I defected." It is possible to see that he left on two levels. Intellectually, he could not remain within the confinement of haredi life but he was willing to consider staying if for no other reason then because he did not feel competent to do anything else. Yet he was not willing to pay the price of marriage and raising children within the same confines from which he needed to break free.

In terms of actually and consciously crossing a boundary Aaron expressed it in the section of our discussion that concerned the terminology of defection. He used the Hebrew term, ltzet bsheala. His understanding of this term is enlightening.

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I heard of the term to 'return' [lhzor bshealah] but I do not agree with the term return because I am not returning to anywhere. Even the word question [shealah] is not so good a term. I heard an interview that said in it that the haredi world tries to answer all the questions. Their point is in the secular world there are no defined answers so it is called to return to the question. But it is not returning it is exiting. I left one world and went over to a different world. In the second world I agree that I have no answers, but that is ok. That does not mean that the haredi 'answer' is correct. For Aaron, the haredi answer is not a correct answer; in fact, it seems to be a method, in his perception, for keeping people in the fold or within acceptable limits of expression. In haredi society he says, they try to make you think that no one else thinks like you do and that you are different. I asked him how they did this in the yeshiva. Any time I would talk about faith, he replied, they would argue with me in a way that did not answer questions. They simply laugh at you. They relate to what you say as if it came from a stupid person and create a situation in which you feel stupid about what you said and that you prefer not to have said it. Being tenacious was also important to Aaron. I suspect that this made a lot of less stubborn people not defect. That did not happen to me because I insisted and did not agree with every answer that everyone was giving me and I was not ashamed to say what I said. If I thought something I would say it.

Aaron not only crossed boarders in a figurative sense, he also tested haredi Judaism outside of Israel. As we saw earlier he traveled to Great Britain in order to study at a prominent haredi yeshiva. His assumption was that Haredim outside of Israel are different. But he did not really see any reason to remain haredi. But in my mind, I was religious and not haredi for some time. For some time I did what I thought or understood that God was commanding us to do and not what the haredim commanded me to do. This is part of his grappling with haredi Jewry. And as we saw earlier, he would utilize a particular Internet site that refuted much of the haredi belief system. He used the word cult when describing haredi society. It seemed that he was in a constant struggle between the demands that haredi society makes and his desire to be free and autonomous. He says,

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Especially when I was in prayer I never felt any connection to God or any sense of spirituality. In a cult they tell the person and persuade him that what he does is connected to God. They pull one over on him. That is what happens in the haredi world. They say if you study Talmud you get a great spiritual feeling therefore some people get that feeling I think that a lot of what they are doing and saying is brainwashing, they try to make you think in a very particular way and indoctrinate from preschool onward, and thats what makes someone believe in what they tell us. Yoram also expressed similar thoughts. From the beginning he saw his being haredi as a fact of birth. He defines certain pre-existing parameters and his defection involves crossing over these parameters of birth. I defected two years ago, which was already a year after I stopped believing and knew that I did not believe, that is, that I decided that I do not believe in religion and I would even say not in God. It would be hard for me to say if I ever believed because I never really seriously thought about it. And when I started to seriously think about it I reached the conclusion that it is not true. Of course I asked questions and I was left with unsatisfactory answers. I got a slew of answers but they were just a variety of nonsense. He describes this experience: I was one of the best students and when I started to seriously think about the real essence of life I said wait, why am I doing this? Because of how I was born or because this is what they want me to do and what about what I want to do? So, I would say, an internal process of agitation (tsisah) began. I had nobody to ask, because to dare to ask questions like this is unacceptable, or better to say, is forbidden to ask. In fact once I went out on missions, you know, to put tefillin (phylacteries) on people and someone asked me about faith and I had nothing to tell him. So I went to the Mashpia who is the spiritual figure in a Habad yeshiva. He paused, so I asked him to continue this story and to tell me about the Mashpia He is like the Mashgiach in a Lithuanian yeshiva. In Habad I would say the Mashgiach is like the evil prison guard who takes care of everything, like where were you and what were you doing? In any event for any Habad person you have to select for yourself a rabbi even if you are 70 years old. With the rabbi you discuss every step in life that you plan on taking. So I approached him and asked how do I answer this guys question? He said to me to tell him that I am still young and that I do not know. It was so cynical that I couldnt even show how disappointed I was with his answer because as far as he was concerned I should have just smiled and that was enough. It was another push in a direction that was starting to take on a force of its own. In effect, he is describing a situation in which he is being forced out of Habad not only because he does not think that haredi life holds any valid expression of life for him but also because his inquiry, which is reasonable to him, is rejected out of hand. It was at this point that he related to the point we discussed earlier in which he described the regime of the yeshiva as being intrusive and without

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privacy to the extent that he was forced to make a hole in his mattress in order to hide what would be considered contraband, such as outside reading material. It was at this time that he started to keep a record or journal of, as he put it, halachic [legal] questions on issues concerning interpersonal relations [bein adam lhevero]. I show the extent to which they do not behave according to how the Torah demands and that they only show how their lives are contradictions in terms to a religious life. A short time after he completed his journal he decided to tell his mother that he wanted to leave. His mother was distraught and requested that he take a month to rethink his decision and meet with rabbis in order to discuss what he was doing and thinking. He agrees but this was very difficult for him as he describes it. The feeling from the minute you decide that you want to leave and you already detest this population, it was a terrible feeling to be there because you realize that you are living a lie and with every day that passes you waste it while you are living in a society that you loathe. But he did return to the yeshiva and, honoring his mothers request, he spent significant amounts of time with the rabbi who was the head of the yeshiva. This experience is described in the following section of the interview.

So I return to the yeshiva and I tell the yeshiva head and he started to sit with me night after night. We would even go to his house and sit and talk for hours. It is hard to say he had an open mind but he was willing to argue. He would touch on very sensitive areas and I would tell him that he is right. He would try to prove his point by saying according to all that is in Torah we are a chosen people and that is how we need to act. I would say to him who said the world was even created? Like you claim that God was eternal so too was the world it was like a chicken and egg question. I sat with him and make my claims. No one else knows I want to leave. I talk with him all night and during the days we are both tired and yawning but nobody knows. I keep going to the mikveh in the mornings with everyone and to act like them. I received no answers from him only shallow responses. That is, they are insufficient for me. Why? Because I told him that for me the Torah is like a table with one leg. Remove the leg and everything on the table falls. That is the Torah. The rabbi is unable to prop up the table leg he just piles his claims up on the table itself, not as support for what holds up the table. Where does it all begin? At this stage he says that he was still objective and, in fact might have remained in the yeshiva if a number of conditions were met. That is, he is displaying a certain level of independence even though he

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has agreed to postpone his exit in order to go through this round of persuasion. He might have remained, he tells us if the rabbi could have demonstrated the religious validity of the haredi world. If he would have shown me that there really was the the concept of reward and punishment and that there is a reason to believe that this is how we need to behave. That is he would have needed to bring me proof that the Jews are the chosen people and that God just commanded us to do he did not prove this. He says what about our forefathers that died in the name of God I am very cynical and just sit and smile he asks why. I say I am reminded of an example and tell him to imagine that you were born as a member of a traditional tribe [nation] that participates in a bon-fire ritual and my grandfather was killed because he fought with some one who wanted to extinguish the fire. So what, I would also die for that? You are essentially telling me to stay a member of the tribe and keep dancing around the fire and so too will your children and grandchildren because that is what your grandfather did. I am not ashamed to say that my grandfather was an idiot.

Yorams criticism of remaining haredi for the sake of continuity is also reflected to a certain extent in Yonatans narrative. Yonatans basic premise is that, on the one hand, his defection was both rational and emotional. The emotional aspect he describes in terms of leaving home, living on his own in Tel Aviv and receiving an exemption from the army as being unfit (profile 21) which bothered him mostly because he is a pacifist. From the rational perspective, he says, from an early age I was very uncomfortable with religion. I think that also as a so called secular, I stand out in terms of my secularism. I do not think this stands out because I defected. In response to a question about faith, he made the following statement that represents his approach to belief, haredi Judaism and religion. It clearly shows the way in which he connects his haredi past with his current life and his inability to rectify life in the haredi world with a reasonable life. He said: Look, now I am going to say something amazing. I would be amazed if another defector would say [regarding faith] this does not interest me. The discussion surrounding believe or not believe is as interesting to me as last years snow. As if I think, or as if there is in me if there is or isn't a God, is a subject for philosophical symposiums where it can be debated until the day after tomorrow. I dont have a shadow of a doubt, I am even sure, that the way of life of the haredim, as I know it, is really nonsense, imbecilic for imbeciles and I have no interest in it. And all the philosophizing about the existence of God does not interest me. And it is not as if I am indifferent to religion, the reverse is true. I can understand people who follow a religion for reasons of tradition, but when they are honest with themselves and not because they are afraid of God. Those who keep tradition I understand them and identify with them. Yesterday I was at a religious wedding with Hassidic dancing, I really enjoyed it. I like Hassidic music, I feel connected to it, I like the experience. But in terms of faith, I am simply void of it.

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On religious people he says: In general I have difficulty with religious people, even though I have many religious friends. I think that a large part of their philosophizing is an argument to create a pretext for their existence [as religious people]. They know that they are not right and they cannot deal with the reality. Therefore they go and create pretexts, complete theories whose entire purpose is to create more pretexts.

Finally, the issue of questions came up later in our conversation, that is, later than it did in previous discussions I had with other defectors. There is a similarity between the way he relates to questions and some of the others, such as Hannah, who spoke about the risks involved of asking questions and Aaron, who essentially said that questions are a futile effort.

I did not ask questions because it is not acceptable to ask, there is no such thing as asking. Why start to complicate things if you want to stay? You know the story, there is a story about one who came to the rabbi and said, Rabbi I am a heretic, I do not believe so the rabbi says to him, if you came to me you are not heretic, so you can relax. It is the same thing here. If you want to remain religious do not go ask questions because that will wreck everything for you. What are you asking questions? There is no one to ask, it does not work that way, that it is permissible to ask and discuss these questions. I asked him if he just lived with the many questions he must have had. He said, From a young age, I had many questions. What did you do with them? He answered, I guess that slowly, slowly, I internalized them and started to value Judaism less and less. I started to understand the extent to which the stories and the legends are baseless. Based on what, I asked, on history? On the truth? Those are stories and legends not things that really occurred all those years ago.

Erans perceptions in this area are also quite interesting in terms of his crossing borders and its connection to the manner in which he criticizes haredi society. He too was a very talented yeshiva student but he was also a Sephardic Jew, that is, a non-European Jew. His family came from Morocco and he said that there was discrimination in the Ashkenazi or European yeshivas against Sephardic Jews. He was very critical of this which, when coupled with his other thoughts, made him into a tough critic of

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haredi life. He spoke of this. I am after all a Sephardic boy and there is a selection process [for advancing through the yeshiva system] and there is a Sephardic quota, there is nothing you can do about it. And there is a not insignificant racist element that exists in the haredi world Now, there were a few other Sephardic guys in my class. When I got to the yeshiva there was at least one At first everyone was sure that I was Ashkenazi after I passed for Ashkenazi for some time I saw how they speak about the good Sephardim. They would ask me if I was really Sephardic I would think that one of the reasons that I thought that the haredi community does not study the Torah of God is because in the Torah they are also commanded regarding relations between fellow men. And the contempt for others, the Sephardic, that was just Or in general even towards prominent Sephardic rabbis of the past there was similar contempt. I thought that this was something that really shows an internal fallacy and even more so regarding an approach to religion that is convenient for us, we are the religious for ourselves (!"#$% &' ())*+, !"-".). That was definitely one of the intellectual factors that that made me do this [leave]. So now that was the situation that simply I got to the stage where my opinions were well known and I would express myself more. When the Tal law [to deal with the issue of military service for yeshiva students who do not normally serve in the Israeli army] came up I would go into a room and right away, Nu, what do you say, let's hear it you must think that You probably think that they should draft us all He continues to talk about the way the rabbis related to others and he once again says that this confirmed his opinion that we are not religious for God, but religious just for ourselves that is, he thought that they did not follow the religious creed of God but the creed that they set up for themselves. I asked him what he meant by this statement so he explained it more in depth. . We are religious, we do what is convenient. If we were religious for God For example I saw one guy who was not very intelligent but he would study all the time and he was righteous. I thought to myself, wait, he is on the margins of the society and nobody even relates to him. He later moved from yeshiva to yeshiva as if he did not exist. I thought that if we were religious for God he would have been well honored by everyone because he studies and me or others like me who are not God fearing (I never stood out, I was not so God fearing, I never had a strong connection with God. I never feared things like hell or heaven). I thought to myself that they were very shallow. If they were really religious they would need to appreciate that guy more then they do me. They value status, the person who speaks nicer or is smarter not the person who keeps more commandments. This too led me to where I am. In hindsight, you can say that this was a central factorAt a certain point I couldnt continue. I just thought to myself that there are two options. I could be stupid, which was not a good option or I could be smart in stupid things. That is the worst option. I thought then and I still do that the things in the Talmud are very intelligent, maybe they are not well known outside of the haredi world, but there are very deep and intelligent things that develop your intelligence. But on every word in the Talmud they build up 1,000. There are all sorts of interpreters, like the yeshiva head where they studied Bialik. I would say to a lot of the guys, and this was considered heretical, look it is nice to study here but this is not what the sages of the Talmud meant. They were simple people and did not think about these things. That we learn, not the simple understanding of the sages but through thesis after thesis of generations of commentators shows that we are not religious for

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God but religious for ourselves. To be intelligent in imbecilic things, this was something that I could not tolerate.

The way that Eran discussed these aspects of haredi life reflected an intense criticism of haredi life that is different that Yonatans who just thought that the whole idea of religion was imbecilic. Eran is skeptical of the method of study in the yeshiva and on the emphasis placed on academic achievement than the simpler understandings of Jewish text that he thinks lead to a higher level of piety. This is actually similar to Yankels reflections that we saw above in which he reflects on a discussion with a former chief rabbi regarding how he (as an ordained haredi rabbi) should relate to the questions brought to the rabbi by members of his congregation. Eran essentially challenges the basic thesis behind the authority of the haredi rabbinate. He did not accept the authority and he, as we saw above, left.

For Ella there were similar factors involved in her exit. These are primarily connected to the perception and experience that she had with rabbis and with religion and the way in which they acted neither as rabbis nor as Jews. The first experience that she describes involves a period after her high school days when she had decided to do national service. She felt that her piety was slipping away from her so she went to a rabbi well known for helping religious people regain their piety and strengthen their religious identity. I went to him and told him I feel that I am slipping. He then put his hand on my head, which is forbidden, to touch a girl, and said do not worry you are blessed and gave me some blessing. He said 'why dont you come live with me, maybe' I got out of there very quickly and said to myself this is the type of rabbi that I know. This reference to how she has found that rabbis act, in opposition to how they should act, reminded her of an incident in school involving the principal and vice principal, both rabbis, who she had greatly respected at one point but who seriously insulted her and were her biggest disappointment. She explains, I left school with the feeling that I hate rabbis because they are supposed to be good people but they hurt me the worst while other, simple, secular people were the nicest to me. On a school outing she and a friend had gotten lost. When they returned to school one of the teachers

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asked her to leave the room because she was talking too much in class. So he [the rabbi] brought me back into the class and stood me in front of the entire class and said to me, You should be ashamed of yourself, it is not enough that you got lost, now you are bothering the teacher during the lesson? He shouted at me in the middle of the class, turning red This was an incident that I tried to forget [she cried as she recalled this incident]. She continued, one of the worst things you can do is to humiliate

someone. It is forbidden to do that, and the rabbi who is supposed to be an example of a good Jew did that to me. She was so hurt that she refused to go to school for a week. As we continued our discussion, we spoke about faith more and the rabbis came up again. She said, first of all it was clear to me that God did not want me to be like those rabbis. It could not be that they were following God because God is not evil. I loved God and could not believe that God wanted bad people to represent him. I think then that I decided that there is no God. I needed to be radical, to go from one radical stance to another in order to ultimately reach the middle. In order to leave I had to say that apparently there is not God because if there was a God he would not have let the rabbis act as they did

For Yosef, much of the way he approached the issue of crossing borders involved not rejecting religion or God because at the very beginning of the interview he said that he was unique because he was religious. However, he considers himself independent. That is, he keeps the commandments, wears a skull cap, but he will go to a Conservative synagogue with no hesitation and he dates a woman who defines herself as bi-sexual. So his rejection and criticism of the haredi system, as we saw earlier was the manner in which they studied. We could recall that he spoke of leaving the haredi yeshiva not for the secular world but in order to study in what he called a white yeshiva that is, non haredi. In terms of when he first started to study Jewish thought at age 18, while in the yeshiva. He said the following. I started to get excited from this and to ask questions and I became slightly more subversive. It was like I said, I am leaving this yeshiva and going to a [non haredi] yeshiva.

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In terms of identity most defectors report a continuing relationship to Judaism or to being Jewish. The interviewees have not defined Judaism, although they do define themselves in terms of being or not being Jewish or Zionist. Their treatment of this is interesting and proximate to the way they related to haredi society. Many of the interviewees remain connected in one way or another with their past and with being Jewish. That is, they continue to discuss it, relate to it and see it as a factor in their lives.

Aarons story first interested me because of our initial conversation in which I asked him if he still considers himself to be Jewish. He said no. Naturally, when the time came for our interview, I tried to delve into this deeper. I asked him to describe himself now. He replied: Who am I now!? Today I do not agree with the concept Jew [Yehudi] because we gave the haredim a monopoly on God and religion. They take it and put it together. They say that if you believe in God you have to believe in the Jewish religion and vice-versa. Even with the word Jew they make it religious. If some one defines himself as a Jew and he does not observe the religion he is not a Jew. This is a well known claim amongst the haredim They claim that Jew is expressed only in Judaism I do not agree. We give them a lot of things that we dont have to give them. Therefore I am not willing to accept that someone will be a Jew and define me as someone that does not do that which is required in order to be called Jew. I am sure that it is enough to preserve my heritage to be called a Jew. Like a French person preserves his heritageI do too. The moment I preserve my heritage I am a Jew. [I do not belong] amongst the haredim or the secular public because I do not believe that there is such a thing as the secular publicI do not think we are any less spiritual then the other public. What it is, is that we are free, free from religion. We believe in democracy so we created a more humanistic world and more democratic. But I do not believe that we are secular I think that we are free and that is how I define myself. The extent to which I remained haredi, in the end, is because I am not secular and I was not born with the same sensation as secular people. There are things that for me secular is taken for granted.

This is Yorams response to a haredi rabbi that tried to get him to return to the haredi world after his defection. He tells me but you are a Jew. I tell him NO, I was born a Jew, I see myself as a citizen of the world. Like Aaron his response to my inquiry regarding who he is now was to reflect a process or a manner in which they re-evaluate their Jewish identity or the extent to which Judaism is still important to him.

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[My identity] is very complex, a little philosophical and contradictory. I am a leftist, pacifist, socialist in my opinions and capitalist in my behavior I do not know if to call myself an atheist or deist, I would say even deist because I do not know if there is a God. But if there is he does not want anything from me because if he did he would be able to tell me that up front. Am I still Jewish? Ethnically, yes. In terms of how I feel, I am not (my emphasis). It does not worry me to hear people say that in a few more years there probably will not be a Jewish people. To me that does not sound so harsh as opposed to how others may take it. For me the break with the Jewish religion somehow created a break with the entire Jewish heritage. Not all of it because there are those aspects that I grew up with and that I like, but in terms of what is defined as the heritage of a people, I do not feel a connection. I would not really call this Zionism but more of commiseration with the State, not more than that. And with that a lot of criticism on how the State looks.

Yonatan too expresses similar doubts about his place in the Jewish world. For instance, he does not want his children to grow up with a commitment to performing ritual but would be happy if they have knowledge concerning Judaism. Concerning how he sees himself, at one point he had said that he sees himself as secular so I questioned him on this. He reconsidered a bit and said that I do not know what secular is. The definitions in Israel regarding secular and religious are ridiculous. I define myself as a person who does not follow the Torah or keep the commandments. I asked if he still sees himself as a Jew, to which he said, yes because in the first instance, I want to recognize myself as a Jew. But I pressed him and asked why to which he replied, I feel very connected to many things in Judaism. For example, my primary criticism regarding how Judaism is presented in Israel is that, secular people are those who do not keep the Torah, they are people for whom the only Judaism for them is various ritual observance done according to the Orthodox.

His approach to Zionism is also interesting. He is not a Zionist. He sees it as flawed because it seeks to define Jews as a people so that the Moroccan Jew is part of the same people as the Polish Jew. He sees them as different peoples. For example, his interest in Tunisian Jewish culture would be the same as an interest in general Tunisian culture. He says,

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Personally I am not a great believer in Zionism. One of the reasons is that I think you cannot take Jews that lived for 1000 years in Morocco and Jews who lived 1000 years in Poland and put them together on some piece of land. And then say to them that because of the Arabs facing you, you need to become good friends. In my opinion that does not hold water. When I say to you that I see myself as a Jew, I tend to see the Jew as something more European. Jewish life in Morocco is very interesting but only as interesting as the lives of Moroccans who are not Jews. I do not feel a sense of identification with the fate of Moroccan Jews. That does not mean, God forbid, that I would not marry a Moroccan Jew. I can also marry a German woman even though I dont identify with the German people. But if I feel any sort of emotion or sense of identification, it is with the European Jewish collective.

Most of the interviewees share a tenuous relationship with a Jewish identity that is not particularly anchored in ritual or in the accepted religious or essential definitions. For example, Hanna does not even feel that she is Jewish. We spoke about issues like tradition and identity. In response to my

question regarding what she brought with her from the haredi world she said that she brought a world view" which is reflected in the following except from her interview. On Jewish tradition: I do not keep it. But I have no problem with it. I do not think that it hurts or helps. In the tradition itself there is something very [oppressive or hegemonic she used the word kochani], in my opinion, in the use of tradition and I have a problem with that.

On the connection between power and tradition:

I think that it touches a lot of areas, it starts at the basics. First of all you want to embed (or implant lhashrish) the tradition and every place that wants to embed tradition does so through power. That could mean by way of food, like forcing someone to come to a meal, not only in Judaism, but also like in the Pakistani culture in London. It is very important to people that their children will remain within the tradition. They force them to come to meals to get to know the tradition the end justifies the means. And it gets to very high levels. Like in a movie I saw on the Pakistanis in London. It shows to a great extent the hegemony of tradition, not only Jewish tradition, but any tradition for which continuity is important. That is, the fear of tradition or that it wont continue you know, will your child know what Judaism is? This is a frightening question for them. And this is true not only for the religious and in other traditions. This fear is what causes the use of power. Because the ends justifies the means and the tradition is supreme. On children and being a Jew: If my child will be a good person I am not concerned about whether he will know what Judaism is? I am more worried about him being a good person and not hurting others. Look I know that as long

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as I live in Israel the chances are pretty high that my children will be Jewish because it is most likely that my future spouse will be Jewish. And once again, in the framework of the State I do not follow the Jewish commandments [live a life according to Jewish religious practice]. My child will know his family, my family, and will know what Judaism is. He will know to respect their practices and how to follow them when he is around them. As for brit milah [ritual circumcision] I assume that if we live in Israel we will do that, if not I do believe that I will not do that. I do not know how much he will know and how important it will be I do not see myself as Jewish [Because] I see Judaism as a religion not as a people. I see the categories in terms of culture. And I no longer see myself as part of the religious culture. I accept that I am in the minority on this for now and therefore I go along with the terminology so as much as I go along with it and say that I am [Jewish] I am not. But I use the terminology because there is no choice. That is, because we speak in a language that needs to be understood. Just because I do not like the language that does not help me. There is a Jewish and Israeli world view and I cannot change that. I do not see myself in ethnic terms. Nor do I see the world in ethnic terms. I see, that there are certain territories that are clear to all, that Israels border is here, borders are clear. Open an atlas and you can see the cultural expression of world. The connections are cultural not ethnic. On Zionism: Zionism is a higher Jewish valueto make a Jewish state. I am not in favor of it. I see Judaism as a religion and not so much as a nation. I think that it brings us too many difficulties particularly in this strip of land.

For Yosef, who remains religious but not haredi, his relationship to his identity as a Jew is best reflected in the way he says that there is something haredi that needs to see in black and white. Today I am much more gray. I learned that there is a word like that. By the haredim there is no such word. Today I try to see gray and colors He continues, saying that today I am very religious but I am very secular. I do not know how to say this more clearly. Secular for me, even when the Messiah comes and we say we were right even though he will not come I do not want the secular to return to Orthodox Judaism. He is important to me, as a secular Jew. I am very involved in secular Judaism, the secular Jewish Beit Midrash and what they produce. I work for Gesher and am very successful there. I also enjoyed being in the army it helped me enter the secular world. I have great difficulties with the religious world because it does not really live with the secular world. Even in the university, they dont live with them, they meet them but they do not live with them. I do.

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Ella was asked what she thought about other Jewish expressions. She said that anything that is connected to commandments is not for her. I asked her to talk about who she is now and if she saw herself as a different person. She said, Of course. I asked her how and she said, In every way, there is no way that I am what I was. When you are religious everything you do is to serve God. You eat not because you are hungry or feel like having steak but to serve God. You say a blessing before and after you eat. Every thing you do is for God and that is what determines your life. In retrospect, today I have faith. I believe in God but not in the same way, not the same God. I am sure that if there is a God I think that he is prouder of me now then before. If there is a God I am sure that he wants people to be happy. You do not need to be religious to work in the pediatrics cancer ward (Ella is a pediatric oncology nurse). You do it because that is what is right.

"Are you still a Jew," I asked her. She replied, Yes, very much so. I asked her why and she said, I think the Jews are also a lot of historical identity. It is difficult to define what it means to be a Jew, what Jewish blood is, but first of all I am a Jew. That is simply how it is.

Ari, who is studying to be a Reform Rabbi and for a doctorate in Talmud, when asked how he defines his identity now said, I am a Jew. That is I am aware of my Jewishness and I enjoy being a Jew. Why, I asked him and he said, because it is history, it is culture, it is my past and my future

Ronas response was similar. She spoke again about being a child convert, with her mother, to Judaism and how she must think of herself as Jewish. She said that she thinks of herself as Jewish in every way. In terms of collective memory, in terms of culture. My narrative, um, I do not know what makes us, the fact that my fathers mothers family who died in the Holocaust so I share that narrative. I was raised that way. I cook Jewish. I do Jewish holidays. I feel very Jewish. Now she lives with her parents in Jerusalem. This was part of an arrangement with her ex-husband who wanted to be sure the children remained in a religious environment. For Rona it is ok because she does not feel any hostility towards her parents or Judaism. She even acts as the "Sabbath goy" in her family. I asked her if she has gone back to synagogue at all. "Yes," she said "I did. I celebrated, um, my father bought 59

us all seatsum I did go Yom Kippur. I was very happy to go. I am very happy to be a Yom Kippur going to shul Jew. Last year I went to the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem when my kids were not here and I loved it. It was a beautiful service. And I am very happy to do those things I think it is very important we keep all the holidays; I do not want to say it, but religiously. We do um, I like it." She mentions that her children have brought her closer to Judaism and that she is considering sending her daughter to a progressive, feminist, Orthodox school for girls.

The issue of faith has surfaced in many of the excerpts we saw above. Hannahs quote at the beginning of this chapter indicates a very basic reason for not remaining in the haredi world, because of a basic lack of faith and is continued when she says, the more I read Biblical criticism the less I believed. We can see that the change in faith or the basis of faith is something that develops in a process and in dialogue with non-haredi sources of knowledge. As Hannah said, the more she read and learned outside of the religious community the less faith she had. Even Ella who spoke about still believing in God [above] was careful to indicate that this is not connected to Jewish religious expression.

Yankel relates, They said, it is faith. You know you have to believe whatever they said. With time it seemed to me 'its a nice story.' Maybe it is divine but Im just another link. I said like this, Orthodox Judaism tries to give you a chain, a direct link. Form Moseh Rabbeinu to now, and were another link in it, when you become a rabbi another link in the chainbut what I learned is that is not the case. And with time I learned there are different sects in Judaism. There are different sects now in Judaism and I started to look above and beyond my narrow community. As we discussed earlier Yankel is a non-Orthodox rabbinical student. He continues, And I dont see how the Orthodox solution would make sense to me. I dont feel at home there. I feel at home here in this community. I see eye to eye with a lot of their ideologies. The actual faith system is something I deal with. When you come from

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being Orthodox, you have 613 mitzvoth and a whole bunch of other ones. Now what I'm doing is taking each one, looking at it with a microscope and deciding if it has the right to stay or if it has to go.

Yorams example is representative of how many of the interviewees relate to the issue of faith. He says that I defected two years ago, which was already a year after I stopped believing, and knew that I did not believe. That is, I decided that I do not believe in religion and I would even say not in God. It would be hard for me to say if I ever believed because I never really seriously thought about it. And when I started to seriously think about it I reached the conclusion that it is not true. Of course I asked questions and I was left with unsatisfactory answers. I got a slew of answers but they were just a variety of nonsense.

Aaron also speaks of faith and belief in this way: They only avoided my questions and tried use demagoguery to sell me this Torah again, the cult, like I call it today, haredi cult. Of course they did not succeed. It took me about two years to grasp that I really do not believe in God and that I do not want to live this life anymore.

In conclusion, what we saw in this chapter is how the interviewees see themselves through the mechanism of an unstructured interview. That is, for the most part, the interviewees knew that they were being interviewed regarding their defection but the narrative that was generated was based on what they wanted to tell. For that reason we have a picture of what it means to them to leave the Haredi community. There are similarities in their stories and in the way they relate to some important categories. The differences will be discussed in the following chapter. But, in short, it is possible to see that the process that is described is composed of looking elsewhere for answers to questions that were not satisfactorily answered inside or not asked for fear of retribution. We saw that defectors

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crossed a very definite boundary that was accompanied by a critique of the haredi community. They deal with faith and identity in interesting ways, most of them coming to a critical understanding of these issues. This comes out of their narratives through which it will now be possible to describe defection or leaving in doubt, to doubt through the prism of theoretical understandings of identity and transformation as well as conversion.

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Discussion This chapter weaves the analytical data collected with a theoretical understanding of defection. In order to do this I will comment on the identity theory introduced earlier in this paper and assert that identity theory as represented by Stuart Hall (1996) is important because it makes it very clear that identity is neither immutable or given. However, it is necessary to go farther. Identity is actually

something that continues to touch individuals, such as defectors from haredi Judaism, as they struggle to come to terms with their place in the world. In other words, they are making a conscious choice between possible identity motifs. In this sense it is clear that "Identities are thus points of temporary attachments to the subject position which discursive practices construct for us" (Hall 1996, 6). "Discursive work" is the making of "symbolic boundaries" it is something that occurs outside and is not an internal process (ibid, 3). That is it is a process that is always in motion and it is never settled (ibid, 2). According to Hall, "it can always be sustained or abandoned" (ibid.). The difficulty, for me, is that there is no conclusion, only discussion on identity. Hall continues to ask questions, which is an important task, but in asking questions it is important to propose an answer. The postpositivist realist way of thinking about identity, I think, tries to provide a way of looking at how identity, while being continually in process, is also a real process that touches the individual. That is, it is difficult to say that the subject does not exist or that he is only a product of discursive process. As I take the interviews and the interviewees into account, it is clear to me that they are individuals struggling to deal with identity but, regardless of the discursive process taking place their existence as subjects is real. They undergo or take upon themselves a radical change in terms of to whom or to what they owe their allegiances. They change and challenge their social position inside of haredi Judaism and consciously move to an entirely different position. Therefore, the issue of identity is important and real. While from the outside it can be seen as contingent and in process from their position, it is possible to say that they continually interpret and try to understand their experiences. This is what constitutes the identity that they presented at the time of the interview.

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"One of Mohanty's central claims is that cultural identity is not determined by the past but is continuously reconstructed as we work through the meaning of our personal and communal histories" (Stone-Mediatore 2002, 134). The primary point that I am able to discern from the research as presented in the previous chapter is that the defector is involved in coming to understand his cultural identity in this manner. That is, in coming to the decision to leave the haredi community he has come to see the place in which he grew up and was socialized as no longer a given or viable plausibility structure. As an expression of identity, it no longer answers his needs and as a cultural expression it no longer provides an avenue by which the individual can understand or relate to the experience that he is having. Mohanty (2002, 43) writes: "Whether we inherit an identity masculinity, being black, [being haredi, LF] or we actively choose one on the basis of our political predilections radical lesbianism, black nationalism, socialism, [defector from haredi Judaism, LF] our identities are ways of making sense of our experiences. Identities are theoretical constructions that enable us to read the world in specific ways." Following Mohanty Moya (2002, 87) describes this concept of identity (called postpositivist realist theory) by contrasting it to postmodern concepts of identity. She writes that postpositivist realist theory requires that we acknowledge the reality of a social location and the categories within it, such as "race, class, gender, and sexuality." While the categories are not required to be seen as uncontested or absolute in order to attribute an ontological status to them "we do need to recognize that they have real material effects and that their effects are systematic rather than accidental." That is, in discussing identity as it relates to defection I find that the explanations presented in the theoretical introduction only partially assist us in understanding why one defects. The way in which Hall (1996) describes identity or identification is very important in that it forces a critique of discourse on identity as something that is fixed and determinative. This critique says that identity is not predetermined by birth or entrance into a social location. In other words, one actually identifies with a social location rather then having an identity. Hall (1996, 3) uses the term "suturing" to describe

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this. By this, he means that identities are not fixed in time nor do they posses a core (as represented by a cultural group) to which one can continually anchor oneself. This is important because as he stated earlier identity is subject to modification. Postpositivist realism offers another perspective that allows a person to connect with identity based on experience. "Identities are not self-evident, unchanging, and uncontestable, nor are they absolutely fragmented, contradictory, and unstable. Rather, identities are subject to multiple determinations and to a continual process of verification that takes place over the course of an individual's life through her interaction with her society. It is in this process of verification that identities can be (and often are) contested and that they can (and often do) change" (Moya 2000, 84).

My first impression when I began to read about identity change and religious disaffiliation was to think that the fact that people convert, that is make a radical change in their lives and in the sources to which they refer to for authority, shows that identity is not essential or immutable. This is true but as I began to read more literature and to conduct interviews it became increasingly apparent that the change and the adoption of a new identity was not something that one simply slides into. In other words, while identity according to Hall "is not determined in the sense that it can always be 'won' or 'lost', sustained or abandoned" (1996, 3), it is not something that is so fluid that one moves between identities without some sort of an internal struggle. It is more then simply theoretical. The fact that the defector struggles with his defection demonstrates the reality by which the individual is gripped and pulled by conflicting expressions of identity.

This is demonstrated by the way in which Wilkerson (2000) describes coming out as a homosexual and the way in which Barbour (1994) discusses deconversion. They describe a struggle with what can be seen as an identity previously understood to be true that they later find to be oppressive and inadequate for the way that they are coming to understand their lives. If we were to collapse the

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preceding narratives into a composite picture of a defector, struggle is a consistent theme. The narratives depict a constant theme of wrestling and of going outside the official and dominant boundaries of the haredi world. This is seen in the way many of the interviewees spoke about going to the library or to other non-haredi sources in search of knowledge. It is also expressed in the way some explicitly challenged and questioned the authority of what they were being told and taught. In total, it is an articulation of their inability to live a committed haredi life and the way in which they interpret their corresponding experiences in order to reconstruct their lives in a new social location. At the same time, the defector continues to maintain a relationship with his previous haredi world. The separation that occurs in the course of the defection is not absolute. It cannot be because all of the interviewees in this struggle maintain contact with their families. Rona, for instance, after the many trials and tribulations she faced with her children and ex-husband, is now living with her haredi parents. In this relationship she continues to contend with her decidedly non-haredi views while respecting her children's desire for religion and her parents' haredi lifestyle. She is far more open to religious explorations then she was in the past. For this reason, it seems that the most appropriate theoretical way to explain the process of defection is to see it through a postpositivist realist theory of identity. Correspondingly, we can see conversion and deconversion as expressions of this most particularly in terms of the struggle that exists within the individual and between the individual and his social location.

Traditionally, a change in identity, particularly when it involves religion or religious expression, has been examined in terms of conversion. Shaffir (1997, 2007) writes, "Issues of identity transformation, change and conversion have served as foci in the examination of patterns of religious identification. In the process emphasis has centered on conversion to religious sects or cults" (see also p. 213). Travisano's (1970) research on conversion is about identity change viewed through the prism of religious change. But for him, not every religious change is a conversion. It can also be an alternation, which is a less radical change. The key to understanding this is the way in which he refers to identity

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as it relates to transformations. "Identity, then, is a placed or validated announcement. One announces that he is some particular social object; others read his cue and respond in kind, saying by their behavior, that he is indeed what he claims" (Travisano 1970, 597). Stone, (as quoted in Travisano 1970) says identity is about the individual establishing "what and where the person is in social terms When one has identity he is situated." Travisano says that this means that "people must establish identities for both themselves and others if an interaction is to proceed in any meaningful manner" (ibid.). He later writes that the "centrality of an identity is a question of how many situations it can be dominant in" (ibid, 603). In short, the relationship between conversion (as opposed to a less absolute transformation) is the change to the informing aspect of the individual's life. When one converts the new identity becomes "central to almost all interactions" (ibid, 605). Therefore, it is important to examine and restate what Travisano (1970, 600-601) means by conversion and compare this to the changes that take place in the case of a defector. Conversions are drastic change in life. Such changes require a change in the informing aspect of ones life or biography there must be a negation of some former identity Conversion is signaled by a radical reorganization of identity meaning and life [It] involves a change in informing aspectssuch a change implies a change of allegiance from one source of authority to another Alternations are transitions which are prescribed or at least permitted within the persons established universe of discourse. Conversions are transitions to identities which are proscribed within the persons established universe of discourse and which exists in universes of discourse that negate these formerly established ones. The ideal typical conversion can be thought of as the embracing of a negative identity The person becomes something which was specifically prohibited.

Travisano distinguishes conversion from another kind of transition which he calls "alternation." Alternation is not a severe change nor does it involve "reflection on the part of the actor either before or after" (ibid, 601). In conversion the individual "goes through a period of intense 'inner struggle.' There is great trauma. The actor reflects on his change. The actor and those around him see his change as monumental and he is identified by himself and by others as a new or different person. The actor has a new universe of discourse which negates the values and meanings of the old one by exposing the 'fallacies' of their assumptions and reasoning" (ibid, 602). Shaffir (1991, 174) compared

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the experiences of individual Jews who become Orthodox Jews and those who leave haredi Judaism. He used the concept of conversion in order to do this and, in part citing Travisano, he writes: "There are significant parallels in the respective experiences As a process, each involves a transformation resulting in the adoption of a radically different life style In this respect both experiences can be characterized as conversion in that each involves the adoption of a pervasive identity which rests on a change, at least in emphasis from one universe of discourse to another".

In examining the narratives we can see elements of conversion as it is described above. More specifically, it is possible to see that the interviewees experienced a radical change in their lives and no longer subscribe to the same "informing aspects" and that this "implies a change of allegiance from one source of authority to another." It is true that the defector no longer allows the haredi world determine how they will live their lives. Similarly, as we saw in the narratives, the vast majority of the defectors invest considerable time in exposing what they see as the fallacies of haredi life. For example, one interviewee kept a journal in which he recorded the ways in which haredim "do not behave according to how the Torah demands and that they only show how their lives are contradictions in terms of a religious life. Another was critical of the way that he saw the rabbis in his Ashkenazi yeshiva showing contempt for Sephardic Jews and prominent Sephardic rabbis. Likewise he saw the way that they valued achievement over genuine religious devotion. This to him, was an example of how the haredi religion is self serving. Another example of this was the way in which

Aaron utilized the internet, particularly the website "http://www.daatemet.org.il." He told me that the website helped him to see the mistakes in the material he was learning in the yeshiva and to conclude that the haredi universe of discourse was wrong. The most common way, though, in which this was done, was the way in which many interviewees frequented the public libraries in search of knowledge and found material that seriously contradicted what they had been educated to believe. We can recall that Hannah said that as a result of her frequent trips to the National Library at Hebrew University, she

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began to read biblical criticism and to come to believe less and less in the veracity of religious Judaism.

The narratives and the way in which the interviewees discussed their defection reflects what Lofland and Skonovd6 (1981, 376) call the "intellectual motif." The motif is characterized by individual, private investigation of possible new grounds of being, alternate theodicies, personal fulfillment, etc. by reading books, watching TV, attending lectures and other impersonal ways to become acquainted with alternative ideologies and ways of life without actually getting involved with an organization or institution (ibid.). In effect, this motif is about the sovereignty of the individual to seek a way to get beyond a situation in which one finds to be inadequate or even damaging. Only later, after having defined the situation as problematic, will a person become more organizationally involved, if at all. To a great extent this is precisely the way that most of the defectors interviewed for this thesis went about laying the ground for their exit. In other words, it is clear that defection requires that a foundation be laid and that for the defectors interviewed herein, that foundation is intellectual.

If the interviewees had not been able to create such a foundation, that is to build up an alternative plausibility structure, it seems clear that they would not have been able to leave the haredi world. For example, Berger (1979, 26) discusses pluralization, modernity and the way in which religion was an objective certainty in traditional society. Contemporary life gives the individual a choice between gods or arguably a choice between God and no God and forces the contemporary individual to choose. Orthodoxy in modernity is the construction of an artificial shtetl. It is artificial because it is immediately penetrable and exitable. To use Berger's words, the Jew in the modern Hasidic shtetl can just get on the subway and get out of his alleged Jewish destiny (Berger 1979, 28-30). While it is clear that as a result of being in a modern and pluralized society, the individual haredi Jew has the opportunity to get on the bus and travel to the public library in order to gain knowledge, it is not sufficient to just get on the bus or subway. This is not to say that Berger means that this is enough. 69

Berger and Luckmann's (1967, 158) treatise significantly treat the subject of transformation, saying that to have a conversion experience is nothing much. The real thing is to be able to continue taking it seriously. Further, they say: The alternating [converting] individual disaffiliates himself from his previous world and the plausibility structure that sustained it, bodily if possible, mentally if not. In any case, he is no longer yoked together with the unbelievers [or believers] and thus is protected from their potentially reality disrupting influence (ibid, 159).

The intellectual motif is the way in which the defector succeeds in separating from the previous world, thus facilitating the radical change that he is making in his life and rejecting the authority of haredi rabbis and the haredi lifestyle. For instance, one of the defectors who spent much time in the library spoke about how a secular newspaper is seen as a defilement of the sanctity of the yeshiva. Yet he did not hesitate to bring a newspaper into the yeshiva. Similarly, another defector spoke about hiding contraband books and periodicals in his mattress. Yet another defector spoke of the library card as an identity card. This demonstrates a clear rejection of the rule of the yeshiva and of the rabbis that control it. In a large sense, it is this world that the defector creates that allows himself to come out from under the yoke of being associated with those who still belong to the haredi world.

The new foundation that they construct is not uniform. For some, it is a purely secular one, while for others it involves maintaining relatively strong connections to the Jewish religion. That is, while

Yonatan thinks that discussions about God and theology are an intellectual waste of time, Yankel still grapples with these issues as he studies to become a non-Orthodox rabbi. However, despite the fact that they do indeed make a radical change in their lives and in their identity, they do not completely sever all of their ties to the haredi community that they abandoned. This is primarily seen in that they still maintain connections with their families and they remain concerned or somehow occupied with the haredi world. Almost all of the interviewees mentioned the way that they still reflect nostalgically on their former lives. More then one interviewee mentioned that he still enjoys going to the synagogue

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and hearing the melodies. Another, who remains religious, mentions that while he attends a variety of synagogues he has the most intense religious experience when he goes to a haredi congregation. That is, the defector may meet the criteria of conversion as explained by Travisano (1970), namely to have reorganized his life in a fundamental manner and to change the sources he draws upon to inform his life decisions. Similarly, it is possible to argue that they actually go through the conversionary process before they actually leave the haredi world. That is to say, the act of leaving completes the process of defection. It does not begin it. Berger and Luckmann (1967, 158) in discussing the transformation of Jewish Saul to the Christian Paul say that he could maintain this transformation only within the context of the Christian community that recognized him as such and confirmed the new beginning in which he now located his identity. They meant that Saul could not have become a Christian and remain located in the Jewish community of that time. It is evident that defectors do not create an absolute separation from their former worlds as Berger and Luckmann advocate. However, in examining their narratives it is clear that, to the extent possible, they create a sense of intellectual segregation. This is evident in the way that they related to haredi life, often speaking of it with a

palpable sense of contempt, not so much for the tradition behind haredi life, but for the way it is interpreted and actualized in modern haredi life.

Yet even after seeing the way in which the defector indeed makes a radical change in his identity and adopts a new source of authority (arguably the self), there is not a total disengagement from everything in their past. That is, their conversion from haredi Judaism did not necessarily produce a corresponding conversion to another religious faith.7 Rather, it is possible to dissect their conversion further and examine it as deconversion.

Recalling our discussion in Chapter 2, Barbour (1994, 2) uses "deconversion to designate a loss or deprivation of religious faith. In deconversion, the individual cannot really disassociate from the

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religious tradition. It no longer informs or controls his life but it is still influential. That is, it rarely entail[s] the total reversal stipulated by an ideal definition of conversion (ibid, 3). The defector surely makes a radical change in his life and changes his relation to authority; he becomes what was and is proscribed by his tradition, yet he does not completely shake that tradition or culture from him. As Ebaugh (1988, 114) says, in transformations there is what is referred to as hangover identity. This means that even in leaving a role there is a residual identity attachment that remains with the person. In his book, Barbour examines the narratives of a number of individuals in history who abandoned their faith. He attributes a number of causes and circumstances to deconversion, the most interesting and relevant of which addresses the issue of ethics. The person going through a deconversion experience has an ethical problem with staying in that particular religious community; particularly after realizing that it is an incorrect expression of the person's religious and cultural beliefs. Aarons experience with these feelings are also connected to a feeling of uncertainty about leaving and how to get by on the outside, especially after going through a yeshiva education. Because of the education or lack there of he received in the yeshiva he believes that state negligence in supervising haredi education and the fact that by just staying in the yeshiva he gets money from the state made him into a potential parasite. Even if you do not believe in God, here there is only profit." In this sense he has to debate with his conscious and with his concept of ethics. He continues: "It took me a little bit of time to think that if I want to stay I have to marry a religious woman and play all the games. My children would receive the same education that I did not want for myself. Therefore I decided to leave.

The narrative I found most interesting and relevant in Barbour's (1994, 115) book was the deconversion narrative of a former Catholic priest. The priest begins to become concerned when he examines the metaphysical theories the Catholic Church uses to support certain theological doctrines. He saw that the metaphysics intended to uphold the doctrine of transubstantiation call into question all

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human knowledge of the world (ibid, 116). This was unacceptable to him and he felt it called into question the ethical validity of a faith that dismisses all doubts (ibid, 117). Ethically, he finds that he cannot remain involved in the Catholic Church, in spite of the rigorous training that he underwent in divinity school and later as a doctoral student. It is possible to look at this through the lenses of Stuart Hal (1996). We can see that the individual, in his (de)conversion, is negotiating within a contested process and deciding whether or not to identify with it or if it is applicable to him at all. In other words, deconversion, in this sense, is the way in which the person says that this particular identity possibility is not suitable. Cultural and religious based identities are not essential; there is nothing in them from which the person cannot disassociate.

To further illustrate this, the priest in Barbour's (1994, 119) book not only had theological difficulties but also difficulties with the church hierarchy because of his writings on progressive political issues that were integral to his faith and priesthood. For him "faith began to seem to be a sacrifice of integrity rather than a virtue." Intellectually, he cannot accept Catholicism and its doctrines as infallible, immutable and essential. For this reason, he leaves the priesthood as well as the Church. Yet he still maintains some connections to religion and church activity (ibid, 119-120). A part of his

transformation, Barbour conjectures, would be in his maintenance of certain moral and political stances that he took as a priest and which brought him into conflict with the Churchs establishment.

Similarly, the ex-priest does not become an atheist. That is, he does not reconstruct his religious identity as a secular person. He sees himself as a restless agnostic who continues to search for whatever knowledge is possible on matters of ultimate concern (ibid, 120). His agnosticism is a contingent and not a necessary agnosticism (ibid, 121). Remaining in the Church would require that he lead "the double life of a hypocrite, having to represent and advocate things he privately doubts (ibid, 118-119). This does not preclude his continued dialogue and confrontation with Christianity. His

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transformation embodies the crossing of cultural frontiers without closing them off. In effect he ventures into different cultural territory yet he maintains a cultural dialogue with his previous world. It is this element of deconversion the maintenance of a dialogic relationship with the previous world that contributes an important element in understanding defection that goes beyond the relatively simple, albeit important, criteria laid down by Travisano for conversion. Arguably, this is what we see happening in the way in which defectors narrate their exit. The defector, in telling his story, is coming to terms with his identity or his concept of identity. It is the way that the teller organizes his experiences and verifies his identity (Atkinson 1998, 11-12). In the course of many of the narratives the interviewee reflected on the relationship he maintains with the haredi community. For some, it is complete rejection of all the tenets of haredi life while for others it may involve a radical reinterpretation of them. That is, even while some of the defectors completely reject haredi Judaism as a religious system with religious relevance, they remain connected to the cultural aspects of the haredi world. One of the interviewees who had related to the question of God's existence as an intellectual waste of time still enjoys reading Yiddish, and was reading the book, "The Tao of Pooh" in Yiddish. Similarly he, like others, positively reflect on some aspects of their education in the haredi world. At the same time they are also critical of the way in which the haredi education system foreclosed any chance for them to receive an adequate civil education, including the completion of high school matriculation exams. The key point might be best expressed in the way that Hannah discusses her exit and the way that she now thinks about Judaism, Zionism and other issues. She said that if she were to marry and live outside of Israel it is clear to her that she would not have any son born to her ritually circumcised. The most important thing to her is that he be a good person. Yet, at least while she is in Israel, she remains in dialogue with the haredi world, as well as the Zionist world. She accepts the cultural code, as she put it, which exists. Her views were more radical then many of the other interviewees who, in one way or another indicated that they still consider themselves to be Jewish, if not religiously then in other

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ways, perhaps culturally. There is a dissonance between the way that some of the interviewees relate to the concept of being Jewish. Some said that they do not see themselves as Jewish because Jewish is only a religious expression while others resent the way that haredi Jewry monopolized the term Jewish. That is, many, if not all, are in a process of reclaiming their Jewish identity. Only Hannah positively indicated that she really is not a Jew. Others did come close to that. For example Yoram, we can recall said: Ethnically, yes [I am a Jew]. In terms of how I feel, I am not (my emphasis). It does not worry me to hear people say that in a few more years there probably will not be a Jewish people. To me that does not sound so harsh as opposed to how others may take it. For me the break with the Jewish religion somehow created a break with the entire Jewish heritage. Not all of it because there are those aspects that I grew up with and that I like, but in terms of what is defined as the heritage of a people, I do not feel a connection. And Aaron, speaking about where he feels that he belongs said: Not amongst the haredim and not amongst secular people because I do not believe that there is such a thing as the secular publicI do not think we are any less spiritual then the other public. What it is, is that we are free, free from religion. We believe in democracy so we created a more humanistic world and more democratic. But I do not believe that we are secular I think that we are free and that is how I define myself. The extent to which I remained haredi, in the end, is because I am not secular and I was not born with the same sensation as a secular person. In examining the complexity of the narratives and the expressions of Jewish connectedness within them it is possible and accurate to say that, for the most part, a defection is conversionary but there is not a real acceptance of a new religious authority. Even Yankel who decided to become the Jewish antithesis of the haredi Jew, a liberal Jewish rabbi, does not ultimately convert in the manner that Travisano describes. For him Judaism, in its reinterpreted form, remains his source for authority or for determining authority. Yet the ex-haredi who maintains a Jewish religious faith while at the same time divesting himself of another Jewish faith presents a more complicated case mainly because, without going into the intricate differences between liberal and Orthodox Judaism, it is possible to say that liberal Judaism is a different religion or a different religious expression of Judaism. Therefore it is entirely possible to interpret his change as conversion as well as deconversion. For Yankel, like the priest in Barbour, the issue is ethics. He is unable to reconcile remaining in a religious structure that denies the possibility of doubt, or in

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Yankel's case, in a religious system and role that applies religious law in an almost arbitrary manner, yet claims to be implementing God's will. The priest's answer was to abandon both the religious system and the religious role. We can recall that the priest thinks of himself as an agnostic who has not given up the search for truths. Yankel is much the same. He fails to see the truth of the Haredi and the Orthodox as exclusive. Correspondingly, his truth leads him to abandon his Orthodox religious faith and to adopt a role that does not disregard the significance of religion, but rather seeks out a different way to apply this significance.

The concepts of conversion and deconversion are not limited to religious change. That is, conversion and deconversion are cultural and maybe political processes in which a person separates from a world view. Jones (1978, 60) sees this process as one of "transformation from one world view to another [that embraces] both secular and transcendental areas of activity." He views identity from a "social interactionist perspective" which "views an individual's identity as being the result of various social experiences 'intrinsically associated with all the joinings and departures of social life' and such identities are social because they emerge and are sustained by a process of negotiation through interacting with others" (ibid.). In a word, it is possible to say that the identity or, to use Hall, we might say that re-identification, is central to the process of defection. In other words, not only does the individual disengage from haredi identification but he also assumes a new or different way of thinking about identification.

It is not difficult to associate the process of defection with the concept of pluralization.

The

organization Hillel, an Israeli association that provides assistance to individuals who leave the haredi world, describes the haredi world in this way: "The haredi world shuts itself off as completely as it can from the modern world in order to keep outside influences from affecting its highly structured way of life. It has strict rules about every aspect of human belief and behavior, and in return provides total community support. For many, this is an intensely satisfying life, one that offers spiritual and emotional

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fulfillment" (http://www.hillel.org.il/). In other words, according to Hillel, the haredi world is averse to modernity. It is a traditional society that frowns on the asking of questions or on challenges to its authority.

This is most profoundly reflected in the way many interviewees relate to the concept of asking challenging questions regarding some of the basics of haredi Judaism. They reflect on having been made to feel stupid and humiliated for asking, to be afraid of asking questions or to feel that even approaching the subject of asking questions is a waste of time. Hannah's narrative addressed this issue. She knew that if she asked the wrong question she risked being expelled. And even though she wanted to leave she wanted to do it according to her own schedule. Any question that a potential defector may have certainly has a prepared answer. That is, defectors do not find that there is a viable environment for real inquiry. In fact, there are even some narratives in which it is possible to see how the defector relates to the question as a threat to the haredi way of life. Hannah, who had many questions said, I did not ask the questions out loud. If I would ask questions they would kick me out of the school. There is no point in asking and, what, get kicked out of school. In the end I would have lost out. Yoram, who also spoke about seeking the real meaning of life, said, "I had nobody to ask,

because to dare to ask questions like this is unacceptable, or better to say, it is forbidden to ask Aaron said, "[haredi] society wants to make you feel like you are doing the wrong thing and that you are an idiot and that your questions are stupid." In effect the question or the asking of questions for the defector is either something that they do not dare to try, or, if they do ask they find that they are some how thwarted in their intellectual inquiry.

This reflects Bergers (1979) Heretical Imperative: In it, we are presented with a situation, in which modernity or modernization introduces pluralization or a multiplicity of ways to attach meaning to certain situations. That is, modernity pluralizes both institutions and plausibility structures (Berger

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1979, 17).

Plausibility structures support our assumptions or provide human beings social

confirmation for their beliefs about reality (ibid, 18). If we understand haredi culture as fundamentalist, as described in the theory section, the fundamentalist desperately wants to close the holes in the fence that protects the truth as they see it from what Berger (1992, 37) might call "cognitive contamination,"8 to eliminate as plausible options, other plausibility structures that the defector presents in his inquiries (see Berger and Luckmann 1995, 60). Yet today's fundamentalist, it should be noted, is not a member of pre-modern, pre-pluralized society. Rather, we could also see haredi society as seeking to create or as already having created a greedy institution (Coser 1974 and Shaffir 1997, 208). The greedy institution makes total claims on their members They seek exclusive and undivided loyalty and they attempt to reduce the claims of competing roles and status positions of those they wish to encompass within their boundaries (Coser 1974, 4). Further they may erect strong boundaries between insiders and outsiders so as to hold the insider in close bonds to the community to which he owes total loyalty (ibid, 5). Most importantly, the religious sect is seen as an embodiment of a greedy institution. The sect is never tolerant because tolerance is a defect. (ibid, 107). It cannot tolerate dissent or any departure from its norms, which is seen as a threat. For cohesion it must exclude dissent. This is because dissenters claim belongedness. A heretics too is dangerous because he proposes alternatives where the group wants no alternative to exist (ibid, 108-109).

If we use both Berger and Coser, it is possible to look at defection as the way in which the individual deals with the relationship between pluralization and haredi society. He reaches a point where the answers, the religious beliefs and the way of life of the haredi world no longer seem plausible. It is not possible, at least not in the framework of the current research, to determine how or when this point occurs but, from the narratives, it is clear that the individuals did reach such a moment. In the course of our review of the narratives, we see that the ideas of dissent and challenge arise. For instance one of the interviewees mentioned that he kept a journal in which he recorded what he saw as indiscretions

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that reflected on haredi hypocrisy vis--vis the spirit of Jewish law. Another defector described his activities, such as going to the public library, bringing in secular newspapers and the like as being considered heretical in the yeshiva world. Yet another interviewee said: I did not ask questions because it is not acceptable to ask, there is no such thing as asking. Why start to complicate things if you want to stay? You know, there is a story about one who came to the rabbi and said, Rabbi I am a heretic, I do not believe so the rabbi says to him, if you came to me you are not heretic, so you can relax. It is the same thing here. If you want to remain religious do not go ask questions because that will wreck everything for you. In essence the defector is acting like a dissenter in a greedy institution. The defector reaches this point in what we might call a dialogue with pluralism. The way they act, they produce, but do not necessarily disseminate alternatives to haredi life amongst their colleagues in the yeshiva, is similar to the behavior that Coser associates with dissenters in a sectarian situation. That is, they not only question the authority of the haredi leadership, they also seek out alternative answers while still in the haredi world. The defector does not come to the conclusion that haredi life is untenable, leave the haredi world and only then seek out an alternative authority or plausibility structure. Rather this, occurs while he is still in the haredi setting. Like Travisano says, the conversion occurs when the individual not only makes a radical change in his way of life but when he comes to accept a belief that is proscribed in his universe of discourse. Similarly the defector's attempts to seek knowledge outside the haredi world is an indication that he is resisting the "uniformity and homogeneity", through "de-individualization" that the sect attempts to achieve (Coser 1974, 112). It is possible to say that this is a process of re-individualization.

The defection process comprises elements of conversion, consisting of radical change and adoption of prohibited beliefs (Travisano 1970), and deconversion, in that the process of conversion is coupled with a continued engagement with the previous universe of discourse. As we saw in Lofland's and Skonovd's (1981) "intellectual motif" of conversion, the defector utilizes the tools of human inquiry to accumulate and process alternative sources of knowledge which, in turn, support the individual's inclination to see his current position as intellectually, spiritually and religiously untenable. Of course, there are no absolutes or

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uniformity in this process. This is evident in the complex situations in which the defector remains religiously Jewish, either as a non-haredi observant Jew or as a religiously liberal Jew, especially one who is studying to be a non-Orthodox rabbi. (Further, this would not be possible if not for the fact that the world, as Berger describes it, is indeed pluralized, which challenges plausibility structures that are commonly held to be true in traditional society or, as in fundamentalist society, are adopted as true reflections of the way that life is supposed to be ran and was run in pre-modern times). In terms of identity, the theory that Hall professes, namely that identity is a process by which the individual becomes sutured to a given identification but is not immutable is adequate in part. This is because the defector does see that there is a concrete identity involved. They speak in terms that can be associated with competing identity structures and surely do see that the way in which they are situated is connected to the way they are living their lives and trying to change them. In other words they see that it is necessary to actively pursue change and to leave a cultural identity structure. That is to say, the identity does not dissipate. An important element in understanding the research at hand is in seeing a bridge between the theoretical and the political. The theoretical concepts of identity and culture that we examined can be seen as liberating or emancipatory in their opposition to essentialism. When identity and culture are seen as being different from what conventional wisdom would have us believe, there is seemingly more room for change. It requires hard work to overcome that structure. This is best described by Wilkerson's (2000) description of the coming out process.

Wilkerson (2000, 277) notes that coming out or the acceptance of gay identity or the acceptance of being homosexual is a political act that condemns societal standards. For there to be change or

transformation we need to be able to say that cultural identity is not essentially ensconced in a particular cultural world. We can see the transformation as a political expression, a vehement critique of the

cultural situation in which you are found. Coming out represents a rejection of an ideological and distorted view of a persons experience (ibid, 276-277). Wilkersons essay describes the

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transformation in a way that indeed seems to create a synthesis between the non- or anti-essentialism represented by what Wilkerson, Moya and Mohanty call postmodern and the political positioning of what is called realist theory. For Wilkerson and others, they see the postmodernist theory regarding identity as claiming that experience is both fundamentally unreliable and socially constituted such that it can be neither a source of knowledge nor a starting point for identity formation (Wilkerson 2000, 272). The picture we get of the coming out process in Wilkerson is one in which a person who has lived a life into which he was normalized or socialized, can be seen as potentially gay. Realist identity theory says: Ones identity is not fixed and immutable, it can change as ones place in society and ones own experiences change, but there will be interpretations of experience that take account of most experiences and most salient facts and continue to do so through the course of ones life (ibid, 265).

For Wilkerson, coming out is the simultaneous recognition of experiences along the lines of a new identity that is simultaneously discovered and constructed He thinks it more coherent to construe coming out as transformation [his emphasis]: the development of a new identity based on a reinterpretation of experiences. This new identity reflects a new and more accurate understanding of who one is in the world and how one can act in itBy construing coming out as transformation we can sensibly say that there were always people who were having homosexual experiences, although they may have chosen to organize [them] in varying ways across cultures and historical epochs. Yet homosexuality, as a politically salient identity organized around a particular view of ones sexuality, is indeed a modern construct. So it is both real and constructed (Wilkerson 2000, 266-267).

This identity shift is integrally related to the way or place in which the person previously conducted his life. This shift, we can say, is based on having conducted ones life in a normalized way. The shift is a recognition that one has been in error with respect to who one was (ibid, 267). The error is a result of dominant, normalizing trends in that society, namely homophobia in the case of coming out as queer or fundamentalism in the case of coming out as non-haredi. The transformation is a rejection 81

(implicitly, according to Wilkerson) of homophobia [or fundamentalism] and those parts and structures of society that maintain it (ibid.). In this way, gay identity refers to existing social structures, reveals their relation to ones personal identity, and also condemns them as wrong (ibid.). This understanding of the transformation is emancipatory and revolutionary in its rejection of orthodoxies, such as the orthodoxy of homophobia. It constitutes an understanding that identities do not need to be fixed forever. This is important in that we are able to see how a non-or anti-essentialist view of culture and identity enables an individual to negotiate meaning and change.

Moreover, Shaffir (1991, 200) seems to agree with this assessment. He writes: "The decision to exit from the haredi community is accompanied by attitudinal and emotional changes concerning the authenticity of the haredi life-style and Orthodox Judaism in advance of the behavioral changes that eventually reflect their altered life-style. Presenting themselvesas suitably committed members of the community, they secretly violate the governing norms of their society and seek the appropriate opportunities to embark publicly upon a radically different way of life."

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Conclusion The most significant impression that I gained in the course of this research was that the defector is constantly in a process of thought and inquiry. He or she is always asking questions, raising doubts and quashing myths. Most profound is that the defector has or creates an image of who he should be and goes about the process of defection, which is the process of actualizing this image. The defection takes time it is not immediate. The defector examines and considers new information and new sources of knowledge. The process involves copious reading of new texts and re-reading of old, more traditional texts in a new light, (hence the significance of the public and academic library, the Internet and common conversation becomes clearer to an observer). Holland (1998, 5) writes that it is possible to see identity as imaginings of self in worlds of action, as social products [As] a key means through which people care about and care for what is going on around them. They [identities] are important bases from which people create new activities, new worlds, and new ways of being. We should also see persons, indeed as being somehow embedded in collective meanings yet able to imagine and create new ways of being. This best reflects the composite that I tried to create in that we can generally see the defector as reflecting and actualizing this description of identity as well as the way that identity is described in postpositivist realist theory that we reviewed. Identity is non-essential, a reality and at times it is a trap for the individuals involved in defection. It involves a relationship between the individual and the institution and, if religion remains significant to the defector it is as if they develop a new relationship with God or the way they think of God. The defector's successes are not measured in terms of having defeated haredi Judaism or of having tipped the societal scales in favor of the secular public (see Bekerman and Silverman 1999 for a discussion of this antagonism). Rather it is understood in terms of the way that the individual understands the place, in which he is situated, sees its inadequacies and is able to create a different way to exist both within that world and, later, outside.

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The primary claim of this research is that defection from the haredi world is most similar to the process of deconversion that Barbour (1994) describes in his book. It, like conversion, involves identity transformation, which is why the issue of identity remains real in the eyes of the defector and for this observer. It is a radical process that involves the adoption of prohibited ways of thinking and a rejection of the (religious and cultural) authority of a fundamentalist-haredi life. However, in conversion (as Travisano 1970 addresses it), the change is almost absolute. My understanding is that it involves an erection of a cultural boundary that necessarily precludes a return to the previous condition. Deconversion also involves similar acceptances of the prohibited and the rejection of an absolute authority, but it also involves an ethical consideration as to the extent to which one can remain in a certain universe of discourse while remaining true to him self. At the same time it also involves a continued engagement with the former universe of discourse, (the haredi world in our case). In my research, I found that defection is actually a process of deconversion. The defector makes radical changes in his life but does not abandon the haredi or the Jewish world entirely. Most of the interviewees do reject Judaism as a religious authority, but do so reluctantly in some cases. Many of their struggles with their place in the haredi world took the form of critical analysis of the way that haredi Judaism or prominent religious figures, in their minds, distort the meaning of Judaism. To me, this indicates that the world, or critical elements of it, does indeed remain salient to them in the new and different way in which they conduct their lives.

Further Research Barbour (1994, 6) analyzes deconversion autobiographies. His book examines a variety of life stories in which the loss of faith or the disengagement from a religious tradition is a predominant theme. It deals with a variety of issues including gender, race and ethnicity, ethics, reinterpretation and more. What is important to him and should be to those who study Judaism is that religious studies as a field

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can greatly benefit from the study of deconversion. A self critical Christian [or Jewish] theology should also be informed by the testimony of those who have criticized or rejected its central beliefs. The insights of those who have conscientiously rejected Christian beliefs ought to play a role in Christian self-definition and in the apologetic task of interpreting the faith to nonbelievers. He continues, saying that "the vitality of a theology or faith depends on it being subject to revision, reinterpretation and renewal (ibid, 5). This is an important consideration if deconversion as a topic of discussion in Jewish cultural research is going to have any influence. Deconversion allows for a reflective examination of Judaism itself and its place as part of a general human cultural milieu. That is, the variety of social experiences that we see in the world and in Judaism can lead one to conclude that the study of Judaism and the study of general culture are not mutually exclusive.

As such, suggestions for further research include comparing defection from ultra-Orthodox Judaism and coming out of the closet for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals. Further research might also include virtual ethnography via observation of an internet forum for former haredi individuals. This type of research would of course involve ethical issue regarding consent. An additional research project might also involve a long term observation of the organization Hillel which has come into existence in the course of the past decade to assist defectors. Finally, given the words of one defector, who claims that the State has denied him an education by failing to compel haredi education systems to provide a full civil education, an examination of state responsibility and the inherent rights to education of haredi students would also be a worthy research project.

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End Notes 1 Levitz holds that Jewish identity is connected to participating in the group practice or act. Identification is more tenuous and is connected more to empathizing or identifying with that group and supporting it. Using the analogy of a sports fan to illustrate this, the fan can identify with the team and support it in the strongest of ways but, when the game is over the fan might say we won or we lost yet he remains in the bleachers and the team goes to the lockers (78). This is important as we speak of plausibility structures because Levitz claims that the only plausible structure for (American) Jews is one in which Jewish behavior, namely Torah study premised on a divine imperative to engage in it day and night, is dominant. His responsibility is not only to learn Torah but to perpetuate it and transmit it to the next generation. (89). In short, if we use the team metaphor Jewish identity would mean that if you are an observant Jew you are part of the team. Identification with Judaism on the other hand implies that you are at most an observer. 2 Travisano prefers the term "universe of discourse" because it is constituted by a group of individuals carrying on and participating in a common social process of experience. and because the term contains inconsistencies as opposed to being integrated (594-595). 3 Historical consciousness can thus be defined as individual and collective understandings of the past, the cognitive and cultural factors which shape those understandings, as well as the relations of historical understandings to those of the present and the future (Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness, University of British Columbia website: http://www.cshc.ubc.ca/about.php). 4 Or, for a, defector he would want to avoid believers. 5 http://www.daatemet.org.il/en_aboutus.html, As detailed in the web site they state: DE has been operating since 1998 as a public organization, whose main goal is the study of classical Jewish culture and the dissemination of its scientific, humanistic interpretation. In order to achieve this goal, DE has carried out a series of educational and cultural projects aimed at developing a dependable, historically grounded interpretation of the Jewish religion legacy, and its promulgation in the Israeli society. DE has reached the conclusion that the amazingly rich classical Jewish legacy, which makes up the main body of Jewish culture, has been deliberately misinterpreted for a long period of time; as a result, it has become a political tool in the hands of self-interested fundamentalists who lay claim to having exclusive ownership of this legacyThe material created by DE has been widely circulated in Israel, triggering nothing short of a revolution in the ultra-religious circles. For the first time, these circles have had their texts, theology and laws exposed to an interpretation that is both critical and protective 6 They follow Travisano's definition of conversion as 'a radical reorganization of identity, meaning, life' (375). 7Of course, one can imagine a haredi Jew arguing that becoming a non-Orthodox (Reform, Conservative or Reconstructionist) Jew (and rabbi) is like joining a religion that is foreign to haredi Judaism. 8 Bergers concept of cognitive contamination (1992, 37) means that, as we encounter a society that is more pluralistic we are risking our plausibility structures and our commonly held beliefs that keep us and our conceptions of who we are as members of particular communities separate and protected.

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