rumspringa

{{lang|pdc|Rumspringa}} is a Pennsylvania German noun meaning 'running around'. It is a cognate of the colloquial German verb {{lang|de|rumspringen}}.{{cite book |last=Wittmer |first=Joe |title=The Gentle People: Personal Reflections of Amish Life, With Contributions from Amish Children and Adults |publisher=Minneapolis: Educational Media Corporation |year=1991 |page=75 }} {{ISBN?}}The word is also translated thus in {{cite book |last=Kraybill |first=Donald R. |year=2001 |title=The Riddle of Amish Culture |pages=119, 145 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |isbn=978-0801867729 }} Dialects do not derive from standard languages, but as a cognate, this expression is closely related to the Standard German verb {{lang|de|herumspringen}} meaning 'to jump around or about'. The Standard German term is a compound word of the adverb {{wikt-lang|de|herum}} (around, about) and the verb {{wikt-lang|de|springen}} ('to jump'). However, in some southern German dialects, {{lang|de|springen}} ({{lang|gsw|schbrenga}} in Swabian) means 'to run'. This term/concept also is used as a separable verb, i.e., {{wikt-lang|de|rumspringen}} ('to jump around') / {{lang|de|er springt rum}} ('he jumps around').

In Pennsylvania German, the prefix {{lang|pdc|rum}} is a contraction of {{lang|pdc|herum}} – a development which is also all but general to spoken standard German. The infinitive (and gerund) form {{lang|pdc|-a}} is standard in Pennsylvania German and other forms of general Upper German.

Amish adolescents may engage in rebellious behavior, resisting or defying parental norms. In many cultures, enforcement may be relaxed, and misbehavior tolerated or overlooked to a degree. A view of {{lang|pdc|rumspringa}} has emerged in popular culture that this divergence from custom is an accepted part of adolescence or a rite of passage for Amish youth.

Among the Amish, however, {{lang|pdc|rumspringa}} simply refers to adolescence. During that time a certain amount of misbehavior is unsurprising and is not severely condemned (for instance, by {{Lang|de|Meidung}} or shunning). Adults who have made a permanent and public commitment to the faith would be held to the higher standards of behavior defined in part by the Schleitheim and Dordrecht confessions.{{cite book |last=Bowman |first=Carl Desportes. |title=Brethren Society: The Cultural Transformation of a Peculiar People |year=1995 |isbn=0801849055 |page=75 |publisher=JHU Press }} In a narrow sense, the young are not bound by the {{lang|pdc|Ordnung}} because they have not taken adult membership in the church. Amish adolescents do remain, however, under the strict authority of parents who are bound to {{lang|pdc|Ordnung}}, and there is no period when adolescents are formally released from these rules.{{cite book |author=John A. Hostetler |title=Amish Society |url=https://archive.org/details/amishsociety00host_0 |url-access=registration |edition=4th |location=Baltimore |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0801844423 |author-link=John A. Hostetler }}{{rp|154}}{{cite book |editor-last=Igou |editor-first=Brad |title=The Amish in their Own Words: Amish Writings from 25 Years of Family Life Magazine |location=Scottdale, Pennsylvania and Waterloo, Ontario |publisher=Herald Press |year=1999 |pages=165–166}}{{cite book |author=Nolt, Steven M. |title=A History of the Amish |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781561480722 |url-access=registration |location=Intercourse, Pennsylvania |publisher=Good Books |year=1992 |page=105 |isbn=978-1561480722 }}{{cite web |url=http://amishamerica.com/2010/03/rumspringa-myths-and-reality.html |title=Rumspringa-Myths and Reality |last=Wesner |first=Erik |date=March 7, 2010 |publisher=Amish America blog |access-date=April 4, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100413214928/http://amishamerica.com/2010/03/rumspringa-myths-and-reality.html |archive-date=April 13, 2010 }}{{cite web |url=http://www.holycrosslivonia.org/amish/q_and_a_no2.htm |title=Joe Wittmer, PhD, Responds to Questions Regarding the Amish (Installment #2) |last=Wittmer |first=Joe |publisher=Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church |location=Livonia, Michigan |access-date=April 4, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120101131958/http://holycrosslivonia.org/amish/q_and_a_no2.htm |archive-date=January 1, 2012 }}

It is the period when a young person is considered to have reached maturity and is allowed to attend the Sunday night "singings," which are central to courtship among the Amish. According to Amish sources, a youth who attends one of these events before the age of 16 might be force-fed warm milk from a spoon, as a good-natured reminder to respect the social boundaries. Members of the local church district often attend the singings and usually bring younger children along.

A minority of Amish youth do diverge from established customs.{{rp|13}} Some may be found:{{rp|10–11}}

• Wearing non-traditional clothing and hair styles (referred to as "dressing English"){{cite web |url=http://video.pbs.org/video/2200745636/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120302211908/http://video.pbs.org/video/2200745636 |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 2, 2012 |title=American Experience The Amish |publisher=PBS |date=February 27, 2012 |access-date=October 18, 2012 }}
• Driving vehicles other than horse-drawn vehicles (for communities that eschew motor vehicles)
• Not attending home prayer
• Drinking and using other recreational drugs

Not all youth diverge from custom during this period; approximately half in the larger communities and the majority in smaller Amish communities remain within the norms of Amish dress or behavior during adolescence.{{rp|13}} Almost 90% of Amish teenagers choose to be baptized and join the Amish church.

Some Amish youth do indeed separate themselves from the community, even going to live among the "English," or non-Amish Americans, experiencing modern technology. Their behavior during this time does not necessarily prevent them from returning for adult baptism into the Amish church.{{Citation needed|date=December 2013}}

Most of them do not wander far from their family's homes during this time, and large numbers (85–90%){{cite book

|author = Stollznow K.

|title = God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States

|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=iw6eCwAAQBAJ

|publisher = Pitchstone Publishing

|year = 2014

|page = 29

|isbn = 978-1939578082

}} ultimately choose to join the church. However, this proportion varies from community to community, and within a community between more and less acculturated Amish. For example, Swartzentruber Amish have a lower retention rate than Andy Weaver Amish (90% vs 97%;{{cite book

|author = {{nobr|Hurst C.E.}}, {{nobr|McConnell D.L.}}

|title = An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the World's Largest Amish Community

|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=SvxpZ37sRd8C

|publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press

|year = 2010

|pages = 29

|series = Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies

|isbn = 978-0801897900

}} although most of Swartzentruber Amish do not allow teenagers to leave the community during rumspringa at will).{{cite book| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=SvxpZ37sRd8C | title = An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the World's Largest Amish Community |year= 2010 | pages = 71–80| isbn = 978-0801897900| last1 = Hurst| first1 = Charles E.| last2 = McConnell| first2 = David L.| publisher = JHU Press }}{{cite book

|author = {{nobr|Mackall J.}}

|title = Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish

|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=FUWHZ3s_1A8C

|publisher = Beacon Press

|year = 2007

|isbn = 978-0807010617

|pages = 65

}} This figure was significantly lower as recently as the 1950s. Leaving the Amish community is not a long-term trend, and was more of a problem during the early colonial years.

{{Unsourced|section|date=April 2024}}

As among the non-Amish, there is variation among communities and individual families as to the best response to adolescent misbehavior. Some Amish communities hold views similar to Old Order Mennonite, and Conservative Mennonites in seeking more productive, spiritual activities for their youth. Some even take up meditation.{{citation needed |date=January 2016 }}

In some cases, patience and forbearance prevail, and in others, vigorous discipline. Far from an open separation from parental ways, the misbehavior of young people during the {{lang|pdc|rumspringa}} is usually furtive, though often collective (this is especially true in smaller and more isolated populations). They may or may not mingle with non-Amish in these excursions. The age is marked normatively in some Amish communities by allowing the young man to purchase a small "courting buggy", or – in some communities – by painting the yard-gate blue (traditionally meaning "daughter of marriageable age living here"; the custom is noted by A. M. Aurand in The Amish (1938), along with the reasonable caution that sometimes a blue gate is just a blue gate). There is some opinion that adolescent rebellion tends to be more radical, more institutionalized (and therefore in a sense more accepted) in the more restrictive communities.

The nature of the {{lang|pdc|rumspringa}} period differs from individual to individual and from community to community. In large Amish communities like those of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; Holmes and Wayne Counties, Ohio; and Elkhart and LaGrange Counties, Indiana, the Amish are numerous enough that an Amish youth subculture exists.{{cite news |title=Rumspringa: Amish Teens Venture into Modern Vices |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5455572 |publisher=NPR |date=June 7, 2006}} During {{lang|pdc|rumspringa}}, the Amish youth in these large communities will join one of various groups ranging from the most rebellious to the least. These groups are not necessarily divided across traditional Amish church district boundaries, although they often are. In many smaller communities, Amish youth may have a much more restricted {{lang|pdc|rumspringa}}, and likewise may be less likely to partake in strong rebellious behavior, as they lack the anonymity of larger communities.

Wenger Mennonites youth go through a period of {{lang|pdc|rumspringa}} starting at age 17 and typically ending at marriage, a few years older than the Amish do. Since most of the youth get baptized when they are ages 16 to 19, they typically do not get into the type of serious offenses of the most "disorderly" of the Amish youth.{{rp|169–73,244}}

{{Unsourced|section|date=April 2024}}

Rumspringa is mentioned in the standard works about the Amish, like Hostettler’s Amish Society, the works of Donald Kraybill, An Amish Paradox by Hurst and McConell and others, but there is only one scholarly book about it:

• Richard A. Stevick: Growing up Amish: The Teenage Years, Baltimore, 2007.

There is also one documentary book:

• Tom Shachtman: Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish, New York, 2006.

Devil's Playground (2002) was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary and for three documentary Emmy Awards{{snd}}Best Documentary, Editing, and Direction.{{cite web |date=August 11, 2003 |title=The 24th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Award Nominees |url=http://www.emmyonline.tv/news/archive/nominations/news_24th_nominees.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111005163406/http://www.emmyonline.tv/news/archive/nominations/news_24th_nominees.pdf |archive-date=October 5, 2011 |work=emmyonline.tv |publisher=National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences |df=mdy-all}} Spin-offs of the film include a book of transcribed interviews, titled Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish,{{citation needed|date=May 2016}} and a UPN reality television series, Amish in the City.

Levi Miller's 1989 novel Ben's Wayne describes the rumspringa of an 18-year-old Amish youth in Holmes County, Ohio, during the fall of 1960. According to Richard A. Stevick, the novel is a realistic portrayal of the rumspringa of that time.Richard A. Stevick: Growing up Amish: The Teenage Years, Baltimore, 2007, pp. 153–154.

Rumspringa is also mentioned in several biographies of ex-Amish like e.g. Ira Wagler's Growing up Amish.

There are several books in the literary genre Amish romance that deal with rumspringa, but mostly with no gain in knowledge about the subject. Levi Miller's novel Ben's Wayne is an exception, since it is a realistic portrayal of rumspringa in 1960.

• Levi Miller: Ben's Wayne, Intercourse, PA, 1989.

{{multiple issues|section=yes|

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{{in popular culture|date=October 2024}}

}}

Amish teens throw a wild party which includes Fall Out Boy in the film Sex Drive.

A season 6 episode of the sitcom New Girl entitled "Rumspringa" features three of the main characters going on a trip which they refer to as a Rumspringa.

A season 6 episode of the Canadian sitcom Letterkenny entitled "Dyck's Slip Out" features two characters who go missing on their Rumspringa.

A season 5 episode of the series Bones features the main characters trying to solve the murder of an Amish teen who was on his Rumspringa.

A season 5 episode of the police procedural drama Cold Case entitled "Running Around" features the main characters trying to solve the murder of an Amish teen who was on her Rumspringa.

A season 1 episode of the series Longmire entitled "The Dark Road" features the main characters trying to solve the murder of a Mennonite teen who was on her Rumspringa.

A Netflix movie called {{Ill|Rumspringa (film)|de|3=Rumspringa – Ein Amish in Berlin|lt=Rumspringa}} was released in 2022 and features the experiences of a young Amish person on Rumspringa in Berlin.

Episode 9, Season 10 of ER titled "Missing" has as its central storyline two Amish teenagers involved in a car collision whilst exploring Chicago. They both must choose whether to return or not.

A season 5 episode of the 2018 series Magnum P.I. featured Magnum and Higgins being hired by a young Amish teenager to track down his sister, who came to the island for her Rumspringa and never returned.

In a season 6 episode of the sitcom 30 Rock, called "Leap Day", Liz Lemon talks about her "crazy" experience on Rumspringa after high school.

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{{Rites of passage}}

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Category:Protestantism in Pennsylvania

Category:Rites of passage

Category:Amish

Category:Mennonitism

Category:Religion in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Category:Adolescence

de:Rumspringa