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In this article the author addresses the sociologist J. Kugelmass's question by analyzing the author's ongoing fieldwork among the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta community of Jerusalem. It is not the author's intention to list the comparative merits or demerits of the insider versus outsider anthropologist. Rather, the author is interested in showing how a combination of factors, namely, the nature of the anthropological enterprise, the modalities of ultra orthodoxy's relationship to those who do not belong, and the personal status and qualities of the researcher, may lead the field experiences of the non-Jewish insider anthropologist of the ultra-orthodox to be remarkably similar to those of a non observant Jewish insider anthropologist. Ever since sociologist Frederick Barth's seminal work on ethnic groups, anthropologists have held that it is at the boundaries or in encounters with the other that a group's identity is constructed and reinforced. Following this school of analysis, sociologist W. Shaffir analyzed aspects of Hasidic curricula, proselytizing activities, and negotiations of conflict to show how the Hasidim proclaim and maintain their distinctiveness in these three areas by throwing the otherness of the others into relief.

The use of names as a means to express or enforce an ideology, or as a strategy of resistance, reveals their power to encode. In this article the author examines the names which modern-day Zionist idealists give to their children. Jewish personal names have functioned, through the ages, both to reveal and to encode. Some socialists suggests that Jewish first names are more than convenient labels for classification that facilitate communication. Although Jewish law does not stipulate a naming system, it does enjoin that a child be given a good name, which will aid its development along the right path in life. Similarly, even though scholars tend to catalogue names and naming under the somewhat apolitical category of Jewish folklore and customs, they have been used as political instruments. Early Zionist settlers in Palestine, for example, exploited the malleability of names by adopting new names to express their collective politiconational renaissance. In this article the author describes how one community of modern-day Zionist idealists name their children. The author remarks that Modern-day Zionist idealist is a term of self-identification used by members of the West Bank settlement of Tekoa.