בנושא: דת, מגדר ומדינת ישראל. תאריך אחרון למשלוח: 1 לספטמבר 2015
CALL FOR PAPERS: Gender, Religion and State in Israel
Over the past decade or more, the State of Israel has witnessed an increasing radicalization of Orthodox religious Judaism, coupled with a strengthening of its influence in the public space. These trends, fed both by the expansion and ideological attraction of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox population sectors and by the establishment of their institutions in the law of the State, manifest themselves particularly in areas related to women’s bodies. Gender segregation on buses and in public spaces, exclusion of women from state and municipal events, covering of women’s bodies in performances, the deletion of women’s faces from billboards and printed publications and the elimination of their voices from the stage and radio – all of these have occurred with tacit state approval. Even as women – including some religiously observant women – increasingly move into combat roles in the Israel Defense forces, widespread calls for the mass induction of ultra-Orthodox men have elicited demands to limit women’s army presence in any area where those men might encounter them.
In the private sphere, women continue to struggle with the intrusion of state-backed religion into their private lives. Issues of personal status, divorce, conversion, fertility, access to abortion and access to ritual immersion are all fraught with tension, as women’s freedoms (among others) are circumscribed by rabbinic aspirations for power and control.
Issue no. 30 of Nashim (Spring 2016), under the consulting editorship of sociologist and activist Elana Sztokman, Ph.D., will explore the intersection of religion and gender in the State apparatus in Israel, and seeks unifying theories about the implications of these tensions for civil liberties and women’s rights in Israel. Topics of interest may include (but are not limited to):
- Gender segregation in Israel
- The removal of women from the public sphere and state-backed events
- Women’s faces and voices in the public sphere
- Women and religion in the IDF
- Marriage, divorce and agunot
- Conversion and gender
- The “mamzer” issue – the blacklist of women unable to marry
- Religion and gender in contest over women’s access to abortion
- Women’s ritual immersion as owned by the state
- Israel in a global context of religious radicalization
Proposals for submissions of up to 12,000 words, not previously published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, should be sent to Deborah Greniman, Managing Editor of Nashim, by July 5, 2015, at nashim@schechter.ac.il. Final date for submission of articles: September 1, 2015. All scholarly articles will be subject to double-blind peer review. Academic Editor of Nashim: Renée Levine Melammed.
