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Foucault and Jewish Feminism: The Meḥitzah as Dividing Practice

Foucauldian analysis of relationships between power and institutional structures has proved a powerful tool for feminist understanding. In light of it, certain practices of traditional Judaism, particularly in Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox forms, can be critiqued as instituting regulations not simply out of religious scruples but also in tension with them, in ways that establish gender hierarchies that deny to women full religious personhood. This essay critiques the increasingly stringent and proliferating practices of meḥitzah—separation of women from public spaces—along Foucauldian lines, while also arguing, against Foucault, for the value of traditional institutional religious life, as a source of dignity and enlargement of the individual in his and her participation in community.