No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Modesty for Heaven's Sake: Authority and Creativity among Female Ultra-Orthodox Teenagers in Israel
Abstract
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 patterns of behavior, and religious innovation. The exegesis these women give to the texts upon which they base their practice redefines the field of modesty in two primary ways: (1) It transforms modesty from a rigid halachic dictate into a dynamic feminine “mission” that is connected to the sphere of virtues; and (2) it replaces the socio-masculine discourse upon which this observance is based with a divine imperative. This phenomenon bears witness to a shift in the types of authority that these ultra-Orthodox teenage girls are willing to accept, since the only justification they accept for their modesty practices is that of personal devotion to God.
... While reproductive decision-making is negotiated within and through many actors and systems of authoritative knowledge (Taragin-Zeller 2017, 2019a, I found that during this time of uncertainty regarding high-fertility norms, religious consultation served as an essential praxis. On the one hand, religious authority in contemporary Judaism has been heavily contested in recent years due to a fragmented structure of religious authority, a democratization of religious knowledge through online platforms, and advancements in female education and leadership (Avishai 2008a(Avishai , 2008bEl-Or 1994;Englander and Sagi 2013;Golan and Stadler 2015;Hammer 2013;Ivry and Teman 2019;Taragin-Zeller 2014). Amid this shifting state of religious authority, however, I was struck by the emerging popularity and multiple varieties of rabbinic consultation. ...
... Religious authority has been challenged in recent years by members of faith groups due to increasing levels of access to canonical texts through digital media, growing demands for gender justice and pushback against religious patriarchy, and transnational migration patterns, which trouble local notions of religious authority. Anthropologists have noted the ways religious authorities and institutions construct novel models of authoritative knowledge, legitimacy, and power in the face of these mounting contestations (Agrama 2010;Clarke 2012;Fader 2020;Ivry, 2010;Kravel-Tovi 2017;Mahmood 2005;Napolitano 2015;Stadler 2009;Taragin-Zeller 2014). Ayala Fader's (2017) work on Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn is a vivid example of the innovative ways religious authority is legitimated and performed by communal leaders in their public faith talks. ...
... These ideas run contrary to Religious-Zionist groups who embraced, supported, and even sanctified Zionism (Stadler 2009). 7. Research findings show how women all over the world are demanding access to religious texts and leadership roles (Abu-Lughod 1998;El-Or 1994;Mahmood 2005;Ochs 2007;Taragin-Zeller 2014. While some have been inspired by feminism, and others by a critique of it, there have been serious advancements in female education in both ultra-Orthodox and modern-Orthodox communities (Avishai 2008a;Caplan and Stadler 2009;El-Or 1994;Taragin-Zeller 2014). ...
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 “shop around” until they find a rabbinic opinion that resonates with their personal desires. These negotiations of religious authority and ethical freedom are worked out across a biographical trajectory, opening new possibilities to explore how religious authority fluctuates and changes over the life course. I argue that analysis of engagement with rabbis without attention to the inner diversity of interpretations and practices perpetuates a hegemonic and overly harmonious picture of religious authority. Highlighting these variations, I show how the process of consultation was more significant than mere submission to religious rulings. Religious consultation, in itself, then constitutes a significant node for making an ethical Jewish life. Attending to these aspects of religious authority has great potential to further develop and contextualize the field of ethical freedom while complicating binary models of submission versus resistance. My approach demonstrates the need to broaden our anthropological tools to better understand the ways individuals share everyday decisions with mediators of authoritative knowledge. [ religious authority, ethics, reproduction, gender, Judaism ]
... Indeed, Cahaner (2020) recently pointed out the possible tensions surrounding the dissonance that may exist in the lives of Haredi women as they balance their own preferences regarding the various roles that they play with the preferences of their spouses, their community and rabbinic authorities. Perhaps related to this is the increasingly central role that Haredi women have been seen to play in determining their own attitudes toward religious precepts impacting them as women (Stadler and Taragin-Zeller, 2017;Taragin-Zeller, 2014). Future research directly assessing perceptions of these women regarding these conflicting demands is important. ...
... The findings can also benefit those engaged in both educational and social welfare policies and legislation throughout the world, as women of faith -Christian (Buszka andEwest, 2019 Piper andGrudem,1991), Moslem (Hallward and Bekdash-Muellers, 2019;Sidani et al., 2017;Syed and Ali, 2007) and Jewish (Blumen, 2002;Caplan, 2003;Wasserman and Frenkel, 2020) navigate personal and professional identities at the intersection of the norms of their own communities and those of the general society in which they operate. First, educational programming must best prepare these women for a diverse and changing workplace. ...
Purpose
This article aims to provide an examination of the impact of Jewish religious tradition on attitudes toward life domains among Jewish Israeli women. This is the first study of importance of life-domains among women in the ultra-Orthodox community: the fastest growing population in Israel. This population exhibits a unique occupational pattern in which women are the primary economic actors. As women are transitioning into more central occupational and economic players throughout the world, this research has both theoretical and practical implications.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 567 employed Jewish Israeli women (309 secular, 138 traditional and 120 ultra-Orthodox) completed a survey about relative importance of life domains. Responses were analyzed via mean-comparison tests, ANOVA and regression analysis.
Findings
Surprisingly, religiosity was associated with higher lower work centrality. Work centrality was the highest among ultra-Orthodox women, and family centrality the lowest. Centrality of religion increased and centrality of leisure decreased with religiosity. No differences emerged regarding centrality of community.
Research limitations/implications
A limitation of this study is that attitudes toward life domains are based on one-time responses to one question. With that, the psychometric characteristics of the measure and its wide-spread use indicate its acceptability and applicability for the issue studied.
Practical implications
The data point to changes in the attitudes of ultra-Orthodox women toward life-domains. Those changes and the increased presence of these women at the workplace challenge both organizational and community leaders to reexamine how to best react to and benefit from the above.
Social implications
Ultra-orthodox society is a fundamentalist, enclave society that has, generally, been able to retain traditional internal social and familial patterns until now. However, increased exposure of community members – and particularly women – to a variety of organizations and individuals operating in them, may be contributing to changes in attitudes of those women regarding their traditional social and familial roles.
Originality/value
This study closes gaps in research examining the impact of religion and of gender on work attitudes. It does so among women in the fastest growing population of Israel, that exhibit a unique occupational pattern that can contribute to both theoreticians and policy planners regarding implications of the transition of women to more central economic roles.
... Anthropologists tend to study Haredi groups within their nation-state contexts (e.g. El-Or 1994;Fader 2009;Kasstan 2017;Stadler 2009;Taragin-Zeller 2014), and we instead push for a comparative approach that highlights how the Haredi global network of knowledge responsibility reproduces similar state-religious dilemmas around sex education. In so doing, we chart how ideas of reproduction and education "travel" (cf. ...
... Examining how religious minorities negotiate their boundaries vis-à-vis what is cast as the external world has become one of the pillars of the anthropology of religion. Over the past thirty years, scholars have particularly focused on fundamentalist groups and demonstrated how self-protective communitie s are inclined to reinforce internal taboo systems by tightening restrictions that pertain to modesty, probity, and bodily practices (e.g., Mahmood 2005;Stadler and Taragin-Zeller 2017;Taragin-Zeller 2014. Building on the seminal work of Mary Douglas (1966), researchers have defined these groups as "enclave cultures" (Almond et al. 2003, 34;Sivan 1995): distinct communities with highly demarcated cultural and moral boundaries as well as strict taboos that partition outsiders from insiders and along rigid lines of gender. ...
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 and childbirth) models of sex education. Conceptualizing these competing approaches as disputes over "knowledge responsibility," we call for more context-specific understandings of how educational responsibilities are envisioned in increasingly diverse populations.
... As part of their antiliberal inclination and their focus on historical patterns, some groups maintain a reactionary gendered division of labor and position women's role as wives and mothers at the core of their religious piety. The control of women's sexuality and the requirement of their chastity through the imposition of gender segregation and body covering have become common practices in most such groups (Taragin-Zeller 2014;Yuval-Davis 1999). Moreover, their attitudes toward modernity in its European-u.S. form, combined with their efforts to maintain community boundaries, often further complicate the integration of female members into the modern workforce (Syed and Pio 2010). ...
... The haredi community comprises 10% of Israel's population and is an enclaved community that constantly demarcates its boundaries vis-à-vis Israeli society. Women are subjected to disciplinary technologies including a strict set of behavioral rules regarding the approved dress code, interactions with men, movement and driving restrictions, and more (Elor 2018;Taragin-Zeller 2014). These restrictions are enforced by the community's authorities through mutual surveillance and self-monitoring but are also legitimized by the Israeli state that allows for gender segregation in some public spaces. ...
On the basis of a case study of the integration of Haredi Jewish women into the Israeli high-tech industry, we explore how gender–religiosity intersectionality affects ultra-conservative women’s participation in the labor market and their ability to negotiate with employers for corporate work–family practices that address their idiosyncratic requirements. We highlight the importance of pious women’s affiliation to their highly organized religious communities while taking a process-centered approach to intersectionality and focusing on the matrix of domination formed by the Israeli state, employers, and the organized ultra-orthodox community. We dub this set of actors “the unholy-trinity” and argue that it constructs a specific, religion-centric inequality regime that restrains women’s job and earning opportunities. At the same time, the “unholy trinity” also empowers women in their struggle to create a working environment that is receptive to their religiosity and what that commitment demands of them.
... 27) Findings indicate that Ultraorthodox identity is maintained in part through visible markers. Ultraorthodox society members express belonging through specific appearance norms: men typically wear black and white, while women adhere to modest dress codes including dresses, stockings, and head coverings (Brown, 2017;Carrel, 2008;Rubin & Kosman, 1997;Saiman & Chizhik-Goldschmidt, 2024;Taragin-Zeller, 2014). These visible markers define the boundary of Haredi identity for many. ...
In the present study, we delved into the personal and societal impacts of poverty in the low-income Ultraorthodox Jewish communities of Williamsburg, Borough Park, Lakewood, and Passaic along the East Coast of the United States. Based on 44 interviews with individuals who live in poverty, three main themes were found. The first revolved around issues of identity unique to Ultraorthodox society, characterized by deliberate segregation, the preservation of tradition, and a sense of moral superiority. The second theme revolved around the fact that these values/goals create challenges for people who are poor: Namely, they have expenses that are typical of the community but difficult to meet, such as high tuition in Ultraorthodox schools, the costs of their children’s marriages, and purchasing (expensive) clothing traditionally worn by members of this sector. The way in which these individuals handle such challenges was reflected in the third theme, revealing how community resources and support for poverty management often entrench them in poverty instead of eradicating it. The study reveals an ironic twist: The social capital and support networks meant to empower those in need may instead reinforce a state of dependency, obstructing empowerment initiatives and further entrenching poverty within these communities. The study concludes with proposals for policy changes that aim to alleviate poverty while preserving the fundamental community framework.
... Clothing must be unobtrusive, resulting in common colors such as white, black, gray, dark blue, and brown in the Orthodox female wardrobe. The Modern orthodox dress code is less strict and meticulous (Taragin-Zeller, 2014). Moreover, the Modern Orthodox society is more exposed to western media in an attempt to synthesize compliance with Jewish law with the secular modern world (Seigelshifer and Hartman, 2011). ...
Background
Women invest in their appearance through clothes, and the way they view their bodies translates into how they choose to dress. Nonetheless, body image research often overlooks the role of clothing in fostering body appreciation. This study examined the impact of a psychoeducational feministic course on the sociology and psychology of attire, on students’ clothing functions and body appreciation.
Methods
The participants were 114 female MA students (47 secular, 67 religious) between the ages of 24 and 64 who completed the Body Appreciation Scale and Function of Clothing scale at the beginning and end of the course.
Results
The results support the contribution of the course to changes in participants’ clothing functions and improvement in their body appreciation F(1,96) = 32.33, p < 0.001, partial Eta squared = 0.25. Surprisingly, religiousness had no impact on the results.
Discussion
This research contributes to the field of positive body image by presenting the potential role of clothing in fostering body appreciation among women. It demonstrates the benefits of investing in clothing that are less driven by external standards and more by the expression of valued aspects of the self.
... The ultra-Orthodox have many taboos about the body, specifically in reference to sexuality and private organs. This community is known for its strict modesty rules (Stadler & Taragin-Zeller, 2017;Taragin-Zeller, 2014;Yafeh, 2007). However, the men in their focus groups talked about women's bodies in specifically gynecological contexts, telling stories about pregnancy and birth and even discussing the sensitive issue of birth control. ...
We examine relationships among ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews, their doctors, and rabbis when medical decisions are made. Analyzing excerpts from sixteen focus groups with 128 ultra-Orthodox Jews, we determine how their belief system affects their decisions about whom to trust and follow when the doctor’s instructions contradict the rabbi’s advice. We argue that the strict behaviors described here with regard to relations among doctors, rabbis, and patients, function as social capital that raises the status of ultra-Orthodox Jews as members of an exclusive club that balances health decisions with the social demand to obey their religious leaders.
... Jewish materialities are, on the whole, fairly well represented in this turn to the material (see Stolow 2010on religious texts, Fader et al. 2007 on Jewish museum exhibits and Yares 2022 on their gift shops, Leibman 2020 on domestic objects, Klein 2012 on food, and Ore 2018 on the cooking process and its things, or Shandler and Weintraub 2007 on greeting cards). However, one area remains under-investigated: there is little research studying Jewish clothing choices, religious grab, or head/hair coverings (see Benor 2012, Harel 2019, Milligan 2014b, Taragin-Zeller 2014, Yafeh 2007 and even less that focuses on non-Orthodox Jewish sartorial practices (Emmett 2007, Milligan 2013, and Darwin 2017 are notable exceptions). The little work that does exist in this area tends to focus on individuals' choices about when, where, and why to wear a head/hair covering and how those choices tie into identity formation or expression. ...
In the lives of students in Luxembourg’s Liberal Jewish complementary school, flexibility and mobility are highly valued as key characteristics of modern living. Complementary school students feel they easily meet these criteria—they are multilingual, cosmopolitan, and their approach to Jewish life is flexible, and equally importantly, they look, dress, and comport themselves “like everyone else.” These factors are understood to facilitate multiple movements and belongings in the contemporary world. The students directly contrast their ways of being with those of more observant Jews whom they refer to as “religious”; the material, embodied, and visible nature of observant Jewish life is perceived to be an impediment to participation and success in the secular sphere. However, when Jewishness appears in these students’ secular school classrooms, it is most often represented by Orthodox-presenting men—often a man in a yarmulke. Further, these men and their yarmulkes are taken to represent all Jews, framed as a homogeneous group of religious adherents. For many complementary school students, these experiences can be jarring—they suddenly find themselves on the “wrong” side of the religious–secular divide and grouped together with those from whom they could not feel more distant. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a material approach to religion, this article argues that the yarmulke comes to point to different levels and modes of observance and identities and enable different possible belongings in the secular public sphere as it travels across contexts that include different definitions of and attitudes toward religion and Jewishness.
... For Haredim especially, the protection of young people and adolescents is balanced against religious self-protectionism, whereby any response must explicitly 'reinforce' and not 'undermine' 'the overall approach' (Spitzer 2021). Haredi Jewish educators might argue that the prevalence of 'rape culture' in broader UK society, which is evidently converging in Jewish schools, is not characteristic of Haredi lifeworlds given the stringent emphasis on modesty and gender separation (Kasstan 2019;Fader 2009;Stadler 2009;Taragin-Zeller 2014). Modesty frameworks, however, do enable institutional silencing around sexual abuse-which is increasingly being challenged offline and online (Fader 2020;Kravel-Tovi 2020). ...
Since the emergence of the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, online tracts have been employed to publicly reveal experiences of sexual abuse and assault among women and men in religious institutions and to shame abusers, which tend to be examined as an issue of women’s rights or child protection from adult predators. Drawing on the use of digital reporting platforms to testify against peer offences within religious schools, this paper asks how do such testimonies reveal adolescent agency and provoke policy re/actions about the accountability of religious institutions? Digital revelations submitted anonymously to Everyone’s Invited are analysed alongside interviews conducted with educators, parents, and youths in Jewish schools in Britain. Findings indicate how adolescent digital revelations of peer sexual abuse call for accountability by implicating the faith schools in question, which in turn triggers pedagogical and policy debates from educators. Public responses reflect diverging denominational positions on how to balance the protection of young people and safeguard religious self-protectionism. The paper spotlights the agency of youth in shaming peer abusers as much as faith schools and structures of religious authority, and in turn, how online shaming reveals frictions over accountability.
... Terms like "revealing" clothing define sexual modesty based on uncovered body areas or by close approximation of the wearer's form, and such clothing may be chosen with erotic intent or to deflect sexual attention (Maurer & Robinson, 2008), (Michelman, 2003) (Fields, 2002). Many religious groups prescribe closely observed rules for clothing (including head, face, arm, and leg covering) as a means of generating selfrespect, signally social membership, and deepening relationships with one's faith (Bryant, 2006;Taragin-Zeller, 2014). However, adherence to clothing requirements for dress and gendered sexual modesty scripts creates conflicts in globalized or immigrant communities, especially in workplace environments or in everyday activities such as public exercise (Avance, 2010;Blakesley, 2009;Boulanouar, 2006;Bouvier, 2016), (Sehlikoglu, 2016;Syed et al., 2010). ...
Sexual modesty is the social, cultural, interpersonal, and psychological systems - defined by the tenets of Script Theory - that regulate individuals' sexual expression and experience at the social, legal, and interpersonal boundaries of acceptable/not-acceptable, private/public, and personal/social. Almost all aspects of sexual expression and experience are touched by the pervasive modesty standards for sexual communication, sexual display, sexual relations, and sexual behaviors. Sexual modesty influences an array of sexual and reproductive health outcomes. Many aspects of sexual modesty are enforced by legal as well as social, cultural, and religious proscriptions, including social shaming and ostracism as well as corporal and capital punishments. The purpose of this paper is to summarize a diverse literature related to sexual modesty from the years 2000 to 2021 in order to clarify its role in sexual health and sexual wellbeing and to identify directions for new research.
... 12 In an earlier study, Taragin-Zeller showed that female students and teachers in a Haredi seminary reinterpreted canonical rabbinic texts on modesty, imbuing them with a remarkably different-but certainly not subversive-meaning. 13 These articulations of critique from within are helpful in contextualizing the anti-sexual violence campaign under consideration here, because most of my Haredi interlocutors, rather than discarding Haredi rules of conduct altogether, hold onto their sense of belonging as Haredi individuals. Their battle takes place within and for the benefit of their own society. ...
Over the last decade, ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) society in Israel has begun to counter sexual violence in ways and on a scale previously unimagined. The shift has been spearheaded by a heterogeneous network of haredi activists, professionals, community leaders and survivors, who are laboring to flag the issue on the community agenda as a high-priority social ill and to assist individuals and families in need. Pushing back against prevailing cultures of denial and silence, this groundbreaking movement works toward new possible scripts for communal accountability. Based on anthropological fieldwork underwritten by feminist sensibilities, I demonstrate that these anti-sexual violence initiatives are creating a venue for public criticism of rabbinic complicity and for the envisioning and enactment of new formations of rabbinic leadership. While this venue is not necessarily subversive in essence, the climate it helps foster is potentially critical, as these discussions expose and unpack taken-for-granted, unchallenged or opaque structures of rabbinic power and authority.
... This population can be loosely divided into Lithuanian yeshiva-based (Torah learning) communities, Hasidic dynasties, and Sephardi Haredim (who trace their origins to the Iberian peninsula, North Africa, and the Middle East). Differences aside, all Haredim are easily identified by their more or less uniform dress code: black hats and dark suits for men, and similarly colored ankle-length skirts, long sleeves, and head coverings or wigs for women (Taragin-Zeller, 2014. ...
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 health decision making. Survey results show that both religious and health-related justifications were common for personal decisions, yet a disparity was found between the ways social distancing guidelines were perceived in the general education context compared with the religious context, signaling the importance for inclusive models of science communication that account for religious sensibilities and state-minority relations.
... popularly known as niddah (Feinson & Meir, 2012), organize marital sexuality through a recurring cycle of sexual purity and impurity (surrounding menstruation), thus demarcating periods of permitted and forbidden physical intimacy between spouses (Avishai, 2008;Ribner, 2003). Intertwined in all areas of bodily practice are the themes of modesty and concealment (tzniut) and restraint regarding inner drives and outward behavior (Taragin-Zeller, 2014;Yafeh, 2007), characterized by abstinence of touching the opposite gender (negia). All Ultra-Orthodox women ideologically adhere to these renunciation and concealment practices, which are designed to make the body and its material needs "fade away" or disappear. ...
This study explored a manual-based group intervention protocol for culturally sensitive short-term dance/movement therapy, as possibly contributing to bodily and psychological perceptions in a unique sample of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women. The insulated, restrictive Ultra-Orthodox society prescribes distinct gender roles, modesty, and strong regulation of women’s physical, sexual, and reproductive lives. Participants (N = 47) were ages 22–55 years (M = 33.32; SD = 7.75). Pre-post assessments included two body-perception measures (Body Appreciation Scale comprising positive body image; Body Investment Scale comprising body image, feelings and attitudes, body care, body protection and comfort in touch) and three psychological self-perception questionnaires (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale; Mental Health Inventory comprising psychological well-being and psychological distress; and "Big Five" Inventory). Overall, significant changes emerged in women’s positive body image, body care, comfort in touch, psychological well-being, and conscientiousness personality trait. Discussion focused on in-depth examination of this protocol-based intervention’s strategies and mechanisms that were both culturally appropriate and effective in facilitating body perceptions and well-being.
... Research about women in Jewish Orthodox societies currently covers a range of issues regarding self-expression, defining the boundaries of body and dress, education, and employment. However, all of these reflect the female viewpoint, with the male establishment expressing its opposition or remaining silent (see, for example, Chesler and Haut 2002;El-Or 2006;Avishai 2008;Neriya-Ben Shahar 2011;Israel-Cohen 2012;Taragin-Zeller 2014;Zalcberg Black 2014/2015. Since men determine women's status in devout societies, I intend to examine how religious leaders encourage changes and women's advancement in the modern world of education and employment while simultaneously preventing change to their inferior political status, which in this article means entry into communal leadership, participation in community decision-making processes, and equality with respect to religious rites. ...
In ultra-Orthodox Israeli societies, the male leadership controls sources of knowledge and education. The women are directed towards fields of knowledge regarding education and social welfare, so that they will remain in a home environment. Even when working outside the home. In contrast, this article will demonstrate that there is an ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, in which the male political and spiritual leadership encourages women to acquire an academic and professional education so they will be able to fulfill themselves and make a respectable living. The test case is the leadership of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party and its attitude to women’s education and their employment outside the community. The article will also demonstrate that despite the modern values of education and employment, the men’s hierarchical status is retained.
... Similarly, other scholars of conservative Christian women argue that religion empowers women (Brasher, 1998;Gardner, 2011). Although moving away from the empowerment model, research on Orthodox Jewish women (Avishai, 2008;Fader, 2009;Taragin-Zeller, 2014) and Muslim women (Deeb, 2006;Mahmood, 2008) examines how piety shapes women's religious selves, rather than focusing exclusively on how religious women suffer in conservative religious traditions. ...
This article examines religious and gendered identities through an ethnographic study of unmarried evangelical Christian women in London. Moving away from an approach that shows that women feel empowered through their conservative, male-dominated religious environment, or else they find it constraining and leave the church, this article investigates the experiences of women who feel limited by their church, and still remain embedded in their Christian environment. The article begins by exploring the normative figure of the ideal Christian woman operative in this context. It then describes the experiences of women who do not fit the norm, outlining the affective toll they suffer through marginality. Finally, the article examines how some women rely on hope in order to change the normative framework within their church. This article argues that leaving and staying are not static categories; instead evangelical women, frustrated with their marginal positions, revealed a continuum of investment underlain by resilience and hope.
... To answer these questions, this article analyzes original open-ended survey data about Jewish women who wear yarmulkes, colloquially known as kippot (small skullcaps that are traditionally worn by Jewish men). This study expands upon the extant literature on women's religious observance that has mainly focused on whether gender-normative practices are oppressive or empowering (Bartkowski and Read 2003;Predelli 2004;Read and Bartkowski 2000;Scott 2009;Shirazi 2001;Taragin-Zeller 2014;Williams and Vashi 2007). Simultaneously, this study advances research about the gender-religion nexus, which has hitherto focused on gender-normative case studies (Avishai 2008;Irby 2014;Rao 2015). ...
This article advances a critical gender lens on the sociology of religion by arguing that “doing gender” and “doing religion” function as intertwined systems of accountability. To demonstrate the inextricability of these two systems, this study analyzes open-ended survey data from 576 Jewish women who wear kippot (skullcaps that are traditionally worn by Jewish men). These women’s responses reveal that this religious practice is fraught with social sanctions on the basis of the women’s simultaneous gender deviance and religious deviance. These women are not read as simply “doing Jewish” when they wear kippot; rather, they are read as doing something that is implicitly gendered, such as “doing religious feminism.” It appears that when Jewish women “un/re/do religion,” they simultaneously “un/re/do gender” and vice versa: gender scripts and religious scripts are inextricably intertwined.
... Another important factor that may affect ultra-Orthodox parents' attitudes is the prevailing attitude to sexuality in this society. In the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community, modesty is an important value (Taragin-Zeller, 2014); therefore, discourse on sexuality, its characters, and boundaries is unacceptable between parents and children; ultra-Orthodox youth are expected to refrain from any sexual experiences, and sexual education is limited and provided prior to the wedding (Ribner & Rosenbaum, 2005;Rosenbaum, De Paauw, Aloni, & Heruti, 2013). This may affect parental attitudes, increasing their tendency not to suspect (or reject their own or This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
Sibling sexual abuse (SSA) represents a range of childhood sexual behaviors that cannot be considered manifestations of age-appropriate curiosity. Despite being the commonest and longest lasting form of sexual abuse within the family, SSA is the least reported, treated, and researched. This qualitative study is based on a sample of 60 mostly religious Jewish families referred to a child advocacy center (CAC) in Jerusalem from 2010 to 2015. It examines parental attitudes to SSA and their reconstruction, during and after their experience at the CAC. Analysis of case summaries and documented conversations between child protection officers and parents reveals 2 main initial parental attitudes after the disclosure SSA. The first is the attitude that no sexual acts took place at all. The second is that they did occur, with 3 different variations: the sexual acts as “not serious,” as a “rupture in the family’s ideal narrative,” and as “another tragic episode in the family’s tragic life story.” Findings also suggest that the CAC intervention is a turning point, leading most parents to reconstruct their initial attitudes from “never happened” or “not serious” to “rupture in the family image” or to “another negative event in the family.” These findings underscore the need to study the experiences of parents whose children were involved in SSA to inform policy, treatment and research. This is critical, as interventions that are not aligned with family attitudes and needs are known to exacerbate the family crisis.
... . Since this initial hijab debate, the head covering corpus has expanded to include Jewish women's practices as well (Bronner 1993;Schreiber 2003;Weiss 2009;Zalcberg and Almog 2009;Seigelshifer and Hartman 2011;Fuchs 2012;Inbari 2012;Israel-Cohen 2012;Taragin-Zeller 2014). However, with two exceptions, this corpus has remained focused on gender-normative 1 practices, while omitting from reference the Jewish women who wear yarmulkes or kippot (singular, kippah): skullcaps that are traditionally worn by Jewish men (Milligan 2012(Milligan , 2014.The purpose of this study is to destigmatize and demystify this seemingly radical head covering practice, by highlighting the multiplicity of meanings that Jewish women associate with their kippot. ...
Considerable literature has examined the meanings associated with gender-normative religious head covering practices such as Muslim women’s hijabs, Jewish women’s sheitels and headscarves, and Jewish men’s kippot. However, very few studies have explored the meanings of Jewish women’s kippot. This article advances Amy Milligan’s ethnographic research on this matter through open-ended survey data from 576 Jewish women who wear kippot. Unlike Milligan’s lesbian sample, this largely heterosexual sample claims to wear the kippah for many of the same reasons that men do: to “do Jewish,” “feel Jewish,” “look Jewish,” and to display their status relative to other Jews. Respondents acknowledge that their kippah practice also signifies egalitarianism, but they emphasize that this is but one of the garment’s many meanings.
This postscript addresses the findings of researchers examining the complex relationship between strict religious observance, gender dynamics, feminism, and state transformations. It underscores the importance of gender analysis within religious groups to enhance our theoretical frameworks. Highlighting religious movements' insights into contemporary practices, it considers global gender and sexuality norm shifts, from same-sex marriage legalization in Europe to the #MeToo movement’s impact. Stadler critically analyzes the papers in this Special Issue, and illustrates how these groups navigate changing moral and religious landscapes. This analysis provides sociologists and anthropologists with a crucial perspective on fundamentalist groups’ responses to modern gender, sexual, and identity challenges. Key themes include religious-state entwinements, tradition’s reconfigurations, gender, and feminist views on religious extremism. Stadler introduces case studies across Christian, Muslim, and Jewish contexts globally, highlighting how comparative analysis reveals fundamentalism, gender, and state interactions. By synthesizing the Special Issue’s contributions, Stadler advances religious theory, illuminating the intricate ties between devout religion, gender dynamics, and the state. This postscript advocates for further research into these vital areas, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive understanding of religious beliefs and practices’ transformative effects on societal and individual levels.
This study advances our understanding of modesty practices within religious groups by examining mixed-gender groups among Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. Through ethnographic participant observation and semi-structured interviews, my research addresses three questions central to understanding modesty practices: How do members of these religious bodies define and enforce acceptable practices of modesty and body management in mixed-gender settings? What mechanisms transmit written and unwritten rules within these groups? And how do religious leaders and texts shape modesty discourse and practices? Drawing on Hobsbawm’s differentiation between old and invented traditions, this comparative analysis reveals that Amish modesty manifests primarily through behavioral practices and parent-to-child transmission, while Ultra-Orthodox modesty encompasses both behavioral practices and formal discourse, relying on texts and books alongside interpersonal transmission. These findings suggest that Amish modesty represents largely an old tradition, while Ultra-Orthodox modesty exemplifies primarily an invented tradition. [Abstract by author.]
This article explores how economic socialization serves as a bridge between individual economic behaviors and the broader social and cultural contexts that shape them. Drawing on a post-functionalist approach to socialization, the study examines the ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Israel, where distinct gender roles, cultural norms and patterns of economic participation create a unique context for investigating divergent economic socialization pathways. Comparing four groups within the Haredi community—average/below-average and high-income women, men with work experience, and men who study at religious seminaries (Yeshiva/Kollel)—analysis of an original survey study reveals how differential exposure to economic life leads to significant variations in financial risk-taking, loss-aversion, financial literacy and competitiveness. The findings problematize explanations attributing economic gender gaps to innate differences, instead highlighting the profound impact of the cultural framing of gender roles vis-à-vis economic integration. By foregrounding economic socialization as a sociological phenomenon, the study contributes to discourses on culture’s role in economic behavior and opens new avenues for examining how individuals acquire economic dispositions through socialization pathways shaped by structural constraints and power relations.
During the past 15 years, there has been a rapid increase in interfaith initiatives in the United Kingdom. Even though the “interfaith industry,” as some have cynically called it, has rapidly increased, the involvement of women in these groups has been relatively low. Based on ethnographic data, including 20 interviews and 3 years of fieldwork with female interfaith activists in the United Kingdom (2017–2020), this ethnography focuses on the emergence of Jewish and Muslim female interfaith initiatives, analyzing the creative ways religious women negotiate their challenges and struggles as women of faith, together. I examine the ways Jewish and Muslim women form nuanced representations of female piety that disrupt “strictly observant” gendered representations, thus diversifying the binary categories of what being Jewish, or Muslim, entails. Further, whereas former studies have focused on interfaith settings as crucial for the construction of religious identities, I show that interfaith activism also serves as a site for religious minorities to learn how to become British citizens. In a highly politicized Britain, where allegations of racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia prevail, I argue that Jewish-Muslim encounters are sites for the construction and performances of British civic citizenship well beyond the prescriptions of the state. Drawing on these findings, I situate interfaith activism at the anthropological intersection of gender, religion, and citizenship, and as a site that reproduces and disrupts minority-state relationality.
In the ultra-Orthodox Jewish tradition, there are different types of schools for men and women, providing education for their varying social and religious roles. This difference is particularly visible in the religious education curricula. Until 1917, the religious education that women were able to receive, albeit to a lesser extent than the religious education received by men, was not systematised. In the late nineteenth century, the rapidly growing interest in the secular world among girls was mainly characterised by the lack of religious education for Jewish girls, and Sarah Schenirer (1883-1935) found it necessary to open religious schools for Jewish girls as a solution. With this initiative, Schenirer called for change in an anti-innovationist culture and aimed to help Ultra-Orthodox girls retain their Jewish identity and remain connected to the community. To this end, Schenirer founded the first Bais Yaakov school in 1917, and within a few years the school grew rapidly into an extensive “network of schools” across Europe, and became known as the Bais Yaakov movement. This initiative acted as the domino that initiated the change in the addressee profile of religious education within the anti-innovationist Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. In this respect, knowing Sarah Schenirer is key to analysing how Bais Yaakov legitimised itself within Ultra-Orthodox Judaism and how this innovation in girls' education found a foundation within a tradition that seemed to lack the necessary resources and support. Considering that there are not enough studies on religious education in Ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Turkey, we believe that this study on the educational activities of Bais Yaakov will contribute to the field of history of religions.
The recent rise in extremism, authoritarianism, displacement and isolationism signals troubled times for the most marginalized groups in societies. In this article, our primary emphasis is on a specific aspect of marginalization within organizational theory – referred to as cultural marginalization. We argue that the existing literature lacks an adequate theoretical understanding to address this phenomenon. To theorize cultural marginalization and uncover how marginalized groups may cope with such circumstances, we build on and problematize the culture-as-toolkit perspective. We integrate this perspective with other cultural theories that consider power structures more prominently. Drawing on this theoretical base, we develop a typology of four dynamics of cultural marginalization and conceptualize the specific cultural survival and cultural autonomy processes marginalized groups may undertake to safeguard their culture. In doing so, we contribute to the ongoing debate surrounding the toolkit perspective by providing novel insights into how marginalized groups utilize their socio-culturally constrained cultural resources in distinct ways, compared with more resourceful actors and groups. Our theoretical contributions pave the way for new avenues of research to deepen our understanding of the general process of cultural marginalization and to direct further inquiry into the survival strategies of marginalized groups and how they might (re)gain autonomy.
Drawing on the qualitative research of Jewish ultraorthodox female fashion entrepreneurs (JUFFE) in Israel, we examine how women's body regulations are collectively negotiated, challenged, and resisted. Our paper shows that, through the disruption of religious clothing and hairstyling, JUFFEs have challenged the patriarchal expectations of women's ideal type in their authoritative society and triggered various changes that allowed for the construction of alternative forms of femininity. Our contributions are twofold: First, we advance the understanding of the body as a site of resistance by exposing the analytical constituents of embodied resistance, namely, the forms of femininity constructed through embodied resistance, which demands are challenged, which types of modesty are resisted, which bodily means are used in women's resistance acts, and the implications of the resistance. By deepening our understanding of the constitutive resources of embodied resistance, we offer a more nuanced and detailed analysis of the various embodied ways and means through which women of religious communities may prompt changes regarding women's visibility and economic status. Second, we broaden the conceptualization of resistance's outcomes in authoritarian regimes by demonstrating how alternative religious femininities are constructed through the collective power of fashion. We present two manifestations of femininity: femininity as a marker of diversity (individualized femininity) and femininity as a marker of economic status (affluent femininity)—both deviate from the one prescribed by their leadership and community. We demonstrate how entrepreneurs' subversive messages are diffused through their clientele's bodies as the carriers of their subversive messages.
This article draws on the anthropology of crisis to analyze ways in which communal-religious responses to crisis situations can reveal engrained social and cultural structures, and especially their gendered aspects. We focus on two alternative forms of Jewish communal prayer service that emerged in Orthodox communities in Israel during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: street and balcony minyans. Based on interviews and texts, we explore Orthodox women's experiences of these new religious spaces that entailed the rearrangement of traditional gender and spatial boundaries. We show that while these spaces opened room for new religious experiences for women, they ultimately accentuated their experiences of exclusion. We argue that the destabilization of the physical religious space in these alternative communal prayers reinforced symbolic gender boundaries. Thus, our study not only demonstrates how crises can uncover the deep social grammar of a community, but also how they unearth processes that defy and challenge that grammar.
Religious disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism is becoming more prevalent and of interest to researchers. In Orthodox Judaism, though gender norms dictate everyday life, research on the role of gender in disaffiliation is scarce. This study analyzed data from a parent study describing the personal experiences of men and women raised as Orthodox Jews who either disaffiliated from the practice (N women = 153, N men = 153) or continued practicing (N women = 168, N men = 146), examined through the lens of gender. Gender differences had a divergent pattern: disaffiliated women reported adverse social/emotional experiences at a significantly higher rate than disaffiliated men and all affiliates, while all men reported adverse education experiences at a significantly higher rate than women. These patterns may, in part, be due to community norms and differential willingness to report outcomes by disaffiliated and affiliated individuals. Our findings highlight the influence of gender on the experiences within the religious community and the complex process of disaffiliation.
This article offers an anthropological look at sacred textuality by exploring the social and theological structure of Jewish religious nationalism in Israel and the West Bank. It argues that the study of sacred texts serves as a medium through which Jewish religious Zionists articulate what it means to return to an ancestral homeland. It demonstrates how the study of these sacred texts is implicated in the cultivation of two different structural modes through which religious Zionists relate to ideas of homecoming. On one side, homecoming rests in a revolutionary force of intellectual insight; on the other, it is expressed through the mystical and mysterious force of prophecy. In a broader sense, this article critiques the reticence of anthropologists to engage seriously with the broader theological ideas that are expressed through a textual medium that can be so much a part of the everyday experiences of individuals living in text-based societies.
This article explores how women in religious workplaces respond to organizational norms of and requirements for modest dress and behavior, both implicit and explicit. It compares two case studies: women working for faith-based organizations (FBOs) in the UK, and women working for secular organizations who travel for work to Saudi Arabia, where the state requirement to dress modesty meant wearing an abaya (slightly relaxed in 2019). Data come from semi-structured interviews with 43 women: 21 who travelled from the UK to Saudi Arabia and 22 who work in UK FBOs. It examines three themes: how women adapt to forms of modest dress, how they navigate dress regulation, and how they negotiate habitus and authenticity. The article proposes that women’s modest dress in workplaces governed by religious codes be understood as a form of lived religious practice and one that raises dilemmas of habitus and authenticity.
The term ‘sibling sexual dynamics’ (SSD) describes (in this study) a continuum of childhood sexual behaviours that are inconsistent with age‐appropriate curiosity and can include abuse (SSA). The present qualitative study, based on 20 semi‐structured interviews, conducts an analysis via constructivist grounded theory on the perspectives of adults who, as children in the Orthodox Jewish community, experienced sexual interactions with one or more of their siblings. Ultimately, the goal is to deepen the understanding of the religio‐cultural aspects of SSD in this cultural context. The findings reveal three main themes: (1) taboos, both those relating to intrafamilial sexual encounters and the religious taboo around sexuality in general; (2) family hierarchic dynamics, including gender‐based hierarchies; and (3) religious prohibition, a concept that the participants perceive as influencing their modes of thought and logic. The study highlights the need for practitioners to attend to the double ambiguity arising from the sibling and religious contexts. Additionally, we suggest that distinguishing between religious and interpretative socio‐cultural factors may provide practitioners with a path to create a dialogue with clients, individuals and religious leaders within the community around issues that may constitute risk for sibling sexual acts and abuse.
This article responds to the seismic transformations in urban relations to the ordinary, which have emerged in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a condition in which mundane objects and actions have been permeated by the pressure of law and ethics. I draw together reflections from an ethnography conducted a few years ago in the strictly orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Stamford Hill, London, with more recent autoethnographic reflections from the adjacent area of Stoke Newington. Exploring productive resonances between these times, spaces and scenes, the article challenges prominent representations of orthodox life as pathologically invested in the ordinary. I seek to enact a form of what Veena Das terms ‘adjacent thinking’ to make two interventions: first, to shed new light on the violence, pressures and possibilities of the transfiguration of the pandemic everyday; and second, to explore how we might cope with our yearning for the mundane-of-before by engaging with an emergent vitality in our relations to the ordinary.
Photographs of female clergy conducting Jewish ceremonies in Reform synagogues are considered highly controversial by Ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Israel. Such photographs appear on social media of Reform Judaism, which advocates egalitarianism in religion. Beit Daniel synagogue in Tel Aviv is active in this realm, introducing images of diversity and inclusion in their social networks. The study presents an analysis of forms photographic documentation of ceremonies in and outside the synagogue, posted on Facebook and websites. This study engages in a visual analysis of the images. It decodes the visual elements that participate in a struggle for visual cultural normalization of gender egalitarianism. Concepts of religious viewing and critical viewing of images on social media are discussed.
Using both a religious and secular example, this article seeks to understand the intersection between authority and creativity in leadership. A hermeneutic of semantic theory guided the analysis of the early chapters of Genesis, supporting the use of these two attributes in effective leadership. By allow- ing the world to be very good and yet not perfect, God offers humanity the potential to use authority and creativity in a way that reflects His own character. The prohibition that God establishes enhances rather than hinders humanity’s potential for authority and creativity by framing a context for these at- tributes to grow. Additionally, the contemporary leadership analysis suggests the importance of under- standing how authority, power, creativity, and freedom are associated with both leadership and follow- ership. Here, again, the literature suggests that a boundary marking authority is needed for the fullest expression of creativity to occur. The question naturally arises as to what occurs when there are vary- ing levels of authority and creativity in an organizational context. These varying levels result in the development of a model of leadership that seeks to understand the dimensions of Order and Freedom in four typologies measuring the degree of authority and creativity in organizational contexts and rec- ommends a greater balance between authority and creativity for both leadership and followership.
This study examines media agenda and attention in Israel, as they were reflected and constructed in the elite Haaretz and popular Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom dailies as of October 2018 until the three election campaigns of 2019-2020. Using quantitative content analysis, we examine the extent to which election campaigns have an impact on the stability of the presentation of public policy issues in the media and on the variety of issues the media cover. This was done by considering the ideological and journalistic orientations of each of the three newspapers as well. Findings show that of the three election campaigns, only in the September 2019 elections (perceived as a "close race") did the agenda of the three newspapers become less stable and less diverse. Thus, the very occurrence of an external political event (e.g., an election campaign) does not necessarily cause media attention to be more focused on that event. Media attention will experience stabilization and focus during election campaigns, only when news outlets perceive these elections as critical.
This paper explores how criticism surrounding the ethics and safety of biomedical technologies circulates and ‘converts’ through global–local religious encounters, producing new claims of moral opposition and rights to religious freedom. The paper is concerned with the question of what rhetorical devices make vaccine safety doubt relevant to religiously Orthodox settings and what implications arise? Based on an ethnographic study of vaccine decision-making and non-vaccination advocacy in Jerusalem, the paper examines how opposition is forged amidst evolving global–local encounters and relations. The data reveal how Christian activists attempt to engender ethical and moral opposition to vaccination among American Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem by ‘converting’ public criticism around safety into a religious discourse of bodily governance. Pinpointing how critiques of biomedical technologies discursively ‘convert’ offers a conceptual template in anthropology to chart how counter-positions are formed and transformed amidst evolving tensions between biomedical and religious cosmologies.
In 2018 the Jerusalem District Court fined the Haredi Kol Barama radio station 1 million shekels ($280,000) for excluding women from the airwaves, stirring outrage within the Haredi community, highly sensitive to appearances of women in public contexts, which had created the station to provide radio broadcasts for its constituents, whose needs were not met by mainstream radio stations. The affair thus serves as a cardinal test of the level of freedom of a radio station, the interests of minority religious audiences, and the powers and responsibilities of the supervising public broadcasting authority.
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 which are antithetical: steadfast resistance to and general acceptance of “calculated family planning.” Seeking a middle road, the third model, “flexible decision-making,” reveals how couples push off and welcome pregnancies simultaneously. Unravelling the illusion of a binary model of planned/unplanned parenthood, I call for nuanced models of reproductive decision-making.
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 the religious elite. While well-established, knowledgeable and assertive religious members find private ways to bypass the almost unachievable levels of fertility, a veil of secrecy leaves less privileged groups, particularly ba'aley teshuva (returnees) to carry most of the fertility load. Whereas scholars of religious transformation have demonstrated how religious elites act as actors and leaders of resistance, my findings illustrate an opposite pattern. Instead of disseminating this critique publicly, religious elites engage in private strategies of secrecy and creative performances of failure that enable these individuals to diverge from norms without publicly contesting them. I argue that not only is stratified critique based on social and cultural capital, it also reproduces social inequalities. By focusing on doubt, struggles, and failures engendered in “everyday Judaism,” these findings require us to refocus our inquiry on power structures within different sub-groups of Israel’s Orthodox Jews. Further, this unique case study highlights how stratified reproduction takes new shape as social and religious convictions gain and lose their force at a particular moment in history.
This article will explore how different contemporary groups of Israeli religious Zionists read and relate to the Biblical tales of Samson. Using current religious Zionist discourse (Bible lessons, newspaper articles and written opinion pieces) authored or delivered by leading rabbinic figures, this article will demonstrate how contemporary interpretations of the ‘Samson Saga’ (Judges 13–16) are used as a medium through which contemporary religious Zionists in Israel and the West Bank contest the meanings of political sovereignty, violence and personal ethics. More broadly, this article will argue that a focus on how sacred texts are interpreted, debated and contested in social contexts (or the ‘social life’ of a text) can offer scholars a thicker and more nuanced window into the varied ways in which religious nationalists grapple with competing political visions and desires.
The meeting with an ultra-Orthodox group in Israel reveals their internal work to protect themselves from the harmful influences of the surrounding society. The new generations call into question the immutable figures of the man devoted to study and of the mother devoted to the family. Male asceticism and feminine virtue change in interaction with the world.
This paper examines how ultra-orthodox women perceive the socioeconomic reality of contemporary ultra-orthodox society in Israel. In practice most ultra-orthodox women work, and they play an important role in the financial support of their family. The ultra-orthodox press, a major socialization mechanism, has a dualistic approach to this paradox: on the one hand it encourages women to work in order to provide for their family and support their husband in his studies. On the other hand, it makes clear that work is not an aim in itself (a career), but rather a means (an occupation) for the financial support of the family. Through in-depth interviews, 25 ultra-orthodox women were asked about their reactions to a text published under the title " Be Modest " in Our Home (Habyit Shelanu)-a women's supplement in the newspaper HaModi'a). The text argued that women's important place is in the home, and they should maintain a sense of modesty regarding the hierarchy of their various roles inside and outside the home. An analysis based on grounded theory in the field found three voices: first, an essentialist voice, which perceives men and women as creatures who are different in essence and therefore have different roles; second, a sociological voice, which analyzes the socioeconomic circumstances of ultra-orthodox society and assigns women the task of providing financial support as a matter of necessity, given the reality of their husbands being engaged in Torah study; third, a critical voice of women who dared to point out the dangers and repercussions of women going out and working: the destabilization of the husband-wife relationship, the family unit, and the social system in the ultra-orthodox sector. These very different voices, which will be explored using relevant studies, illustrate one of the fascinating developments taking place in Israel's ultra-orthodox society in the twenty-first century. orthodox women; livelihood; private and public space; modesty; reading texts
New ritual practices performed by Jewish women can serve as test cases for an examination of the phenomenon of the creation of religious rituals by women. These food-related rituals, which have been termed “amen meals” were developed in Israel beginning in the year 2000 and subsequently spread to Jewish women in Europe and the United States. This study employs a qualitative-ethnographic methodology grounded in participant-observation and in-depth interviews to describe these nonobligatory, extra-halakhic rituals. What makes these rituals stand out is the women’s sense that through these rituals they experience a direct connection to God and, thus, can change reality, i.e., bring about jobs, marriages, children, health, and salvation for friends and loved ones. The “amen” rituals also create an open, inclusive woman’s space imbued with strong spiritual-emotional energies that counter the women’s religious marginality. Finally, the purposes and functions of these rituals, including identity building and displays of cultural capital, are considered within a theoretical framework that views “doing gender” and “doing religion” as an integrated experience.
Sociological studies of women's experiences with conservative religions are typically framed by a paradox that ponders women's complicity. The prevailing view associates agency with strategic subjects who use religion to further extra-religious ends and pays little attention to the cultural and institutional contexts that shape “compliance.” This paper suggests an alternative framing. Rather than asking why women comply, I examine agency as religious conduct and religiosity as a constructed status. Drawing on a study that examined how orthodox Jewish Israeli women observe, negotiate, and make sense of regulations of marital sexuality, this paper explains religious women's agency as religious conduct, or the “doing” of religion. I demonstrate that doing religion is associated with a search for authentic religious subjecthood and that religiosity is shaped in accordance with the logics of one's religion, and in the context of controlling messages about threatened symbolic boundaries and cultural Others.
Pious Women”(above, note 14); Elor, (above
- Seeberger-Sofer