Meet Our Fellows 2017-18

 

Naomi Pearl

Department of Sociology of Education

Research Topic

Between worlds: the integration, identity, and growth of an ultra-Orthodox intellectual elite at the Hebrew University

Advisors: Prof. Tamar Elor and Dr. Julia Resnick

Research Summary

The study deals with the process of integration of ultra-Orthodox students at the university, as part of the "Shluchey Tzibur" program for leadership development in the Haredi community, and on the impact of training and studies on their identity and on how they seek to preserve their identity and at the same time integrate into the academic world and the arena of leadership in Israel.

on the community has also undergone significant changes over the last ten years. This study seeks to focus on the aspect of integration into higher education and its influences. The study deals with a unique test case: A program designed for entrepreneurs and social leaders who come from the core of the Haredi community, with the aim of advancing it, coping with challenges within it, and promoting its ability to maintain civil partnership in the social and state systems. The study strives to examine the integration of the Haredi community into academia, which is a new and foreign world - in values, in ethos, in discourse, in cultural capital, and in the culture of learning.

The study seeks to deepen the processes undergone by the fellows of the program, in the process of forming a hybrid and complex identity, Haredi-Israeli. In the way they perceive themselves and their identity, the internal and external conflicts that accompany this journey, and the strategies that fellows develop in order to deal with tensions, contradictions and dilemmas. The study also seeks to examine the way in which the interviewees form a new elite in the Haredi community and in Israeli society.