Lynn Davidman - Becoming Un-Orthodox : Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews

My first expression of gratitude is to all the women and men who participated in this research and bravely shared their life stories with me. This book would not exist without the generosity of the eighty Hasidic (Ultra-Orthodox) defectors whom I interviewed for this book. All the ex-Hasidic Jews with whom I spoke were open about sharing with me their life stories and, in response to my questions, particularly their accounts of how they came to leave their strictly religious enclaves. I know from my own experience, and I was highly aware in the interviews, that many aspects of these stories were painful to reconstruct. I appreciate that each of you was willing to go back to the past and attempt, within our discussions, to reconstruct a life story that seeks to establish coherence between the period before you left your enclaves, and your lives since.

As I worked on this book, in Providence, Rhode Island and in Lawrence, Kansas, I have been blessed with many friends, colleagues, and research assistants, all of whom contributed in significant ways to the completion of this process. It was in a conversation with Shelly Tenenbaum that we came up with the idea for this project. When I began this research, four students at Brown UniversityKira Ganga Kieffer, Annie Lewis, Maxine Sharavsky, Elizabeth Sherworked with me on the initial coding and sorting of data according to the themes I identified in my interview transcripts. In addition, without my asking, they wrote memos offering insights on some of the themes, relating them to material they had read, or to their own life experiences.

Two years later Andrea Titus began working with me in her last year at Brown, 20072008. Andrea deeply invested herself in all tasks related to this project. In the spring of 2008 we began to work on an article based on the interviews. In order to further develop our coauthored essay, I persuaded her to spend the summer with me in Lawrence. Andrea was an amazing research assistant. She took initiative, worked efficiently, wrote beautifully, and was an intellectually stimulating partner during our work together. She read and summarized relevant research literature, made comments on my drafts, and rewrote sections of them until by the end of the summer we had prepared a near-final version for submission. We became friends as we worked together so closely over an extended period of time, and we are still in touch.

At the University of Kansas I had the good fortune of finding several graduate students who were interested in my project and worked with me for various periods of time over the last five years. Chelsea Bailey, Ray Sin, Ben Gray, Adrianne Showalter Matlock, Michelle Glorioso, Nathan Moser, and Jon Burrow-Branine all spent time playing and thinking with me, in the intellectual playground of my developing ideas. In the last few months of my final push to completion, Jon came back to help me get to the finish line. He read drafts of three chapters and made helpful comments on each.

Two graduate students, in particular, Nathan Moser and Chelsea Bailey, stand out for their superb research, analytic and writing skills, dedication to the project, as well as their steady support and friendship. Nathan, who had come to the University of Kansas to study with me, worked hard on this project for over a year, from July 2011 through September 2012. We were already friends, but our close work together over that time cemented a lifelong friendship. We had numerous brainstorming, synergistic conversations in which we strove to weave together the analytic foci of the book: narratives and embodied practices. Eventually the light bulb flashed, and we articulated an innovative argument about the mutual construction of narratives and embodied practices: Meaningful bodily routines and rituals make sensefor individuals as well as communitiesonly when they are situated within the framework of a coherent, overarching metanarrative.

I got to know Chelsea, a graduate student in sociology, through the seminars she took with me. I was impressed by her ability to quickly grasp reading material, ask thoughtful questions, and write up her own research in a clear and engaging manner, always situating her work within the larger analytic frameworks of the field. In the spring of 2013, knowing I needed some extra help, I asked her to work with me on the final version of the book. Immediately she became deeply engaged with, enthusiastic, and committed to working hard on this book. Chelsea read multiple iterations of chapter sections and entire chapters, offering suggestions that helped me further clarify my ideas and how I wrote about them. During the two months we worked together, spending almost twenty hours a week in my study, we worked hard but also had fun, becoming close in the process. In November and December 2013 I needed a bit of help with all the final tasks involved in completing the book. I asked Chelsea if she could spare some time for a couple of months, and she told me it felt appropriate for her to reenter the project in its final stages and see it through to completion. Her help was invaluable in my completing the book on time.