Disturbing Traditions The Amish Try To Hide From Outsiders

Every culture has traditions it displays and traditions it doesn't. The ones it displays are the ones that photograph well. The ones that make the community look exactly the way it wants to be seen. The ones that end up on the brochure. And then there are the other ones. The ones passed down quietly, practiced behind closed doors, never mentioned to outsiders, never acknowledged in the documentaries, never explained to the tourists buying quilts at the roadside stand. Every culture has both categories. What separates the Amish from most is the size of the gap between them. Because the Amish have built, over three centuries, one of the most effective public images in American cultural life. And behind that image, in the space between the postcard and the reality, there are traditions that have been documented by researchers, uncovered by journalists, testified to in courtrooms, and described in detail by the people who grew up inside them — traditions that the community has every reason to keep invisible, and that deserve, for the first time, to be examined in the full light of day.