“Not Being Counted”: Women's Place and Religious Space in Jewish Orthodox Communities During the COVID-19 Crisis

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Fuchs, Ofira (Author) ; Werczberger, Rachel (Author) ; Guzmen-Carmeli, Shlomo (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2024
In: Journal for the scientific study of religion
Year: 2024, Volume: 63, Issue: 1, Pages: 181-195
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Israel / Woman / Orthodox Judaism / Worship service / COVID-19 (Disease) / Pandemic / Sex difference / Exclusion / History 2020-2022
IxTheo Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AE Psychology of religion
BH Judaism
KBL Near East and North Africa
RC Liturgy
TK Recent history
Further subjects:B Women
B Orthodox Judaism
B Covid-19
B anthropology of crisis
B communal prayer
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1468-5906
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal for the scientific study of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/jssr.12885