Abstract
ABSTRACTThis 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]
Highlights
RABBINIC AUTHORITY IN ORTHODOX JUDAISMOrthodox Jews currently account for roughly 19 percent of Israel’s population (ICBS 2019) and comprise multiple groups that can be loosely divided into the following streams: the ultra-Orthodox communities (Haredi), the Hasidic dynasties (Hasidic), the Religious Zionists, and national Haredim (Hardal).4 While differentiated by origin, rabbinic leaders, and customs, all groups purportedly adhere to an extensive body of Talmudic and post-Talmudic exegesis and share a stringent “orthopraxis stemming from a shared commitment to Halacha [Jewish law]” (Novis-Deutsch and Engelberg 2012, 7)
According to Irshai, even though most opinions in Jewish law require two children, contraception exists within a complex legal system of concerns that may be taken into consideration, such as physical and mental health, financial issues, and child welfare (e.g., Shulchan Aruch, Aruch Hashulchan Even Haezer 1:8)
Rabbinic leaders, and customs, all groups purportedly adhere to an extensive body of Talmudic and post-Talmudic exegesis and share a stringent “orthopraxis stemming from a shared commitment to Halacha [Jewish law]” (Novis-Deutsch and Engelberg 2012, 7)
Summary
Orthodox Jews currently account for roughly 19 percent of Israel’s population (ICBS 2019) and comprise multiple groups that can be loosely divided into the following streams: the ultra-Orthodox communities (Haredi), the Hasidic dynasties (Hasidic), the Religious Zionists (sometimes referred to as modern-Orthodox [i.e., Dati Leumi]), and national Haredim (Hardal). While differentiated by origin, rabbinic leaders, and customs, all groups purportedly adhere to an extensive body of Talmudic and post-Talmudic exegesis and share a stringent “orthopraxis stemming from a shared commitment to Halacha [Jewish law]” (Novis-Deutsch and Engelberg 2012, 7). At the beginning of the twentieth century, rabbis put forward creative interpretations of the concept “Da’at Torah” (literally “The Torah View”) that accentuated the authority of outstanding rabbinic scholars (Brown 2014) This view can be summarized in the following notion: “The great religious authorities hold the power to issue rulings in their specific area of expertise but in all areas of life, including the political realm” (Brown 2014, 255–56). This article fills this gap by highlighting the diverse way Orthodox Jews negotiate rabbinic authority in their “ordinary” reproductive decisions
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