ABSTRACT
Julie's International Salon is located in a residential neighborhood of a large midwestern city. The salon's clientele is mostly drawn from the neighborhood. It is largely female, American-born, middle-class, older, and Jewish. Jewish customers range from those involved in some branch of religious Judaism, to those active in the local Jewish Community Center, to women who have no formal connection to any Jewish institution yet have strong Jewish identities. The chapter argues that community at Julie's is of an unintentional sort: without planning or design, Julie's emerges as a group of individuals-a different group depending on which day of the week their appointments fall-who enter into ongoing relations with one another around a shared set of concerns. If friendship and community emerge from relationships among equals, then the communal life at Julie's is centrally a phenomenon experienced by the shop's clientele.
