community. In 2024-2025, she was a Ruth Melzer fellow at Katz center for advanced Judaic Studies at Penn University.
Neriya Ben-Shahar investigates mass media from the perspectives of religion and gender. Her research addresses the tensions existing between religious values and new technologies among women in Old Order Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.
She applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Strictly Observant: Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women Negotiating Media, with the following results:
From page 99:Learn more about Strictly Observant at the Rutgers University Press website.from the strict censorship used throughout the community's media, together with the ban on external newspapers. Ultra-Orthodox women are fully aware, as is every community member, that their community's media is strictly censored. They appreciate and even welcome this censorship. Thus, the members of both communities know that their news input may often be missing critical details from both people and media, and they must therefore turn to more general channels. They create many methods for themselves, structured of different combinations of media and people, to obtain news that will provide them with the whole picture.This is an exciting test! If readers opened my book to page 99, they would get a good idea of the whole work’s main themes. Although the page focuses on news consumption, it also explores the relationships between women in religious communities and the media. Indeed, most of us get our news through a combination of personal interactions and media. However, in both the Amish and the Ultra-Orthodox communities, the people play a stronger role in the diffusion of the information due to their small size and high density.
Many people in these communities lack the financial resources to buy communal newspapers and magazines, which are relatively expensive, as would be expected of texts targeting relatively small groups. This leads to their seeking news updates, at no cost, by word of mouth. The other free method of news transmission for the women in both communities consists of in-person social networks created to supplement their knowledge through sharing papers or reporting news to others. I observed women sharing newspapers and magazines, along with verbal recommendations, such as "You should read the story on page 9." The Ultra-Orthodox women, who refer to politics much more frequently than Amish women do, add commentaries, such as "That politician's behavior is shameful-you will see it yourself on page 2." This sharing process is much more than just the physical transfer of a newspaper, as it is accompanied by social aspects as well. The process itself includes a combination of media and people.
A final insight about the combination of media and people derives from the fact that these communities do not lack community connections, which depend on and stem from their small size and high density. Richardson et al. (1979) described Canadian communities that experienced disasters in the 1970S: "The housewives in smaller places may not know any more people, but the people they know are more likely to know each other, which makes possible a much more rapid diffusion of information" (p. 390). The Amish and Ultra-Orthodox women are similar to these Canadian housewives. Both communities are famous for their strong connections, which enable information to jump from farm to farm or from one Jerusalem apartment to the next. One Amish woman told me: "We always ask each other: What do you know about...? How do you make...? What should I do with...? This is the way word of mouth works for us." Although most Ultra-Orthodox women work outside their homes, the communal structure, the high number of children, and the social norms lead them to use the same methods of talking-consulting with their nearby friends about everything, from news to cooking advice. They use their strong connections to obtain information from one another, while simultaneously strengthening their connections through the process of getting information.
"OF COURSE THERE ARE NO DRUGS IN ISRAEL!"
I was raised in a strict religious National Ultra-Orthodox community. My parents turned off the radio when they thought that something in the news was inappro-priate. Taboo content included stories with sexual or violent matters and stories
The page includes only one reference (Richardson et al., 1979) that explains the diffusion of the information in small communities. I’m happy that the Page 99 Test shows that I tried to use as few references as I could (except for the literature review). Indeed, this is an academic book, but its primary goal is to give the readers a pleasant experience when they read about the amazing communities I study, not to show how many articles I read.
The page is cutting in the middle of my personal story about the news censorship I experienced as a girl in a strict religious community. This is a good example of my inside-outside location within the communities I study. As a feminist scholar in a secular academic college, I don’t experience this religious censorship anymore (even though I’m aware of the political and economic censorship that we all experience). However, what we experience as children is extremely powerful. Seeing these women care so much about the medium and the content their family consumes is not only an anthropological observation for me, but also a profoundly personal experience from my childhood and youth.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
