Jew and non-Jew: an investigation of the relationship between an area of Chabad cosmology and the "world view" of three Lubavitcher Hassidic informants

The concern of this study is with a portion of a system of beliefs possessed by Lubavitcher Hassidim. The core of the study consisted of many hours of taped interviews with three Lubavitcher informants. Following Redfield's distinction between "cosmology" and "world view," two kinds of data were elicited: 1. Information having specifically to do with the informants' knowledge of systematized cosmology which is part of Chabad theosophical doctrine. 2. Judgments which were elicited from each informant in the context of linguistic situations other than that of discussion of Chabad. The concern here was with the formulation of an area of informants' world view. Both “cosmology” and "world view” refer to the way people view the universe. The term "cosmology,” however, is used here to refer to an explicit, systematized set of ideas, whereas "world view" is implicit in people's behavior (including verbal behavior) and can be ''derived by abstraction from ethnographic description." As it is used in this study, "world view" refers to principles of classification which underlie and organize people's experience of the world. The area of Chabad cosmology dealt with in this study concerns that which distinguishes "man" from "non-man" as well as one kind of man from another. Two major categories of man, Jews and non-Jews, were found to be distinguished, and their distinguishing attributes were discussed. Study of the world view of the informants focused on distinctions which they make between the terms 'Jew' and 'non-Jew' as well as 'Jewish' and 'non-Jewish.' Concern here was with the discovery of taxonomic relations of contrast and inclusion as well as of criterial attributes. The ultimate objective of the study is to determine if there could be found in the world view of the informants some structural relationships which parallel such relationships found in Chabad cosmology. Such a parallel was indeed found. It was concluded, however, that the inference of a causal connection between the relationship found in the cosmology and the one found in the world view is not justified by demonstration of a structural parallel alone. On the other hand evidence was summoned which suggests that, although it does not determine it, the cosmological relationship may influence the world view relationship.