Changing Concepts of the Ultra-Orthodox Body: Rabbi Avigdor Miller as a Test Case

The “Jewish Knight” of Slobodka honor culture and the image of the body in an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish context

“…The Grandfather's true innovation, however, is to shatter the equations of spirit = intellect/matter = body. In his view, which was influenced by the concept of the body in European honor culture, the body itself, as a creation of the divine, can be the means of discerning the spiritual, that is, the spiritual within the body (Englander 2014b). Also, in Slobodka, the force exerted on the body to reshape it is often no less than in other yeshivas.…”

“…23 On asceticism as a way to control the body, see Corrington (1986). In my work on Rabbi Avigdor Miller (Englander 2014b) I bring some examples of Jewish voices who critiqued the Ultra-Orthodox community, such as Berdyczweski and Bialik. A very few descriptions of the gdoilim have them, upon reaching old age, repent of their extreme asceticism, concluding that the ruthless battle with their bodies led ultimately to the victory of the body and of the yetser (evil inclination).…”