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This article examines the negotiation of prayer melodies at Or Chadasch, a liberal Jewish synagogue in Vienna, exploring how these melodies represent the community’s balance between tradition and innovation within a progressive Jewish framework. As a “minority within a minority,” Or Chadasch operates on the periphery of Vienna’s Orthodox-dominated Jewish community and global progressive Judaism. The article begins by providing a historical context for progressive Judaism in Austria and by tracing the development of Or Chadasch and its repertoire of prayer melodies. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it explores how the emotional connections of congregants and prayer leaders to specific melodies shape debates on musical tradition, continuity, and communal belonging. Central to this analysis is the concept of minhag (custom), an insider term that serves as a flexible yet deeply rooted foundation in the musical worship practices of the congregation. The article identifies six “modes of minhag”—continuity, habit, authority, potluck, participation, and choice—as distinct approaches through which congregants negotiate persistence and change in prayer melodies. These modes illustrate how minhag functions as both a stabilizing and adaptive force, which accommodates diverse attachments across transnational and transhistorical Jewish musical practices. The study posits that minhag, understood as enacted through multiple modes, transcends a simple binary of tradition versus innovation. Furthermore, the article situates the musical minhag of Or Chadasch within broader ethnomusicological research on minority communities, arguing that this minhag reflects the specific historical, ideological, and sociopolitical positioning of the congregation, thus serving as a living archive of the community’s history.

This article aims to examine the role of social media in disaster communication and its potential to foster a sense of communal belonging through shared emotional connection, using the case study of the 3.11 disaster in Japan. The 2011 triple disaster had profound implications for new interactions among individuals, as the earthquake not only brought destruction to the surrounding environment, but also reconfigured many people’s sense of place, security and communal belonging. I argue that, in a post-disaster context, social media had substantial implications for individuals’ perceptions of belonging to local and regional communities, as it introduced new dimensions and forms of interaction among individuals, regardless of temporal and spatial barriers. Qualitatively approached, this study examines the evolving potential of social media to serve as space where individuals can experience and express closeness in time of crisis, creating and maintaining new forms of affective communities in digital space. Based on in-depth interviews and social media data from Japan that relates to the 3.11 disaster, this article sheds light on how social media can enable users to experience a sense of belonging to local, regional and global communities through multi-level interaction with similar others.

Recognizing the challenges associated with aging in western culture and its particular vulnerability to despair, this paper turns to an Augustinian theological anthropology in conjunction with Geriatrician Louise Aronson's social and medical description of aging among the human life stages. With Aronson, an Augustinian anthropology critiques western assumptions that autonomy, self-determination, and productivity are the primary arbiters of value. Instead, an aging anthropology marked by dependent participation, meaning found through purpose aimed at Sabbath rest, and an identity held secure through communal belonging serves as an antidote to the challenges of modern aging that ends in worship and hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of social media in disaster communication and its potential to foster a sense of communal belonging through shared emotional connection, using the case study of the 3.11 disaster in Japan. The 2011 triple disaster had profound implications for new interactions among individuals, as the earthquake not only brought destruction to the surrounding environment, but also reconfigured many people's sense of place, security and communal belonging. I argue that, in a post-disaster context, social media had substantial implications for individuals'perceptions of belonging to local and regional communities, as it introduced new dimensions and forms of interaction among individuals, regardless of temporal and spatial barriers. Qualitatively approached, this study examines the evolving potential of social media to serve as a space where individuals can experience and express closeness in time of crisis, creating and maintaining new forms of affective communities in digital space. Based on in-depth interviews and social media data from Japan that relates to the 3.11 disaster, this article sheds light on how social media can enable users to experience a sense of belonging to local, regional and global communities through multi-level interaction with similar others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]