Rumspringa ([rəmˈsprɪŋə], [rʊmˈʃprɪŋə]), also spelled Rumschpringe or Rumshpringa, is a term for a rite of passage during adolescence, translated in English as "running around", used in some Amish and Mennonite communities. The Amish, a subsect of the Anabaptist Christian movement, intentionally segregate themselves from other communities as a part of their faith. For Amish youth, the Rumspringa normally begins around the age of 14 to 16 and ends when a youth chooses baptism within the Amish church, or instead leaves the community. For Wenger Mennonites, Rumspringa occurs between ages 16 and 21. The majority choose baptism and remain in the church.
Contents
Not all Amish use this term (it does not occur in John A. Hostetler's extended discussion of adolescence among the Amish), but in sects that do, Amish elders generally view it as a time for courtship and finding a spouse. A popular view exists by which the period is institutionalized as a rite of passage, and the usual behavioral restrictions are relaxed, so that Amish youth can acquire some experience and knowledge of the non-Amish world.
Etymology
Rumspringa is a Pennsylvania German noun meaning "running around". It is derived from the verb rumspringen. It is closely related to the Standard German verb (he)rumspringen meaning "to jump around or about". The Standard German term is a compound word of the adverb herum (around, about) and the verb springen ("to jump"). However, in Swiss German as in some other southern German dialects, springen — besides meaning "to jump" — also means "to run". In modern Standard German "to skip" ordinarily would be translated with the verb hüpfen, which literally means "to hop". This term/concept also is used as a separable verb, i.e., rumspringen (to jump around) / er springt rum (he jumps around).
The Pennsylvania German noun Rumspringa was derived by contracting the first component of the Standard German term herum to 'rum - a development which is also all but general to spoken standard German - and converting the word ending to the Pennsylvania German (and general oberdeutsch) infinitive form "-a".
Popularized view
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 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, rumspringa simply refers to adolescence. During that time a certain amount of misbehavior is unsurprising and is not severely condemned (for instance, by 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. In a narrow sense the young are not bound by the 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 Ordnung, and there is no period when adolescents are formally released from these rules.
It is the period when the young person is regarded as having reached maturity, and is permitted to attend the Sunday night "sings" that are the focus of courtship among the Amish; according to Amish sources, a youth who dares to attend one of these events before the age of 16 might be force-fed warm milk from a spoon, as a good-natured reminder to observe the lines of status.
A minority of Amish youth do diverge from established customs. Some may be found:
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. Almost 90 percent of Amish teenagers choose to be baptized and join the Amish church.
Leaving the community
Some Amish youth do indeed separate themselves from the community, even going to live among the "English", or non-Amish North Americans, experiencing modern technology. Their behavior during this time does not necessarily prevent them from returning for adult baptism into the Amish church.
Most of them do not wander far from their family's homes during this time, and large numbers 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 higher retention rate than the New Order Amish within the Holmes County, Ohio community. This figure was significantly lower as recently as the 1950s. Desertion from the Amish community is not a long-term trend, and was more of a problem in the early colonial years.
Variations
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.
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 rumspringa is usually furtive, though often collective (this is especially true in smaller and more isolated populations; the larger communities are discussed below). 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 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. During 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 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 rumspringa between ages 16 and 21, a few years older than the Amish do. They typically do not get into the type of serious offenses of the most "disorderly" of the Amish youth.
Film
Rumspringa is the subject of the film documentary Devil's Playground (2002), which was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary and for three documentary Emmy Awards—Best Documentary, Editing, and Direction. Spin-offs of the film include a book of transcribed interviews, titled Rumspringa: To Be Or Not To Be Amish, and a UPN reality television series, Amish in the City.
Rumspringa is mentioned in the movie Sexdrive (2008), and "How To Be Single" (2016).
Literature
Rumspringa is the subject of Roger Rheinheimer's novel Amish Snow, which chronicles Ezra Neuenschwander’s rocky journey from victim of an abusive Amish home life to successful businessman.
Television
Mr Belvedere - season 2. Episode 20 - 1985 .....
An episode of the Fox detective series Bones ("The Plain in the Prodigy") deals with human remains found scattered along a long stretch of railroad track. Temperance "Bones" Brennan and Seeley Booth determine by their forensic study of the skeletal human body parts that they are the remains of a young Amish boy on Rumspringa. In addition, they learn who murdered him and why.
Cold Case season 5, episode 3 [entitled "Running Around"] is about the Rumspringa of a teenage Amish girl and a homicide.
Longmire season 1, episode 2 ("The Dark Road") is about the homicide of a teenage Mennonite girl who works secretly as a stripper during her Rumspringa.
In Orange is the New Black season 3, episode 9 ("Where My Dreidel At") tells Leanne's backstory and reveals that she committed a crime during Rumspringa, and the police offered her a bargain to stay out of jail if she'd go undercover with other Amish teens on Rumspringa and record their drug use and selling. She accepts the deal, but upon returning from Rumspringa to her community she is shunned for betraying other Amish teens to the police and is ultimately incarcerated for subsequent crimes.
The Amish: World's Squarest Teenagers (2010) is a Channel 4 television documentary series which focuses on five young Amish who traveled to the UK during their Rumspringa as part of an arranged cultural exchange. In each episode the group stays with British families of varying socio-economic levels, living in turn on a South London Council Estate, the Kent countryside, and a Scottish hunting estate. During their visit, they are introduced to the diverse and unfamiliar, including sex shops, street dance, single mothers, stabbings, street violence, rock music, beach parties, game shooting, and polo. The first episode of the four-episode series broadcast on July 25, 2010.
In the Rules of Engagement episode, Twice, an Amish youth experiences Rumspringa in New York with Russell Dunbar as his guide.
In the final episode of the 3rd season of My Name is Earl, Earl has to custody a young Amish girl from the "Camdenite" community during his Rumspringa ("Camdenites", Earl explains, were a small part of an Amish-like religious movement that founded a community near his hometown, Camden, after a small conflict with the rest of the movement). He does this as a way to compensate for how he and his brother years ago used to take advantage of the naivety of the girls in their period outside the community, with the unexpected consequence of leaving the community without any young ladies (since all the girls chose to abandon the Amish lifestyle after the experience).
One of the deaths in episode 32 of "1000 Ways to Die" (death #645) is the history of an Amish boy who attends a party during his Rumspringa and an excessive alcohol consumption ends up killing him due to a birth defect (his body doesn't produce Alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes) that passed unnoticed because of his religious customs.