Women of the wall: radical feminism as an opportunity for a new discourse in Israel

Shakdiel, Leah

doi:10.1080/13531040212331295892

Cited by 25 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The first studies on the Women of the Wall were inside analyses by researchers who were among the first founders of this organization, i.e., Haberman (1997, 2012) who also discussed the feminist aspect of the religious realm in the Israeli context and Chidester and Linenthal (1995) who adopted Michel Foucault’s Theory of Power to convey the unavoidable competition or struggle over ownership, legitimacy and sacred symbols in such places. The WOW phenomenon raised the debate about the use of a divider ( mechitsa ) for women’s prayer at the Wall prior to 1948 (Shakdiel, 2002; Charmé, 2005; Shiloh, 2010). Shakdiel (2002), who is also a women’s rights activist but from a different school of thought, rightly portrayed the WOW as an undermining factor in Judaism and in “Israeli Ethnocracy.” Jobani and Perez (2014, 2017) studies pertain to the WOW’s impact on Israeli public discourse concerning the role of religion in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.…”

Section: Women Of the Wallmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The WOW phenomenon raised the debate about the use of a divider ( mechitsa ) for women’s prayer at the Wall prior to 1948 (Shakdiel, 2002; Charmé, 2005; Shiloh, 2010). Shakdiel (2002), who is also a women’s rights activist but from a different school of thought, rightly portrayed the WOW as an undermining factor in Judaism and in “Israeli Ethnocracy.” Jobani and Perez (2014, 2017) studies pertain to the WOW’s impact on Israeli public discourse concerning the role of religion in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. They suggest privatizing the administration of holy places for the different stakeholders and letting the State withdraw from religion.…”

Section: Women Of the Wallmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Fighting for Equal Spiritual Voice: The Case of the “Women of the Wall”

Daphna–Tekoah

Sharaby

2019

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Our study contributes to the ongoing debate about women’s rights and religious feminism. The context for analysis of women’s experiences is the “Women of the Wall” who have been struggling for the past 30 years for their right to practice their spiritual rituals (praying at the Western Wall) in a hegemonic and masculine arena. We suggest that the “Women of the Wall” and their battle for spiritual equality threaten the hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, this feminist battle expands the feminist revolution and the fights for women’s equality to the religious arena which is dominated by hegemonic masculinity. The implementation of the Listening Guide, a feminist methodology, assists us in uncovering various voices, representing different aspects of the experiences of the “Women of the Wall” in a conflict zone. These narratives reveal juxtapositions of feelings of competence, determination and vulnerability and shed light on the women’s struggle for gender equality in a hegemonic masculine domain.

show abstract

Section: Women Of the Wallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women Of the Wallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fighting for Equal Spiritual Voice: The Case of the “Women of the Wall”

Daphna–Tekoah

Sharaby

2019

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…That purity would be compromised by the mixing of the genders in activities there. 54 Of course, the earliest forms of socialist Zionist thinking envisioned a new utopian society shared in equally by Jews regardless of their gender or ethnicity. Indeed, to some degree the Western Wall had already served as a symbol of this ideal.…”

Section: Changes In the Political Meaning Of The Mechitzah After 1967mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Transformation of Gender Traditions at the Western Wall in Jerusalem

Charmé¹

2005

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent years the Western Wall in Jerusalem has become a site of conflict and contention between liberal and feminist Jews, on the one hand, and strictly religious Jews, on the other hand, over the permissible roles for women in the religious rituals and activities that take place there. It would be easy to characterize this struggle as an effort to claim for Jewish women a larger share of a sacred space that, like an Orthodox synagogue, is currently dominated, regulated, and controlled by Orthodox men. Of course, like many religions, traditional Judaism offers rationales for different gender roles in religion, such as the supposedly higher "spiritual" nature of women, which makes certain religious obligations of men unnecessary; and women's central role in child care and the domestic realm of the family. Orthodox Judaism defends the practices at the Wall, moreover, in light of what it regards as the clear demands of Jewish law and custom. This article will challenge the unproblematic acceptance of these religious explanations by analyzing some of the unarticulated political and social functions that such gender roles serve and ways in which those functions have become further complicated by Jewish nationalism and the place of religion within Israel, both before and since the creation of a modern nationstate.Although there is little question about the strength and antiquity of patriarchal traditions in Judaism that limit female power and participation, this may not be the most fruitful starting point for a feminist analysis of this controversy, for in this case we are not confronted by a historically continuous policy of female exclusion from the activities at the Western Wall. 1 Accordingly, acknowledging the antiquity of the Wall itself does not justify any presumption of antiquity in the gender practices currently in place there; it is simply not true that Charmé: Political Transformation of Gender Traditions 72 Beneath the claims of fidelity to an unchanging past that one routinely finds among competing religious adherents, one discovers a dynamic process of construction, innovation, and change that is based on both continuity and discontinuity with the past.

show abstract

Claiming Equal Religious Personhood: Women of the Wall’s Constitutional Saga

Raday

2007

Religion in the Public Sphere: A Comparative Analysis of German, Israeli, American and International Law

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Women of the wall: radical feminism as an opportunity for a new discourse in Israel

Cited by 25 publications

References 6 publications

Fighting for Equal Spiritual Voice: The Case of the “Women of the Wall”

Fighting for Equal Spiritual Voice: The Case of the “Women of the Wall”

The Political Transformation of Gender Traditions at the Western Wall in Jerusalem

Claiming Equal Religious Personhood: Women of the Wall’s Constitutional Saga

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About