Summoned: Religious Life in an Orthodox Jewish Neighborhood, Tavory Ido, Tavory Iddo

In Summoned, Tavory takes readers to the heart of the exhilarating--at times exhausting--life of the Beverly-La Brea Orthodox community. Just blocks from West Hollywoods nightlife, the Orthodox community thrives next to the impure sights, sounds, and smells they encounter every day. But to sustain this life, as Tavory shows, is not simply a moral decision they make. To be Orthodox is to be constantly called into being. People are reminded of who they are as they are called upon by organizations, prayer quorums, the nods of strangers, whiffs of unkosher food floating through the street, or the rarer Anti-Semitic remarks. Again and again, they find themselves summoned both into social life and into their identity as Orthodox Jews. At the close of Tavorys fascinating ethnography, we come away with a better understanding of the dynamics of social worlds, identity, interaction and self--not only in Beverly-La Brea, but in society at large.