Appropriately Subversive: Modern Mothers in Traditional Religions (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780674008861)

How do mothers reconcile conflicting loyalties--to their religious traditions, and to the daughters whose freedoms are also constrained by those traditions? Searching for answers, Tova Hartman Halbertal interviewed mothers of teenage daughters in religious communities: Catholics in the United States, Orthodox Jews in Israel.

Sounding surprisingly alike, both groups described conscious struggles between their loyalties and talked about their attempts to make sense of and pass on their multiple commitments. They described accommodations and rationalizations and efforts to make small changes where they felt that their faith unjustly subordinated women. But often they did not feel they could tell their daughters how troubled they were. To keep their daughters safe within the protective culture of their ancestors, the mothers had to hide much of themselves in the hope that their daughters would know them more completely in the future.

Moving and unique, this book illuminates one of the moral questions of our time--how best to protect children and preserve community, without being imprisoned by tradition.

Author: Tova Hartman Halbertal
ISBN-10: 0674008863
ISBN-13: 9780674008861
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/15/2003
Pages: 208
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.86lbs
Size: 8.64h x 5.94w x 0.81d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 12/23/2002 pg. 64
Library Journal 01/01/2003 pg. 118
Christian Century 05/31/2003 pg. 37
Library Journal 01/15/2003