Insights: Ideas of Equality in Religious Communities

This is a reflection written by Vicky Yu on the lecture by Professor Orna Blumen at the recent Learning Outside the Lines Conference.

My initial reaction to the topic of this talk, was a visceral sense of discomfort. “Orthodox” religious communities conjure up stereotypes of intense social conservatism: traditional, nuclear families, dogmatic leaders and a disdain for the evolution of an increasing secular and liberal youth. “Ultra-Orthodox” (U-O) could only be worse. Continue reading

Insights: Prof. Fruma Zachs on The Private World of Women and Children

A first attempt in gleaning some of the insights shared during the talks during the afternoon of the conference on Children and Youth in an Interconnected World, presenting a broad range of distinguished speakers, all talking about the role of children and youth in this fast-changing world.

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The Private World of Women and Children: Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes in 19th Century Greater Syria – Professor Fruma Zachs

Professor F. Zachs from the University of Haifa, Israel, talks about the research on the private world of women through preserved narratives of nursery rhymes. In the last twenty years  children have finally begun to be  researched as a topic of themselves, not just from the perspective of adult worlds and family. Nursery rhymes as oral folklore emphasizes certain themes, like suffering and the child’s world, but in the Arabic world this is not yet studied extensively. In her work, Professor Zachs analyses these nursery rhymes to show new insight into the emotional and interconnected world of children and their families. Continue reading