A Rabbi of One's Own? Navigating Religious Authority and Ethical Freedom in Everyday Judaism

Funder: Israeli Democracy InstituteABSTRACT: 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

A Rabbi of One's Own? Navigating Religious Authority and Ethical Freedom in Everyday Judaism

Funder: Israeli Democracy InstituteABSTRACT: 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

Like a Snake in Paradise

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.La rencontre avec un groupe ultra-orthodoxe en Israël révèle le travail interne de ses membres pour se préserver des influences néfastes de la société environnante. Les nouvelles générations remettent ainsi en question les figures immuables de l’homme adonné à l’étude et de la mère dévouée à la famille. L’ascèse masculine et la vertu feminine s’infléchissent au contact du monde.El encuentro con un grupo ultraortodoxo en Israel revela su trabajo interno para preservarse de las influencias nefastas de la sociedad circundante. Las nuevas generaciones cuestionan así las figuras inmutables del hombre dedicado al estudio y de la madre devota de la familia. La ascesis masculina y la virtud femenina se desalinean en el contacto con el mundo

"Conceiving God's Children": Toward a Flexible Model of Reproductive Decision-Making.

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.Hebrew University and Israeli Democracy Institut