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Celebrating Jewish annual feasts by the Czech Union of Jewish Youth
Moravcová, Anežka ; Janeček, Petr (advisor) ; Košťálová, Petra (referee)
Jewish festivities make an important part of Jewish culture. Their form has long stabilized and become fixed through years. This thesis would ascertain the importance of these festivities within the community of the Czech Union of Jewish Students, The community comprises persons from fifteen to thirty-five years of age. During my research there were sixty one members. These youths gather to celebrate important feasts in the Jewish year, and sometimes even to celebrate together the weekly feast of Sabbat with the comunity of Moishe house, as I was allowed to witness. This work examines the feasts through the concept of "performance", concept known from Victor Turner and widely used by Richard Bauman. The research was conducted by the means of empirical evaluation, structured dialogues, questionnaires. The study concludes the performance of these festivities shows signs of the so called "emergent quality", a term invented by Richard Bauman. This creative aspect is an important way of expressing and confirming the identity of the given community. It also reflects and reacts to the actual facets of the community, and so keeps its culture "alive". This work shows that celebrating the feasts with the Union may provide Jewish persons who do not belong to any strict division of Judaism with a sense of...
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Taking the veil and the temporary vows as a rite of passage observed in the Catholic religious orders of Discalced Carmelites and Sisters of Mercy of St. Borromeo
Moravcová, Anežka ; Janeček, Petr (advisor) ; Jakoubková Budilová, Lenka (referee)
The rite of taking the veil and of the temporary vows in female religious congregations present breaking points in the lives of the future nuns. I would argue that these rituals, which sometimes fuse into one ceremony, show clear marks of the so called "rite-of-passage". Nuns put on the veil for the first time, and become full-fledged members of the closed community. The ritual has preserved its main form, even though it has been subjected to some modernisation within many congregations. We can observe its importance hasn't been much diminished since late. This study attempts to demonstrate the importance of these ceremonies in contemporary communities and to show that they can truly be categorised as examples of rite-of-passage ("rite-de-passage") such as has been coined and described by Arnold van Gennep. Studying the importance of the ritual means exploring also its role in the individual life stories recalled by the selected respondents. This thesis is based on both the method of participant observation and the biographical study. It uses the scheme of social drama introduced by Victor Witter Turner to demonstrate the role of a ritual within a community, even as its impact on the individual lives. In the study we can follow the process of entering the community through the eyes of the nuns...
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