Women’s Strategies in Creating and Renewing Religious Rituals

Abstract

The exclusion of women from public religious space is a known, widespread phenomenon. Recent years, however, have seen women creating and renewing religious rituals for themselves, thereby forging a place for themselves in a space from which they were previously barred. This article examines some strategies women employ in creating and renewing female-religious space as exemplified by two rituals carried out by Jewish women: ‘amen meals’ (a new ritual) and public ‘taking-challah’ ceremonies (a renewed ritual). It argues that these rituals, which paradoxically appear to preserve the existing order, actually undermine it. The women direct the main weapon used to control them—obedience to the rules of order—in order to destabilize and reconstruct the social structure.