Sound and Silence: Religious Literacy and the Culture of Male Reading in 19th century Eastern European Jewish society

Iris Parush

The objective of my paper is to unravel the different uses, functions and meanings of reading within the discourse and the social practices of 19th century Eastern European Jewish Society. It will focus on aspects of the secularization process that were tightly linked with the departure from religious literacy, and experienced mostly by men. The analysis of the cognitive, psychological, religious and literary impact of that process on male reading practices will draw on autobiographical memoirs depicting 'literacy events' which took place at the Yeshivah, at public libraries and in the private sphere (attics, basements, toilets, woods, gardens etc.). These memoirs will be treated as a kind of ethnography of reading, and analyzed as narratives that render both the cultural constraints and the cluster of meanings given to the reading experience by young Yeshivah students undergoing the process of enlightenment.