Religious Practices of Orthodox Jewish Women on Instagram

Abstract

The article examines the religious media practices of Russian Orthodox Jews in order to identify a thematic frame that is typical for the network of women’s blogs on the Instagram platform. Previously, Russian researchers of digital Judaism have not studied the gender specifics of online religious practices. The novelty of the study lies in the research optics, which makes it possible to identify the characteristic features of women’s narratives online. The author chose content analysis as a methodology to study 10 accounts of Orthodox Jewish bloggers. The research confirms that the blogs of Orthodox Jews are the result of the mutual influence of positive and negative commandments of Judaism, as well as media requirements and norms. The most popular narratives were the rules for observing women’s religious practices, preparing for religious holidays, daily praying practices of Jewish women, the dichotomy of male and female in the everyday tradition based on the Torah, as well as the image of Jewish women in a historical and religious context. The frame “performing women’s religious practices” was designated as the dominant one. Moreover, according to the author, in following studies the concept of “opinion leader” should be used to analyze the blogs of Orthodox Jewish women, who seems to be influencers in the female Orthodox Jewish online community.