Abstract
In the United States, religion is largely treated as a matter of choice. In his book Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation while Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, Schneur Zalman Newfield questions this notion, arguing that some religions, such as ultra-Orthodox Judaism, have such powerful and long-lasting effects on members’ attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that they persist in some form even among those who choose to leave. According to Newfield, these enduring, often unconscious attachments among exiters to ultra-Orthodox ways of thinking and doing call into question common conceptualizations of religious identity and exit.
Newfield’s primary argument is that religious exit, which occurs when individuals distance themselves from their religious communities in visible, public ways, has been conceived far too often as having a binary outcome, where individuals are either “in” or “out” of a particular religious group. Based on his qualitative interviews of 74 exiters from Lubavitch and Satmar ultra-Orthodox communities, he demonstrates that, for individuals who leave ultra-Orthodox groups, exiting is a long-term process, shaped by the boundaries of their communities of origin. In fact, Newfield describes his interviewees as “exiters” to show that their exit is still in progress.
He proposes that the concept of liminality provides a useful approach to understanding the experience of these religious exiters. To Newfield, liminality is a long-term state of in-betweenness, in which individuals have distanced themselves from their communities of origin without fully entering new communities. It denotes the limits of individuals’ capacities for complete identity transformation. Newfield classifies his interviewees into three different categories of liminality. Those who incorporate without considerable consternation elements of their communities of origin and their new communities are “hybrid” exiters; those who have difficulty replacing elements of their communities of origin are “trapped” exiters; and those who appear to have had total separation from their communities of origin while exhibiting preoccupation with them are “disconnected” exiters. In addition, Newfield finds evidence of liminality in his interviewees’ narratives themselves, which he categorizes as intellectual, involving critiques of their communities’ beliefs or practices, or social-emotional, revealing emotional suffering in their communities of origin. To Newfield, these narratives reveal liminality because they involve reactions to their ultra-Orthodox communities’ failed promises of intellectualism or support.
Newfield provides considerable additional examination of liminality among his interviewees. For example, he considers their “habits of action,” such as an aversion to pork, and “habits of thought,” such as conservative gender attitudes, to be reflective of at-times unconscious yet lasting connections to their ultra-Orthodox upbringings. Among the subset of hybrid interviewees, Newfield also identifies a number of strategies to manage their liminality—in relation to their communities of origin as well as to their still ultra-Orthodox families, which he emphasizes do not completely shun family members who exit. Ultimately, based on his findings, Newfield proposes the use of the concept of liminality and exploration of habits of thought and action in exits from other total institutions, specifically divorce, exit from prison, and immigration.
Newfield, an exiter himself from a Lubavitch ultra-Orthodox community, is a skilled interpreter of the ultra-Orthodox communities that he investigates. He provides deep insight into their beliefs, practices, and lifestyles, revealing similarities and differences across the Lubavitch and Satmar communities that he studies. Readers of this book will come away with a much deeper sense of ultra-Orthodox life as well as a clearer understanding of the variation that exists under this umbrella term.
In addition, Newfield’s argument that exiting is a long-term process and that elements of their ultra-Orthodox upbringings persist for exiters is a convincing one. He ably argues for the incorporation of the theoretical concept of liminality into studies of religious exit. Moreover, he marshals substantial compelling evidence in support of his claims. His investigation of his interviewees’ narratives establishes clear links between their ultra-Orthodox origins and their current life situations in their thoughts and actions, demonstrating how they remain in an in-between state.
To support his claims about the sociology of religion’s emphasis on binary conceptions of religious exit, Newfield focuses on scholarship relating to the experiences of individuals who joined and left New Religious Movements. Yet, to gain a deeper understanding of religious identity, I wondered why he did not engage more with literature on Jewish identities or scholarship on exit from other strict, totalizing religious groups, like the Old Order Amish. These literatures seem to offer clearer parallels to the ultra-Orthodox case. Moreover, since Newfield appears keenly aware of theoretical insights that can be drawn across different subfields within the discipline and the multidimensionality of ultra-Orthodox identities, I further questioned why he did not attempt to draw from the vast field of research on immigrant assimilation, which has long investigated the blending and reshaping of immigrants’ identities in their new communities.
While Newfield’s limited engagement with this research does not detract from his primary finding that exiting ultra-Orthodox communities is a long-term process involving a sense of in-betweenness, engaging further with these other bodies of literature could have offered inroads to deeper theoretical insights regarding the multidimensionality of religious identities. For example, Newfield categorizes exiters into types and their narratives into groups. He also identifies their varying habits of thought and action along with strategies for managing liminality—although only among hybrid exiters. Yet, Newfield rarely discusses how these varying exiting types, narratives, habits, and strategies relate to one another. Because Newfield’s primary focus is on challenging the binary approach to religious identity, he expends most effort on demonstrating the presence of liminality in his interviewees’ lives. He does not examine patterns in these varying dimensions of liminality. Readers are left to wonder about the fuller picture that could be drawn from the connections that may exist across these multiple dimensions.
In addition, Newfield provides deep, thoughtful, reflexive reflection on his methodological approach to his interviews, yet he offers only minimal discussion of his analytical methods in an appendix, where he notes his grounded theory approach. This lack of discussion creates uncertainty regarding some of his findings. Most notably, it is unclear how he arrives at his three-category typology of hybrid, trapped, and disconnected exiters, since he provides no quotations from his interviewees’ narratives to explain this categorization. Readers, then, are left to puzzle out these categories’ meanings and their roles in exiters’ lives.
Notwithstanding these shortcomings, Newfield’s book offers a deep, descriptive accounting of the experiences of exiters from ultra-Orthodox Judaism. In so doing, it contributes substantial insight into ultra-Orthodox communities. It also provides clear evidence of liminality in the lives of ultra-Orthodox exiters, as they navigate between their worlds of origin and their new communities. Furthermore, Newfield’s concept of liminality can undoubtedly provide a useful starting point for future studies of religious exit so that they may expand beyond binary approaches to more deeply examine the forces that shape individuals’ religious identities. I highly recommend this book for scholars and graduate students of religious identity, religious exit, and Jewish Studies.