The author of this study about Amish and Jewish women is a media scholar whose own life correlates with that of her subjects. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar focuses on women’s experiences in two minority groups: urban Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel and rural Old Order Amish in Pennsylvania. Assessing communication tools ranging from newspapers to cellphones and the internet, she highlights the challenges these media forms pose for women seeking to maintain their religious communities. 

Raised in an Ultra-Orthodox set­tlement in Gaza, the author spent her childhood in a community almost as strict as the Ultra-Orthodox and Pennsylvania Amish subcultures she now studies. Aspects of her tightly controlled upbringing were painful. Her parents took away her library card to discourage her curiosity about the wider world. She faced ridicule from Ultra-Orthodox teachers for showing interest in women’s roles in sacred texts. Later, while attending Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she rebelled by enrolling in courses in women’s studies, embracing a feminist identity. 

Acknowledging her insider/outsider status within her Israeli religious community, Shahar says that “the impossible gap between my feminist feelings and thinking and my deep religious commitment, as reflected by my very strict observance and modest dress, intensifies my deepest questions. . . . Can one really combine a secular, critical and feminist academic life with religious belief and commitment?” 

This quest led her to the research for this volume. After learning ­English, she arrived in the United States for
postdoctoral studies and began trav­eling to Lancaster County, Pa., to be­-
friend Old Order Amish women. She conducted ethnographic fieldwork there from 2011 to 2019. 

The lives of Israeli Ultra-Orthodox women contrast markedly with that of their Amish counterparts. Approximately 1.2 million Ultra-Orthodox people live in Israel, mostly in urban settings. They value higher education and are committed to studying the ­Torah and living in accordance with strict interpretations of Jewish law. Women raise large families (seven children, on average) and often work outside the home, earning livelihoods that enable their husbands’ intense study of Talmudic texts. Families use an array of technologies, including phones and computers. Shahar describes the lives of Ultra-Orthodox women as arduous, entailing daily commutes between their homes and workplaces.

REaders may wonder why Shahar, an expert in Israeli Ultra-Orthodox community life, is also interested in the Amish. She explains that both are hierarchical communities in which devout women internalize the question, “What does God ask of me?” Daily practices in childrearing and in other work demonstrate how adeptly they contend with stressors while preserving patriarchal structures. Women in both groups experience guilt as they navigate “complicated moral and emotional systems” governed by strict religious rules and deeply ingrained expectations of self-control. 

Shahar builds on the work of Mennonite scholar Diane Umble and others who published research findings on telephone use among the Pennsylvania Amish. Shahar argues that both Amish and Ultra-Orthodox women are well aware that their media choices constitute forms of power. In both using and choosing not to use various media forms, they demonstrate virtue (within the context of their subcultures) and enhance their status as valued members of their communities. 

Among Ultra-Orthodox women, this stance necessitates nuanced use of media (using computers to function ­effectively in workplaces). Among Amish women, she documents the ways in which some media are accepted (sharing information in community- produced newspapers) while others — notably, cellphones and ­computers — are often rejected due to the per­ceived threats they pose to Amish values. She cites one Amish woman’s belief that the internet is “Satan’s tool to draw our focus away from God.” 

Shahar critiques earlier generations of scholars of the Amish for glossing over women’s participation as stakeholders upholding their communities’ traditions. Moreover, she argues that her comparative study of the two re­ligious subcultures is not just a niche study, limited to insights about these two minority populations. She claims her findings have broad relevance for helping readers understand implications of media use and non-use. On this latter point, Shahar’s analysis is reed-thin, yet her volume, with its rich descriptions of daily life, is a welcome addition to Amish cultural literature.  

Rachel Waltner Goossen of Topeka, Kan., is professor emerita of history at Washburn University.