Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO THE PARENT ORTHODOX MODERNIZING MOVEMENTS
- PART THREE THE RELIGIOUS KIBBUTZ MOVEMENT
- 4 The foundations of the Religious Kibbutz Movement
- 5 Charisma and rationalization
- 6 The halakhic–socialist collective
- 7 The confrontation between halakhah and external reality
- 8 Between heteronomous and autonomous authority
- Afterword
- Appendix A The Religious Kibbutz Federation settlements
- Appendix B About the religious kibbutz members quoted in this book
- Appendix C Ideological periodicals referred to in book
- Notes
- Index
8 - Between heteronomous and autonomous authority
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO THE PARENT ORTHODOX MODERNIZING MOVEMENTS
- PART THREE THE RELIGIOUS KIBBUTZ MOVEMENT
- 4 The foundations of the Religious Kibbutz Movement
- 5 Charisma and rationalization
- 6 The halakhic–socialist collective
- 7 The confrontation between halakhah and external reality
- 8 Between heteronomous and autonomous authority
- Afterword
- Appendix A The Religious Kibbutz Federation settlements
- Appendix B About the religious kibbutz members quoted in this book
- Appendix C Ideological periodicals referred to in book
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In the course of building its institutional order, the Religious Kibbutz Federation established a social base – a “plausibility structure” – for its specific symbolic world, a world that integrated traditional–religious and innovative–ideological cultures. In this chapter we shall discuss both these cultures as embodied in the RKF's two basic reference groups: Orthodox Jewry and secular–national Jewry.
Had the RKF confined itself to its social boundaries and nurtured its symbolic reality within them, in all likelihood its seclusion would have advanced the crystallization of this reality. However, since the RKF regarded itself as a pioneering movement that aspired “to be among the molders of the Jewish people as a whole, and not to confine itself to elite sects,” its involvement in general society tended to stretch its cultural fabric in opposing directions. This is because both of the RKF's reference groups recognized a different transcendent center as the source of authority for its cultural system and identity. Moreover, these groups had mutually exclusive cultural centers. For Orthodox Jewry, the transcendent center of the past was focused on halakhah and mediated through the Rabbinate. For secular Zionism, the transcendent center of the present was mediated through radical national ideologues and quintessentially expressed in the secular kibbutz movement.
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- Judaism and Modernization on the Religious Kibbutz , pp. 141 - 157Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992