Academic articles and chapters
“Ultra-Orthodox Jews from the ‘Margins:’ Revisiting Book Tradition.” AJS Review, 46.1 (2022). 80-104.
Early social science scholarship on Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews told a story about Haredi life wherein the yeshiva rescued Orthodox Jews from extinction. Many social scientists have viewed ultra-Orthodoxy through the lens of the yeshiva, and by extension disembodied men and rabbinic stringencies. This lens presented ultra-Orthodoxy as a society of certainty, with the ultimate authority in text. Based on a survey of the field, I found that although more scholars have conducted research outside the yeshiva, and scholars continue to demonstrate the many ways that Haredim are no longer solely a society of learners, new scholarship still reflects an outdated paradigm of understanding Haredi life. I argue that when we shift the perspective away from this narrative, we come to see that embodiment, competing authorities, and doubt are also integral to Haredi life and part of its definition.
“Jewish Pronatalism: Policy and Praxis.” Religion Compass, 15.7 (2021). 1-13.
Pronatalism is the practice and ideology of encouraging biological reproduction. While many religions as well as national and ethnic identities can be described as pronatalist, scholarship about reproduction among Jews often describes Jews and Judaism as foundationally and absolutely pronatalist. This article demonstrates the nuances of existing pronatalism in Jewish policy and practice, and highlights diverse reproductive practices and strategies among Jews in order to demonstrate that pronatalism is not the sum total of Jewish reproductive policy, advocacy, or praxis. Section 2 provides a brief overview of some of the biblical and rabbinic sources that many view as religious roots for Jewish prontalism. The sections 3.1 and 3.2 focus on Jewish pronatalism in Israel and America. Throughout this article, we will see how pronatalism has been applied and internalized through ethnic, racial, and able-bodied lenses. While pronatalism is undoubtedly a strong cultural and religious force, this article provides a nuanced picture of reproduction among Jews by considering reproductive practices and strategies of Jewish women to be in conversation with pronatalist policies and ideologies. By decentering pronatalism in the study of reproduction and attitudes toward reproduction, we see that demographic continuity is just one of many considerations in Jewish reproductive practices.
With Michelle McGowan. “Cross-Cultural Teaching about Abortion and Religion.” In Teaching Sexuality and the Abrahamic Traditions: Perspective Transformation and Embodied Learning. Edited by Darryl W. Stephens and Kate Ott, 109-124. New York: Routledge 2020.
This chapter provides two cross-cultural approaches to teaching about abortion and religion in American universities, presenting a complexity of religious perspectives extending beyond dominant Catholic and Evangelical pro-life narratives. The authors use comparative approaches to introduce students to moral and religious perspectives on abortion that have emerged in the United States, Israel, and the Netherlands since the 1970s. These trans-religious and trans-national approaches denaturalize abortion politics as American university students know it. Complicating students’ understandings about the religious and social values underpinning the moral permissibility of abortion allows them to bring a more critical eye to historical and contemporary abortion debates in US contexts as well as abroad. Such comparative approaches encourage students to think about the morality of abortion with more nuance by widening their knowledge and experiences of approaches to global regulation of abortion and religious perspectives on abortion. This pedagogical approach promotes perspective transformation through recognition of diverse moral frameworks and the role of socio-political and religious contexts in framing the permissibility of abortion.
“People of the Book, Women of the Body: Reproductive Literacy among ultra-Orthodox Women in Jerusalem,” Body and Religion, 3.2 (2019). 108-129.
Jews have often been referred to as ‘People of the book.’ This is because books, specifically those that contain rabbinic legal discourse, are understood to be authoritative guides for Jewish life, and those who have achieved mastery in the content of the books are considered authorities. Although ‘people of the book’ is often used to refer to all Jews, book culture has been almost entirely constructed by men, particularly among ultra-Orthodox Jews. This article offers a different framework, one which sees women’s religious authority growing out of embodied experiences. Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) women challenge the dominant paradigm for religious authority by insisting that their pregnant bodies replace books and rabbis. While a woman’s body might be seen as an impediment to her religious authority, I argue that women become capable of exercising religious authority through their embodied experiences of bearing children. During my two years of ethnographic research with Haredi women in Jerusalem, I found that after giving birth to two or three children, Haredi women felt authorized to make decisions about their pregnancies without consulting a rabbi. After a woman has two or three children, she develops what I refer to as ‘reproductive literacy,’ meaning she knows how to use her embodied reproductive experiences as knowledge, expertise, and thus authority over reproduction. Through a close reading of pregnancy advice books and an analysis of how Haredi women use these books, I show that how Haredi women embody authority to make decisions about the maintenance and continuation of Haredi life.
“Whose Womb and Whose Ethics? Surrogacy in Jewish Ethics,” Journal of Jewish Ethics, 3.1 (2017). 68-91.
Through the comparison of Jewish ethical arguments about surrogacy and ethnographic data from surrogacy in Israel, this article argues that normative Jewish ethics does not respond to the contemporary lived experience of surrogacy. On the ground, some normative Jewish ethical concerns are resolved easily, and yet we will find that the lived experience raises issues not even addressed by Jewish ethicists. This article looks at questions of maternal identity and the exploitation of surrogates through the comparison of normative Jewish ethics with ethnographic data. In the conclusion it considers how to improve the methodology of Jewish ethics to better reflect the reality on the ground.
“Ethnography and Jewish Ethics: Lessons from a Case Study in Reproductive Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 44.4 (2016). 636-658.
This essay offers a Jewish approach to ethnography in religious ethics. Following the work of other ethnographers working in religious ethics, I explore how an ethnographic account of reproductive ethics among Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish women in Jerusalem enhances and improves Jewish ethical discourse. I argue that ethnography should become an integral part of Jewish ethics for three reasons. First, with a contextual approach to guidance and application of law and norms, an ethnographic approach to Jewish ethics parallels the way ethical decisions are made on a daily basis in Jewish communities. Second, ethnography bolsters the voices of those involved in ethical discourse. Third, ethnography facilitates the bridge between local ethical questions and global ethical discourse.
“Anonymous Intimacy: Orthodox Jewish Women as Legal Advisors on the Internet.” In Digital Judaism. Edited by Heidi Campbell, 74-90. New York: Routledge, 2015.
In the late 1990s, Nishmat, a women’s seminary in Jerusalem, Israel, began training women to become advisors to other women on particular topics within Jewish law. These advisors, or Yoatzot, were trained to answer questions on a hotline, but the hotline quickly reached its capacity for the number of calls it could handle every week. Responding to the urgent need for Yoatzot to be able to reach more women, Rabbanit Chana Henkin, the founder and dean of Nishmat, decided to create an online forum for Yoatzot to answer questions. Using the Internet has allowed the Yoatzot Halacha (female advisors in areas of Jewish law) to reach a global population of women, as many write in with questions from English-speaking countries. The Internet has also allowed Nishmat to spread its message of encouraging women to educate themselves in areas of Jewish law. In this chapter I explore the ways in which Yoatzot Halacha use the Internet to challenge rabbinic authority offline, expand women’s roles online and alter the legal discourse for halachically-observant women. In these ways, Yoatzot Halacha and the founders of this program are changing the practice of Judaism for many women and particularly their method of communication with religious authorities.
“The Cultural and Legal Reproduction of Poverty: Abortion Legislation in Israel,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 30.1 (2014). 147-156.
In this series of essays reflecting on the thirtieth anniversary of the first publication of Beverly Wildung Harrison’s Our Right to Choose, this article shifts our focus. While the other authors examine contemporary reproductive concerns in light of Harrison’s analysis, I consider how well Harrison’s argument has mapped onto another geographic location and another religious tradition. Here, I analyze the discourse in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) surrounding the 1970s legalization of abortion in Israel. A close reading of the debate reveals that various facets of Harrison’s argument resonated with the Israeli Jewish scene. Supporting Harrison’s main argument that we must investigate the economic and racial realities within the sexism ever present in antiabortion discourse, I argue that the economic context of the abortion debate in Israel was critical in shaping the new legislation. In what follows, I consider a few of Harrison’s main arguments in Our Right to Choose and show how the abortion discourse in Israel supported Harrison’s claims.
“What they Mean by ‘Good Science’: The Medical Community’s Response to Boutique Fetal Ultrasounds,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 34.5 (2009). 528-544.
Since 1994, when the first fetal imaging boutique appeared in Texas, many sites have been established around the country for parents to receive nonmedical fetal imaging using three- and four-dimensional ultrasound machines. These businesses boast the benefits they offer to parental-fetal bonding, but the medical community objects to the use of ultrasound machines for nonmedical purposes. In this article, I present the statements released by the medical community, highlighting the alarmist strategies used to paint boutique ultrasounds as bad science and elevate the medical use of ultrasounds. Through a close reading of the statements, it is shown that the medical community's primary concern is not the health of the fetus or the woman but rather their place as the sole users of fetal ultrasounds. This detailed analysis reveals a medical community fearful that its authority is being usurped and is therefore responding with statements meant to denigrate boutique fetal ultrasounds.
Public-facing articles
“From Justification to Justice: Calling for a New Conservative Movement Position on Abortion” Masorti Journal 67.1 (Winter 2022-2023)
In this article I review the Conservative Movement’s official positions on abortion, as seen through teshuvot from the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), as well as statements and resolutions from the Rabbinical Assembly (RA).1 These publications, written between 1975 and 2022, have often been composed in response to a law, court case, or regulation being discussed in the American political sphere. I will demonstrate that, through these publications, the Conservative movement created an official position about abortion rights that reflected the justification framework. This framework starts from the assumption that abortion is morally wrong but can be permitted—that is, justified—in certain circumstances. I argue that the Conservative Movement’s position on abortion is ethically flawed because of its reliance on the justification framework and because it does not reflect the lived experience of abortion in the United States. In line with feminist ethical critiques of halakhah, I maintain that the CJLS and the RA have overlooked women’s experiences. Conservative Jewish leaders should revisit their teshuvot and resolutions on abortion and revise them in order to foreground and center the experiences of Jews who have had abortions.