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Orthodoxy, Feminism and Traditional Jewish Wedding Ritual – What It Takes to Foster Changes in a Religious System

Orthodoxy, Feminism and Traditional Jewish Wedding Ritual – What it takes to foster changes in a religious system by Irit Koren Short summary of the paper Introduction The paper I will be presenting is based on a sociological study of the ways in which women who identify as Orthodox and as feminists challenge, resist and adapt the traditional wedding ritual. In Jewish law, or Halakha, the wedding ritual marks the groom’s acquisition of ownership over the bride, and that legal significance underlies many of the customs associated with the ritual. The women I studied sought to modify the ritual, and their approach to it, in ways meant to put them on more of an equal footing with their husbands; doing this required them to negotiate extensively with their husbands, parents, future in-laws, and the officiating rabbis. I collected the data on which I based my work through in-depth narrative interviews with Jerusalemite women and a subset of their husbands, parents, and rabbis. Although the women in the study all lived in Jerusalem, I believe the phenomenon they represent is mirrored elsewhere as well. While this topic might at first blush seem narrow, yet I follow the Geertzian course of seeking out in these grains of sand the heaven of a much broader phenomenon. These subjects illustrate the struggle faced by citizens of a modern, increasingly transnational world to remain at home with their religious traditions, to reconcile their modern identities with pre-modern ritual practice.