ABSTRACT
This paper presents an analysis of the attraction and resocialization of contemporary, secular young women into a traditional religious world view: that of Orthodox Judaism. In the past fifteen years, paralleling the growth of Christian fundamentalism, there has been an increase in the number of women and men who become attracted to Orthodox Judaism (Aviad 1983; Kaufman 1985). I focused this study on the young, educated middle-class women who are making this choice, since their attraction to this traditional religion raises two interesting and related questions. Why and how are old religious traditions reconstructed in the modern world, when many of the predictions and much of the evidence pointed toward the increasing secularization of modern Western societies? (Berger 1969; Wilson 1966, 1982). Secondly, given that Orthodox Judaism prescribes for women the traditional role of wife and mother in a nuclear family, why does it appeal to contemporary women who appear to have a relatively wide range of role choices, particularly since this is a time in which the feminist critiques of traditional roles, and of religion’s place in maintaining these roles, are so widely available? (for example, Daly 1968, 1973; Heschel 1983).
