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作者

Elazar Ben-Lulu

来源

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY,Vol.50,Issue2,P.231–260

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

1Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, USA;2Azrieli Center for Israel Studies, The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

摘要

Anthropologists see life-cycle rituals as a significant way to understand gender roles and identities in religious communities. While in the past, these compulsory rituals involved a significant change in a person’s social status, today many of their traditional features have been transformed. This ethnographic inquiry examines Bat Mitzvah ceremonies (coming of age rituals for girls) in Israeli Reform Jewish congregations. By including new blessings, appropriating masculine religious symbols, and creating new bodily gestures, the feminine life-cycle ritual challenges the traditional Jewish laws and contemporary socio-cultural constructions of the Israeli Jewish community. The exclusion of the Israeli Reform community from mainstream Jewish religion turns this ritual into a subversive act that battles local Jewish Orthodoxy authority. The ceremony is a political performance, which positions the Reform congregations as an activist religious agent for gender equality in the Israeli public space.