The Experience of Religious Fortification: The coming of age of religious Zionist young women

Abstract

ABSTRACT While in normative Judaism the category of female adolescence was virtually nonexistent, religious Zionist educational authorities in modern Israel have had to produce their own model of female adolescence and women's socialisation. Probing the accounts of 37 17 year-old religious Zionist female adolescents educated in a single-sex boarding school, we show that the young women experience adolescence as an intense period of religious fortification during which they labour to relinquish childish frivolities and vanities, to fight the 'ills' of modern, secular adolescence, and, at the same time, to overcome their resistance to religious socialisatory prescriptions. The study explores the interrelationship of strong educational messages and processes of coming of age. It contributes to feminist perspectives on female development by discussing a case study in which muting the female voice is essential for preservation of the patriarchal order. This silencing, employed as a pedagogical practice, is critical for religious fortification. Thus, institutional practices and the experience of growing up converge in shaping womanhood.