Lea Taragin-Zeller

University of Cambridge | Cam

In this commentary, we lay out a research agenda for studying religion and science communication that moves beyond theological and moral tensions to include embodied knowledge practices and orientation toward particular vocational futures. Based on findings from a case study of a National Geographic Kids magazine tailored for Orthodox Jews, we argu...

A recent wave of studies has diversified science communication by emphasizing gender, race, and disability. In this article, we focus on the understudied lens of religion. Based on an analysis of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) science journalism and its readership, we identify four main strategies for tailoring science, which we call the four “R”s—removin...

Scholars have identified a range of variables that predict public health compliance during COVID-19, including: psychological, institutional and situational variables as well as demographic characteristics, such as gender, location and age. In this paper, we argue that religious affiliation is also a clear predictor for compliance with public healt...

Despite growing interest in community-level science literacy, most studies focus on communities of interest who come together through particular science, environmental or health-related goals. We examine a pre-existing community—ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel—with a particular history and politics vis-à-vis science, technology, and medicine. First,...

Drawing on thirty in-depth interviews with faith leaders in the UK (including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Sikhism), we examine the diverse ways religious groups reorient religious life during COVID-19. Analysing the shift to virtual and home-based worship, we show the creative ways religious communities altered their customs, ritual...

This article examines the varying ways religious devotees utilize, negotiate, embrace, and reject religious authorities in their everyday lives. Ethnographically exploring the ways that Orthodox Jews share reproductive decisions with rabbinic authorities, I demonstrate how some sanctify rabbinic rulings, while others dismiss them, or continue to “s...

While calls for more inclusive science communication have primarily focused on race, gender and disability, this conversation draws our attention to science communication among religious minorities. Drawing on the case study of Haredi Jews in Israel, the goal of this webinar is to explore the range of challenges science communication poses for reli...

While scholars have highlighted how science communication reifies forms of structural inequality, especially race and gender, we examine the challenges science communication pose for religious minorities. Drawing on the disproportionate magnitude of COVID-19-related morbidity on Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox Jews, we examined their processes of COVID-19...

Sex education presents a major dilemma for state-minority relations, reflecting a conflict between basic rights to education and religious freedom. In this comparative ethnography of informal sex education among ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) in Israel and England, we frame the critical difference between "age-appropriate" and "life-stage" (marriage...

Drawing on an ethnographic study of reproduction in Israel, in this article I demonstrate how Orthodox Jews delineate borders between the godly and the human in their daily reproductive practices. Exploring the multiple ways access to technology affects religious belief and observance, I describe three approaches to marital birth control, two of wh...

As Israel’s Orthodox Jews struggle to live up to high fertility norms rooted in religious and Zionist ideals, an obscured model of stratified critique has emerged. Based on an ethnography of Israel’s reproductive landscape, I demonstrate how critique of high fertility standards is based on particular social and cultural capital only available to th...

The ethnographic research that I conducted at a Bais Yaakov seminary in Jerusalem demonstrates how ultra-Orthodox female teachers and their teenage pupils structure an ideology of modesty through the reinterpretation of canonical texts on modesty. In this study, I show that modesty is a creative sphere informed by two trends: the adoption of modern...