A Rabbi of One's Own? Navigating Religious Authority and Ethical Freedom in Everyday Judaism

Abstract

This article examines the varying ways religious devotees utilize, negotiate, embrace, and reject religious authorities in their everyday lives. Ethnographically exploring the ways that Orthodox Jews share reproductive decisions with rabbinic authorities, I demonstrate how some sanctify rabbinic rulings, while others dismiss them, or continue to “shop around” until they find a rabbinic opinion that resonates with their personal desires. These negotiations of religious authority and ethical freedom are worked out across a biographical trajectory, opening new possibilities to explore how religious authority fluctuates and changes over the life course. I argue that analysis of engagement with rabbis without attention to the inner diversity of interpretations and practices perpetuates a hegemonic and overly harmonious picture of religious authority. Highlighting these variations, I show how the process of consultation was more significant than mere submission to religious rulings. Religious consultation, in itself, then constitutes a significant node for making an ethical Jewish life. Attending to these aspects of religious authority has great potential to further develop and contextualize the field of ethical freedom while complicating binary models of submission versus resistance. My approach demonstrates the need to broaden our anthropological tools to better understand the ways individuals share everyday decisions with mediators of authoritative knowledge. [religious authority, ethics, reproduction, gender, Judaism]

“We think this way as a society!”: Community-level science literacy among ultra-Orthodox Jews

“…While this particular event is specifically connected to COVID-19, it brings to the fore many of the familiar tensions between religion and science, medical authority and religious authority, and individual versus communal power ( Fader, 2020 ; Gross et al, 2019 ; Taragin-Zeller, 2019 , 2021 ). These types of tensions have been documented by ethnographers of science and medicine, both in the context of medical care ( Ivry and Teman, 2019 ; Kasstan, 2019 ; Raucher, 2020 ) and in the context of legal-ethical disputes, such as organ donation and brain-death ( Gross et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Furthermore, in the case at hand, almost all of these experts are male, which is surprising due to the lower levels of science education among Haredi men. Hence, while these organizations offer relevant knowledge and expertise, these networks also perpetuate insular models of gendered knowledge gatekeeping (see: Taragin-Zeller, 2021 ). Our analysis showcases how medical askanim cultivate their scientific knowledge and expertise outside of institutionalized science education programs.…”

Viral Entanglements: Bodies, Belonging and Truth‐claims in Health Borderlands

“…In Israel, anthropologists have explored how rabbinic interventions in clinical encounters give rise to "kosher medicine" as a "local mode of medical care," which is premised on a "growing tendency to think of medical interventions as imperative for observing God's commandments" (Ivry 2010: 663). This integration of biomedicine and religion is especially apparent for reproductive technologies, which shape how religious Jews actualize and interpret the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" (Ivry 2010;Kahn 2006;Kasstan 2019;Taragin-Zeller 2021). But ideas of protection are not always projected in line with religious or medical opinion (Kasstan 2021a).…”

Frum mames : faire la maternité, le genre et la judéité parmi les femmes juives hassidiques de Montréal

“…En même temps, elle a continué son parcours et elle envisage de le poursuivre lorsqu’elle disposera de plus de temps. Ensuite, les propos de Rivka ouvrent sur la question de son agentivité, qui n’est pas que « reproductive » (Raucher, 2020) ou « religieuse » (Longman, 2002) mais qui inclut la volonté de s’affirmer professionnellement, même si cela implique de négocier, voire même de défier l’autorité religieuse (Taragin-Zeller, 2021).…”