Do you really know how they make love? The limits on intimacy with ethnographic informants

Abstract

The article is based upon two years of field work among ultraorthodox Jewish women from the Hassidic sect of “Gur” in Tel-Aviv Israel. It deals with the question of possible intimacy between a woman ethnographer and a woman informant. On the theoretical level, the paper presents a predicament between the opportunities for intimacy — anticipated from ethnographic theory — and the obligations that such relationships might impose upon the research. The article describes how both women have learned to recognize the limits of intimacy with each other and what happened when they decided to go beyond those limits. On the narrative level, the paper is a portrayal of everyday reality of ultraorthodox woman and women who live within a nonorthodox society.