Pregnancy and the Reproductive Habitus of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women.

Anthropological scholarship frames pregnancy as an out of ordinary embodied event, rarely focusing on mothers of more than four children. We interviewed 49 ultra-orthodox Jewish [Haredi] women in Israel and the US who birthed up to 16 children. We suggest that Haredi women are acculturated to the routines of pregnancy, childbirth, and a habitual position of receptiveness toward continuous childbearing as an act of religious devotion. This "circumferential habitus" prepares women for the routines, attitudes, and dispositions of pregnancy as a way of life. Nevertheless, the deeply embodied experiences of pregnancy do not become "second nature," revealing the "holes" or limits of the reproductive habitus.

Becoming Sincere: Why Do Jewish Inmates in Israeli Prisons Embrace Religion?

Why do Jewish inmates in Israeli prisons embrace religion? What initially motivates them to participate in prayers during incarceration and what are their motivations to make a deeper commitment to observe orthodox Judaism while in prison? We conducted 30 qualitative interviews with 29 Jewish-Israeli men who underwent a process of "religious invigoration" or "religious strengthening" during their prison term and chose to continue being observant following release. We examine their motivations to initially participate in the less restrictive prison seminaries as well as their motivations to transfer to religious wards where incarcerated men must commit to a fully religious lifestyle. Building on the scholarship on the motivations and benefits of religious participation and conversion in prison, we suggest that incarcerated Jewish-Israeli men embrace religion for both sincere reasons and for the extrinsic benefits. Those who progress to a second stage of religious observance and transfer to religious wards do so primarily for extrinsic benefits. However, they report many intrinsic benefits of religion that lead them to continue to pursue religion once released. We suggest that men have different motivations at different stages of the path of religious invigoration in prison but that those men who commit to observance gain intrinsic benefits that may give them sincere reasons to continue religion upon reentry.

The Power of the Single Story: Surrogacy and Social Media in Israel.

Analyzing interviews with 20 Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who gave birth in 2014-2016, I examine the common narrative structure of their personal stories and the way that this becomes what Adichie calls a "single story". This idealized, romanticized, utopian story includes: 1. an intimate bond between surrogate and intended parents; 2. an epic birth; 3. a happy ending, told publicly. After illustrating this structure, I present the consequences of this single story for surrogates whose experiences diverged from, yet were constantly compared to, the "perfect journey" narrative. Anthropologists of reproduction must pay careful attention to digital storytelling as a new reproductive technology.

Surrogate non-motherhood: Israeli and US surrogates speak about kinship and parenthood.

Drawing on a comparison of two ethnographic research projects on surrogacy in the United States and Israel, this paper explores surrogates' views about motherhood and parenthood, relationships and relatedness. The paper challenges three myths of surrogacy: that surrogates bond with the babies they carry for intended parents, that it is immoral not to acknowledge the surrogates' maternity, and that surrogacy upsets the moral order of society by dehumanizing and commodifying reproduction. Contrasting the similarities and differences in the voices of surrogates from these studies, the authors argue that surrogates draw on ideas about technology, genetics and intent in order to explain that they do not bond with the child because they are not its mother. This is followed by an exploration of surrogates' definitions of what constitutes parenthood, suggesting that in both contexts, surrogates draw clear boundaries between their own family and that of the intended parents. Finally, it is suggested that surrogates expect a relationship, or a bond, to develop with the intended parents and view their contribution as exceptional moral work which involves nurturing, caring, friendship and solidarity. The paper concludes that for surrogates in the USA and in Israel, maternity, bonding and kin-ties are not automatic outcomes of pregnancy, but a choice. Surrogates in both contexts hold that bonding with other people's children as if they were one's own is wrong while bonding with their couple and creating 'fictive kin' ties with them is the logical outcome of the intense and intimate process of collaborative baby-making.

Pregnant Metaphors and Surrogate Meanings: Bringing the Ethnography of Pregnancy and Surrogacy into Conversation in Israel and Beyond.

This article explores the way that surrogacy and normal pregnancy share cultural assumptions about pregnancy. Through a juxtaposition of our ethnographic studies of two groups of Jewish-Israeli women-women who have undergone "normal," low-risk pregnancies and women who have given birth as gestational surrogates-we argue that surrogacy and pregnancy emerge as potent metaphors for one another. Both pregnant women and surrogates divided their bodies into two separate realms: fetus and maternal pregnant body. Both trivialized the effect of gestational influence on fetal health, making the fetus seem detached from gestational capacities of the mother. We argue for closer scrutiny of the way local cultural priorities and experiences of pregnancy shape surrogacy and for bringing the scholarship on pregnancy and on surrogacy into deeper conversation.

The "Watchful Eye of God": The Role of Religion in the Rehabilitation and Reentry of Repentant Jewish Prisoners.

Can participation in a religious rehabilitation program benefit a released prisoner's reentry into the community, and if so, how? Which elements of the religious worldview can be translated into tools for promoting desistance? Using a qualitative approach, we conducted 30 interviews with released prisoners from 3 months to 5 years beyond release who participated in a Jewish faith-based rehabilitation program administered by Israel's Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority. We interviewed participants in the Torah Rehabilitation Program about the role of religion in their lives and in their desistance from crime. We map out the spiritual, behavioral, and psychological tools they feel aided them in facing the challenges of reentry.

Obligatory Effort [Hishtadlut] as an Explanatory Model: A Critique of Reproductive Choice and Control.

Studies on reproductive technologies often examine women's reproductive lives in terms of choice and control. Drawing on 48 accounts of procreative experiences of religiously devout Jewish women in Israel and the US, we examine their attitudes, understandings and experiences of pregnancy, reproductive technologies and prenatal testing. We suggest that the concept of hishtadlut-"obligatory effort"-works as an explanatory model that organizes Haredi women's reproductive careers and their negotiations of reproductive technologies. As an elastic category with negotiable and dynamic boundaries, hishtadlut gives ultra-orthodox Jewish women room for effort without the assumption of control; it allows them to exercise discretion in relation to medical issues without framing their efforts in terms of individual choice. Haredi women hold themselves responsible for making their obligatory effort and not for pregnancy outcomes. We suggest that an alternative paradigm to autonomous choice and control emerges from cosmological orders where reproductive duties constitute "obligatory choices."

God-sent ordeals and their discontents: ultra-orthodox Jewish women negotiate prenatal testing.

Through narrative interviews with 20 pregnant ultra-orthodox [Haredi] Jewish women in Israel conducted between 2007 and 2009, we examine the implications for such women of prenatal testing, and of pregnancy as a gendered route of piety. We found that pregnancy signified both a divine mission and possible reproductive misfortunes. Bearing a child with a disability was taken as a test of faith and God's decree was to be accepted. Fetal anomaly created anxiety about the women's ability to fulfill their God-given task and about their position in an unwritten hierarchy of gendered righteousness. Challenging reproductive decisions were often assigned to rabbis, but this did not exempt women from viewing themselves as inadequate in their religious devotion. We conclude that prenatal testing becomes a spiritual ordeal that aggravates pregnancy tensions.

Pregnancy as a proclamation of faith: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women navigating the uncertainty of pregnancy and prenatal diagnosis.

Research has suggested that religion and spirituality may inform individuals' interpretation of and responses to uncertainty during pregnancy including the possibility of genetic disorders. In this study, 25 qualitative interviews were undertaken with ultra-Orthodox [Haredi] Jewish women about their experiences with uncertainties related to pregnancy, prenatal care, and prenatal diagnosis. We found that women draw upon a particular set of faith-based concepts to cope with the uncertainties of pregnancy and to make decisions regarding prenatal testing. The women draw on the religious concepts of faith and certainty, which are based on trusting that God will not test them beyond what they can withstand. When prenatal screening indicates a possible fetal anomaly or when a disabled child is born, these women interpret the situation as a God-sent ordeal in which they are called upon to prove their trust and certainty in God's plan and to resist the uncertainties generated by the probability-based technologies. This research has implications for genetic service providers when discussing prenatal testing and fetal anomalies with Haredi women.

Expectant Israeli fathers and the medicalized pregnancy: ambivalent compliance and critical pragmatism.

This article addresses the medicalization of pregnancy in Israel and its effects on the experiences of Jewish-Israeli men who participated in various stages of their female partners' prenatal care. The highly medicalized arena of Israeli prenatal care, with its strong emphasis on prenatal diagnostic testing, provided the context in which the men's accounts of their interactions with reproductive biomedical authority, practitioners and knowledge were understood. It is suggested that the anthropological scholarship on reproduction assumes that men benefit from the medicalization of pregnancy and birth and comply with medicalization. Women, on the other hand, are often depicted as being subjected to harmful medical surveillance and responding to it in degrees, ranging from compliance to resistance, and mediated by pragmatism. Data derived from participant observation in multiple arenas and from 16 in-depth interviews with Israeli men whose female partners were pregnant or had recently given birth suggest that although some Israeli men regard the biomedicalization of pregnancy positively, most tend toward varying degrees of criticism. It is suggested that men's responses to reproductive biomedicine are far more complex than portrayed to date in the existing scholarship and that men's responses to biomedicalization reveal complex power negotiations.

The social construction of surrogacy research: an anthropological critique of the psychosocial scholarship on surrogate motherhood.

This article presents a critical appraisal of the psychosocial empirical research on surrogate mothers, their motivations for entering into surrogacy agreements and the outcome of their participation. I apply a social constructionist approach toward analyzing the scholarship, arguing that the cultural assumption that "normal" women do not voluntarily become pregnant with the premeditated intention of relinquishing the child for money, together with the assumption that "normal" women "naturally" bond with the children they bear, frames much of this research. I argue that this scholarship reveals how Western assumptions about motherhood and family impact upon scientific research. In their attempt to research the anomalous phenomenon of surrogacy, these researchers respond to the cultural anxieties that the practice provokes by framing their research methodologies and questions in a manner that upholds essentialist gendered assumptions about the naturalness and normalness of motherhood and childbearing. This leads the researchers to overlook the intrinsic value of the women's personal experiences and has implications for social policy.

The medicalization of "nature" in the "artificial body": surrogate motherhood in Israel.

In this article, I draw on anthropological and feminist scholarship on the body and the nature/culture divide as a framework for understanding the place of surrogate mothers in a conceptual ideology that connects motherhood with nature. I explore links between the medicalization of childbirth in Israel and the personal agency of surrogate mothers as relayed through interviews. Taking the patriarchal context of the Israeli surrogacy law of 1996 into consideration, I underscore surrogates' imaginative use of medical metaphors as tools for the subversion of surrogacy's threatening social connotations. By redefining the surrogate body as "artificial" and locating "nature" in the commissioning mother's body, surrogates adopt medical rhetoric to transform surrogacy from a transgressive act into an alternative route toward achieving normative Israeli national reproductive goals.