IN-PERSON Lisbon Livable Cities. Section B

Abstract

My paper explores how wandering in urban spaces serves as a platform for representing secularization processes among ex-orthodox believers, thereby creating a hybrid space where those who have left a religious way of life—a sort of exiles and migrants in a secular world—find their place anew. I will analyze representations and characters from contemporary Hebrew literature, demonstrating how these “Jewish migrants” learn to experience the new secular world they have immigrated to, thereby shaping their identity in the livable city. Exile is primarily physical, necessitated by the departure from a previous environment, but it is predominantly emotional, resulting in a sense of alienation. Concurrently, the need to adopt new living styles and habits, ways of communicating with the urban environment, and unfamiliar behavior codes, stimulates a longing for an “exilic” existence where Jewish existence reaches its full potential. As Benjamin and de Certeau argue, wandering in urban space becomes a subversive practice when it refuses to conform to the way the space was designed to shape the subject’s consciousness and function within the spatial order. Leaving religion and wandering in the city provides the subject with a creative opportunity to reshape a set of connotations, images, and contexts that challenge these constructions, thereby forming personal and communal identities that enhance the city’s livability.