The Politics of Belonging: A Study of Educated Jewish Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Women in Israel

Abstract

The past few decades have witnessed significant increases in levels of education among women members of conservative religions. Contrary to the expectations of both researchers and policymakers, this trend has not been accompanied by decreases in levels of piety. The purpose of this article is to explore what it means to educated religious women to belong to conservative religious communities that embody values and practices that do not conform to the values of modernity associated with exposure to higher education. On the basis of a series of group interviews with educated Jewish Haredi women in Israel, we examined this very question. We found that the women we interviewed demonstrated a deep pride in their religious identity and an ongoing and strong commitment to their community. At the same time, they regarded membership in their community as a form of social capital enabling them to secure a wide array of benefits, which provided compensation for the demand to conform to conservative practices. We conclude that through a process of exchange (social capital against the price of conforming), the women challenge existing norms while maintaining strong religious identities, taking part in democratic processes, and, together, forging articulated bonds of membership and belonging.

1. Introduction

Ever since the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s seminal text on women and education in the 18th century, it has been evidently clear that the denial of equal access of women to education is central to their subordination. Today, some 200 years later, in the discourse on development and gender, education is regarded as a modernizing and liberating force capable of ushering progress and prosperity into society (Global Education Monitoring Report Team (UNESCO) 2022; OECD 2020; UN Women 2020). As Bradley and Saigol (2012) have noted in this context, women’s lack of education is often viewed as a major impediment to the development of a country as a whole. Hence, the expansion of demands for equal rights in education in many countries has led to expectations that with the attainment of higher levels of education, women would increasingly oppose conservative and patriarchal practices, especially within those communities most identified with such practices, i.e., conservative or orthodox religious communities. However, mounting evidence has proven this expectation to be unfounded. Within the more conservative religions, such as orthodox Judaism, fundamentalist Islam, and evangelical Christianity, levels of religious adherence and piety among educated women seem to have remained stable (Rinaldo 2014).

This apparent conundrum has produced a rich and vibrant discourse in the academic literature surrounding issues of women’s agency and religious piety, with the discourse exploring the diverse ways in which pious women exhibit agency and pursue employment and education while adhering to the principles of their religious communities (Avishai 2008; Rinaldo 2014). Underlying this discourse, but not explicitly addressed, are questions of what and how: what it means to educated religious women to belong to and feel solidarity with conservative religious communities that embody values and practices that do not conform to the values of modernity associated with exposure to higher education, and how they address this seeming conundrum and explain/justify membership to their communities. Hence, despite the rich body of literature on pious women and agency, the important issue of belonging has largely been ignored (Yuval-Davis 2006, 2011).

We examine these very questions in this article using a series of five group interviews with 25 educated Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jewish women. We found that the women who we interviewed expressed a deep pride in their religious identity and an ongoing and strong commitment to their community while articulating membership as a form of social capital that enabled them to secure a wide array of benefits. Hence, they spoke of belonging in terms of an exchange. In this article, we unpack the mechanisms and terms of this exchange by exploring how women seek to define and redefine their Haredi membership through their progressive practice, thus challenging existing norms while maintaining strong religious identities, taking part in democratic processes, and forging newly articulated bonds of membership and community belonging.

1.1. Women and Belonging to Conservative Religious Communities

Research on belonging is an interdisciplinary endeavor. In social psychology, much of the literature focuses both on the need of individuals to conform to the groups to which they belong out of fear of exclusion, and on the social meanings of membership and the ways in which interpersonal relationships are constituted by membership to particular groups (Allen 2020). In both political theory and sociological theory, the focus has historically been directed toward the different ways in which people belong to collectivities and states, alongside the social, economic, and political effects of the disruption of communities in the context of industrialization, globalization, migration, and conflict (Skey and Antonsich 2017; Crowley 1999). In this context, social theorists have long been preoccupied with the impact of modernity on patterns and meanings of belonging (Castells 1996; Giddens 1991). In general, much of the research is driven by the idea that bonds of solidarity and belonging have an ambivalent and ambiguous relationship with modernity—a relationship that is reenacted in contemporary society in what is known as the politics of identity (Crowley 1999). Hence, in many Western societies, the solidarities embodied in religious, ethnic, and cultural communities are seen as potentially incompatible with the bonds of citizenship (Brubaker 2009).

While the broad topic of membership and belonging has garnered wide attention, most discussions tend to equate belonging with identity (Antonsich 2010). Hence, relatively few theorists have provided analytical frameworks that can guide researchers to systematically examine the different meanings that individuals attribute to the act or feeling of belonging. However, such a framework for systematic analysis is crucial if we seek to explore the ways different meanings attributed to belonging impact political and social realities. The many studies of Yuval-Davis provide this kind of framework (see especially Yuval-Davis 1999, 2006, 2011). Examining membership and the politics of belonging from a dynamic socio-political perspective, Yuval-Davis (2006) provides a tripartite analytical framework suggesting that belonging is comprised of three main reference points: social location; individuals’ identifications and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings; and ethical and political value systems with which people judge their own and others’ belonging. Thus, her framework combines insights from social psychological perspectives with an emphasis on power relations and hierarchies taken from social theory. The literature on social capital, which highlights the importance of a sense of belonging to overall well-being and a sense of effectivity and purpose (Ahn and Davis 2020), provides an interesting complementary paradigm to the analytical framework of Yuval-Davis.

From the perspective of social capital, membership is seen as a means of procuring potential benefits. Two main perspectives have been adopted in the literature—individual and collective perspectives. Researchers using the individual perspective regard social capital as an important and powerful resource embedded in networks that serve personal goals, such as employment, and education or family background (Varekamp et al. 2015; Gayen et al. 2019), while collective theorists, mainly rooted in Putnam (2000), refer to social capital as a collective good derived from shared norms and values, trust, and reciprocity. The acquisition of social capital revolves around three dimensions: interconnected networks of relationships between individuals and groups (social ties or social participation), levels of trust that characterize these ties, and resources or benefits that are both gained and transferred by virtue of social ties and social participation (Serageldin and Grootaert 2017). These three elements are seen as contributing to well-being and a sense of place in the world, which, in turn, are essential to the development of modern, productive societies (Putnam 2000; Woolcock 2010; Wallace and Pichler 2009; Ahn and Davis 2020).

Within conservative religions in general, and within the Haredi community in particular, the sense of community is embedded in and manifested through the demanding and expansive norms and practices that together constitute the core of belief. Adherence to these norms and practices produces close-knit ties of solidarity among members (Kook and Harel-Shalev 2021). Belonging to these communities, which constitute “thick” bonds of solidarity (Tamir 1998), is seen as central to the individual’s personal growth, development, and general well-being while exiting the community is held as difficult and often traumatic (Zion-Waldoks 2015). Hence, belonging to the Haredi community can be seen to embody the three dimensions attributed by theorists to social capital. Due to this dense network of attachment, as evidenced in research in different political contexts, other arenas of membership, such as the nation or the body of citizens, are seen as competitive rather than complementary and often become issues of conflict (Turner 2016; Castles and Davidson 2020; Braunstein 2019; Eitan 2022).

Finally, while conservative religious communities are known, in many cases, to be deeply patriarchal and oppressive with regard to women, the ways that belonging to the community are experienced by women have not been extensively researched (Rieder-Indursky 2018). This research lacuna is particularly striking given the fact that women are currently playing a growing role in the social and economic processes that are propelling conservative communities into a period of great change. Thus, the different meanings that women attach to belonging and membership to their communities and how they perceive membership as a form of social capital have wide-reaching implications both for their own individual identities and the collective social location of their communities.

1.2. Gender, Religion, and Membership: The Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Community in Israel

Ultra-orthodoxy is a movement that emerged in response to the spreading secularism, enlightenment, and modernity of 18th-century Europe. The movement promoted the notion of separatism/isolationism as the main strategy to combat the dangers inherent in modernity. The Haredi community in Israel, which has traditionally adopted isolationism and separatism as a way of life, has been going through significant processes of change over the past two decades (Brown 2021). Apart from isolationism, this Haredi community adheres to other religious and social principles: since it is a conservative religious community, some of the communal principles are religious per se, such as the centrality of Torah1 learning and strict adherence to religious practices (Halacha). However, other guiding principles of the community are not necessarily religious but can be seen as aimed at preserving the community and its identity and, as such, can be better identified as cultural, for example, adherence to specific dress codes and a preference for living in closed communities. These community principles are given high priority and at times are considered more important than the principles that guide individual behavior (Brown 2017; Ben-Hayim 2022).

As mentioned above, the Haredi community has been undergoing a process of change in the past few decades. One of the main changes has been the gradual and uneven weakening of the principle of separatism, particularly among groups that are on the margins of the community. During this period there has been an ongoing trend for members of the Haredi community who have chosen—to differing degrees and in different ways—to break through the so-called “ghetto walls” to assimilate into mainstream Israeli society in various contexts (Brown 2021; Zicherman and Cahaner 2012). What began at the end of the 20th century as a marginal phenomenon has now emerged as a significant trend—referred to by many as “the widening of the margins”—within the Haredi community. This trend has attracted significant attention from scholars of the Haredi community, who have chosen different names by which to identify these groups: “modern Haredim” (Zicherman and Cahaner 2012), “Israeli Haredim” (Eitan 2022), “self-rejuvenating Haredim” (Dayan 2017), “new Haredim” (Gal 2018), or “ambivalent Haredim” (Finkelman 2014). By virtue of its great diversity, some scholars have even referred to the Haredi community as an “imagined community” (Gado and Fishof 2023). As a part of the “widening of the margins” of the Haredi community mentioned above, the following areas of daily life may be regarded as particularly illustrative of these changes: the acquisition of a secular education, participation in the military; the development of academic careers; employment outside of the community; a weakening commitment to the Haredi dress code; residence in mixed neighborhoods, and the adoption of Western-style leisure activities (Zicherman and Cahaner 2012; Frenkel and Wasserman 2020a, 2020b). These activities are complemented by the use of the Internet and some changes at the ideological level (Brown 2017, 2021; Eitan 2022).

1.3. Women in the Community: From Continuity to Change

Women in the Haredi community play a major role in preserving community values. This role is particularly significant in the context of the value of marriage and childbirth—a central value to which Haredi women are singularly dedicated. They marry at a young age, by which time they will have been educated toward a commitment to large families (Brown 2017). In addition, women play a central role in supporting the value of Torah learning as a central component of Haredi society. From a young age, Haredi women (particularly those belonging to what is known in Israel as the “Lithuanian” (See Section 2) stream) are geared toward supporting a “house of Torah” by taking on the role of sole breadwinners to enable their husbands to dedicate themselves to religious study (Friedman 1991). An important value associated with the woman’s role is adherence to “Da’at Torah” (rabbinic authority), which also pertains to the political sphere. According to this value, the leading rabbis steer the community in all issues—not only religious but also social and political—with the community voting unanimously for Haredi parties (Brown 2017). As Eitan (2022) noted, Haredim have the right to vote but not the right to choose (Rieder-Indursky 2018).

The women of the ultra-orthodox community thus occupy a paradoxical position: On the one hand, they maintain their central role in preserving the community (as evidenced by the number of women exiting the community being lower than that of men (Regev and Gordon 2020)), but, on the other hand, Haredi women see themselves as part of the processes of change discussed above, and some even see themselves as engines of the change (Brown 2021). This change may be partially attributed to the shift of women to employment outside of the household, which originated from the need to support and strengthen the society of scholars. Thus, while Haredi women traditionally look at employment outside of the household as a bread-winning endeavor and not a means of self-fulfillment (Kasir et al. 2018), over the past decade, with changes in both patterns of employment and higher education, employment has been more often seen as a source of self-fulfillment (Kook and Harel-Shalev 2021).

As a result of changes in the employment market and the establishment of educational institutions that are adjusted to suit the cultural practices of the Haredi society (e.g., gender separation), Israel has witnessed a sharp rise in Haredi students enrolled in institutions of higher education. During the decade from 2009/2010 to 2021/2022, the number of Haredi college students rose by 10.5%, with Haredi women (vs. men) contributing more to the rise. In 2020/2021, the number of Haredi students rose an additional 14%, probably due primarily to opportunities that arose as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2021/2022, the number rose yet an additional 6.5%. In 2021/2022, 69% of all Haredi students were women (Malach and Cahaner 2022).

Attitudes toward the status of women within the ultra-orthodox community have been a subject of intense interest to the wider Israeli society since the turn of the century. There is a rich body of literature that examines different aspects of women’s status, and government resources have been directed toward the study of employment and education among ultra-orthodox women as a means of directing future policy. Thus, while current sociological research on the ultra-orthodox community almost always refers to women, the research focus is usually directed at attitudes toward the status of women and changes in their employment and education (Brown 2017, 2021). Less research has examined the women as active subjects, whose opinions and worldviews impact the nature of the community and the ways in which its boundaries are shifting. In our research, which combines perspectives of sociology, gender, and political science, we look at Haredi women as active, discerning, and deciding subjects who make choices that have implications beyond the status of the members of their gender.

2. Methods and Research Framework

The research is based on semi-structured group interviews conducted with 25 participants in five group interviews held online via Zoom from March to September 2022. The research design received the authorization of the Ben-Gurion University Ethics Committee (approval number 1782-1). Due to the nature of the framework, i.e., online discussion, we chose to conduct the interviews in small groups of four to eight participants; in this way, we could facilitate a welcoming atmosphere for conversation and ample time for each participant to speak. Informed consent was obtained from all interviewees involved in the study, with the consent being recorded at the beginning of each interview.

The online format enabled us to include women from various towns throughout Israel. The age range of the women interviewed was 20–55 years, and the groups included single women and married, divorced, and widowed women with or without children from various Haredi streams (Hasidic, Lithuanian, and Sefaradi2). All the interviewees had degrees from various institutions or were in the midst of studying, in addition to 12 years of schooling. The five groups that we interviewed produced a wealth of data, and thus—supported by methodological studies of group interview sample size—we concluded that the number of interviewees provided us with an adequate basis for the research (Korstjens and Moser 2018; Kook et al. 2019).

The interviewees were recruited using the snowball technique, with the assistance of two ultra-orthodox women (author no. 1 and a friend of a friend of the authors), and hence, some of the interviewees were acquainted with one another before the study. The discussions were held in Hebrew, and the meetings lasted about two hours. At the end of each meeting, each woman received a small monetary gratuity. The group interviews were audio recorded and transcribed, and pseudonyms were used.

In terms of the authors’ positionalities (Fader 2007), Gado is an ultra-orthodox woman, and Kook and Harel are secular Jewish women; all authors are experienced in qualitative research and have previously conducted research about the ultra-orthodox community. We—as the research team—consulted among ourselves regarding the questions to be asked in the interviews. Overall, we asked the participants about their everyday experiences, their identities and perspectives as ultra-orthodox women, their perspectives regarding gender roles within the community, their family lives, and their participation in the workforce, as well as the role of women of the community in the public sphere.

To analyze the interview transcripts, narrative analysis was implemented. The narrative method involves listening to and analyzing people’s narratives about their own experiences (Smith 2016; Harel-Shalev 2020). Narratives can thus reveal multiple voices in a particular community and within a particular person. Particularly, in the format of group interviews, narratives can be constructed individually and/or co-constructed within a group setting (Gilligan 2015; Korstjens and Moser 2018; Kook and Harel-Shalev 2021). In the current research, we examined both the group dynamics and the personal narratives.

Analyzing the Meaning of Belonging for Educated Haredi Women

The women interviewed for this study were far from the stereotypical Haredi woman. Most of them took pride in their employment and referred to it as self-fulfilling and as a career. All had at least undergraduate university or college degrees. Many challenged the traditional meaning of personal status and childbirth practices, where “personal status” in this article includes marital status, children, home–work balance, and dress code. However, it was clearly evident that almost all of them displayed a very strong identification with their community. They spoke about their identity as Haredim with words such as “deep pride”, “essential”, and “that is who I am”. At the same time, by virtue of their employment, personal status, and political involvement, they challenged the very principles that their traditional identity as Haredi women seemingly dictated. Thus, the following questions emerged: what was the meaning of belonging to a community whose very principles they defied and challenged, and what role did they play in this rapidly changing Haredi community?

Following Yuval-Davis (2006) and Antonsich (2010), we chose to organize our analysis of the women’s narratives around two major analytical dimensions: (I) belonging as a personal and intimate narrative in which the women describe who they are with reference to the communal norms of their group (how I fit into the community with which I identify), and (II) belonging as a discursive resource that constructs, claims, justifies, or resists hierarchies of power and the social location to which the women belong de facto (what is my relationship to the hierarchy of power that defines the community to which I belong?). Building on theories of social exchange and social capital, we listened to the women’s narratives for clues to the mechanisms with which they sought to secure the benefits of membership to their community, while at the same time providing solutions to the dilemma posed by the conflict between higher education and exposure to more liberal and progressive values, on the one hand, and the patriarchal structure of their ultra-orthodox communities, on the other hand. Thus, the first analytical dimension focuses on the many references they made to the communal norms of their group, in particular how they engaged with decisions regarding their personal status, while the second analytical dimension brings together the many references and discussions surrounding political activism, religious studies, and their status as a minority within Jewish Israeli society.

I.

Membership and narratives of identification and emotional attachment

Membership in a community often involves a deep level of identification and emotional attachment. Indeed, many, if not most, theories that aim to explain the reasons underlying people’s motivation to belong to communities focus on the psychological, social, and emotional dimensions of belonging (Baumeister and Leary 1995). The women’s narratives that we examined reflected deep levels of attachment, reflected in the stories about who they are and what it feels like to be a member of their group. Identity narratives such as these merge the collective with the individual, and thus by analyzing them, it is possible to garner memories of the collective past and imaginaries about the collective future.

Many of the narratives of the women we interviewed reflected identification and emotional attachment to their community. For most of the women, these narratives spoke of conflicts between the individual and collective imaginaries and norms regarding gender and the role of women. Most of the narratives addressed issues of personal status and personal development. Through the narratives, it was possible to read into the struggle to reconcile the women’s deep emotional attachment to their community and their determined—and often bold—efforts to promote norms and values that were at odds with those of their community.

As discussed above, for many educated Haredi women, membership in the Haredi community embodies conflictual values: the desire for self-fulfillment according to values generally held to be part of modernity versus the Haredi value set regarding women as embedded in traditional patriarchal worldviews. The narratives of the women about themselves did indeed reflect this conflict. On the one hand, the women strongly identify as belonging to the Haredi community—they feel that they are part of it and insist on self-identifying as Haredi. On the other hand, many of their actions diverge from Haredi norms, and they do not self-identify as “typical” Haredi women. For example, they spoke openly about family planning, careers, political activity, and even the study of Torah and Talmud3—traditionally a male domain. The narratives that related this conflict used the terms “rewards” versus “costs” that are involved in belonging to the Haredi community, thereby presenting a transactional type of approach to group membership and belonging, as exemplified in the following quote from Esti:

I want to develop a career in education … God willing… to reach the highest ranks. And I pay a high price for this…to develop a career is really something that you pay a price for. And I think that the Haredi woman sometimes pays social prices as well for wanting to develop a career.

In this short and very direct statement, Esti expresses her desires for self-development embedded in a world of belief—“God willing”.

The emphasis on a transaction of values reflected a strong belief that regardless of the lifestyle that the women chose, it was a matter of personal choice. Thus, the women read agency into their decision-making process. Shoshana, who works at one of the major secular universities as part of a support network for Haredi students described this personal choice in the following way:

If I understood something, it’s that ultimately people make their own decisions and it’s like a marketplace. I mean there are products, and there is a price we are willing to pay–okay? In Haredi society you can… for example, study Gemara if it interests you, so long as the price is “right”—that you are not ostracized, that your children are not harmed, etc… At the end of the day, we understand that there is give and take… a relationship of give and take between society and the individual…There is what the community offers you, and there is what you yourself want, and at the join of these two positions the question is how high a price you are willing to pay for your self-fulfillment.

Naomi brought some examples of the price paid for diverging from community norms:

… this is the Haredi standard… there are common punishments in Haredi “law” …For example, when a woman wants to learn how to drive … in some Haredi communities it is totally unacceptable… I’ll talk about myself for a moment. I learnt how to drive 20 years ago. For three years I didn’t tell my mother-in-law…. When she found out, she didn’t speak to me for the next three years…This is a punishment, it is a negative reward for a person or woman who dared to do something [unacceptable in the community]. And in my opinion, it didn’t happen because I am a woman, it happened because I dared to “cool the bathwater”.4

Naama further extended this point by saying that in conservative communities, the price may be higher, but “business-like” calculations are always made:

In one way or another, it exists in every society. I will expand upon my point by saying that in conservative societies–not only the Haredi community but also in Arab and Bedouin societies–if you excuse the comparison–it is clear that if the community is the more conservative, then the flexibility towards people who are “different” is a little more challenging. But at the end of the day, it is all a matter of costs.

By extending the comparison to all societies, Naama normalizes the transactional discourse of membership by presenting it as a human trait. Moreover, in an interesting comparative digression, Naama compared the Haredi community to Arab communities, which are also conservative but are much lower in the ethnonational hierarchy, and such a comparison would be considered an anathema to most pious Jews. This comparison nonetheless universalizes Naama’s statement by extending it to the ultimate “other” in Israeli society (Braun-Lewensohn et al. 2021).

Alongside the price to be paid as a “community tax”, belonging to the community brings rewards and privileges. According to Naama:

I think there is something rewarding as well. That is, you pay a heavy price as a Haredi woman. You need to get married at an early age, you don’t always know how to choose your partner, you have many challenges. But… in the end there is something rewarding as well. That is–in the end, you don’t only “pay” you also “receive”. And it just takes a while to understand it [this exchange] from this perspective.

Miri expanded on the “rewards” received from belonging to the community—rewards for which it is well worth giving up personal desires:

After I became a widow–with young children–I thought that the needs of my children would demand that I get a driver’s license. I didn’t do it because of the community. Here–this is a “tax” that I paid. But the reward was worth it many times over. I would not have survived emotionally–becoming a widow, during the corona–without the community… I am embraced by a community that demands from me not to learn how to drive, so as to “walk the path”. But on the other hand, they embrace me with ten hands. All day long, they took care of my children…whenever I needed and as much as I needed.

For Miri, submitting to the community norms and refraining from obtaining a driver’s license was well worth the price, given the support and help she received when her husband died. Such a situation is typical of gemeinschaft communities, which provide solidarity and support in times of need (Friedman 1991). However, despite the emotive language she used to describe the support she received, Miri spoke of it in terms of a “tax” and a transaction, indicating that the decisions she took were conscious and rational.

Yafit, who also spoke about the community with deep respect and even admiration, noted that when she calculated the costs and benefits of sending her children to Haredi schools, she understood that she was unwilling to pay the price. Therefore, she chose to send her children to non-Haredi, Habad5, educational institutions despite not belonging to Habad:

At some point, I understood that the Haredi community merged everyone and everything together—the politics and the religion. The prices we pay are religious prices… The religious world they represent is superficial, shallow. That pained me deeply. I didn’t want my children to be educated like that, despite the fact that the community … provides an excellent educational safety net… I chose not to send my children to Haredi institutions–but to religious institutions–not ultra-orthodox ones, God willing, despite the fact that I myself am Haredi and have deep respect for the community.

Despite the fact that the women interviewed are intimately familiar with the boundaries of the community and the norms that these boundaries protect, in their values and lifestyles, they are redefining the boundaries by expanding them. In this way, they seek to normalize behavior that is considered deviant and to legitimize their membership, thus closing the gap between their own personal narrative and that of the community. In their perception, their subjective—and often subversive—narrative is actually redefining the boundaries of the community and expanding/widening its margins. This is evident in the following quote from Hanna, a career woman who does not feel constrained by community norms. In a self-reflection on motherhood and childrearing, she sees herself as taking an active part in the redefinition of community norms:

I myself feel very very much like a mother–despite all my activities. On the contrary, I feel that part of the things I am busy with are actually for my children, for the next generation, for my children and grandchildren–okay? Because I consider this very very important.

Hanna is a bride instructor, and, very untypically, she suggested the possibility of planned parenthood to her students, thus enabling them to think in terms of personal choice. She believes that this serves them during their marriage and makes a difference. Continuing to reflect on her role in the transformation of Haredi norms and practices, she said:

As a brides’ instructor, I am very unconventional. I introduce the issue of contraception within my counseling–for everyone–those who are more open and those who are more orthodox. As far as I am concerned, it is a “must”. And I actually see that many of them make use of it… I am very happy that it has managed to enter their awareness. And yes–I would be happy if this whole thing would be taken from the control of the rabbinical [male dominated] authority, but they are also involved, and that’s okay.

Miri belongs to the Belz Hasidic stream of ultra-orthodoxy and normalizes her behavior and her priorities by redefining the boundaries of the community in such a way as to allow her to be “mainstream”:

I think I am a completely stereotypical ultra-orthodox woman. I don’t feel like I’m breaking a fence or a ceiling in some way within my society… [no one is] angry about what I do. Even if I choose things that are not of interest to other women at the moment, because of their location or priorities, for example to study Gemara, which is not [the norm]. Well, okay I didn’t go and post it in public, but those who heard it around me, didn’t faint. I was laughed at, maybe… Some asked: What are you interested in, what are you missing? Yes, these questions were raised but not to the extent that I’d be expelled because of it.

When we asked her if she is really not criticized for her choices, she continued:

Now I can’t say that everyone around me is the same, but everyone around me in my community is different in their choices. I mean among my sisters, among cousins, friends, I deliberately take those from the community of Belz. And some of them are really housewives and mothers of children, but to this day, I don’t know anyone for whom this [being a housewife and mother T. G.] is not done happily and willingly. Because whoever doesn’t want to, at least we have the legitimacy of family planning in our community. There is the legitimacy to work or to study… So I’m not cut off from the ultra-orthodox public. I don’t think we were in this place ten years ago. Revolutions and quiet internal changes are taking place… I am ultra-orthodox, Hasidic, I am used to everything. In a way I’m not conventional, because I’m just interested in other things. But that’s the definition.

Tzviya described the difficulty on the personal level of standing up to the limitations of the community, which she presented as contradicting personal development. Significantly, she brought in the authority of God to demonstrate that what she demands of the community is the right thing:

By nature, I am a rebel. It has always been hard for me to deal with boundaries. It’s hard for me when I am told what to do…. Up until today I am in conflict with that. I need a lot of space and a lot of oxygen and “don’t tell me what to do, I will do whatever I want….” You can live in a place and feel like you are in jail and that, for sure, is not what God wants. For sure….. He wants us all to be happy. And there are a lot of options.

All the women we interviewed had broken through the boundaries of the community in terms of their own personal development—each one in her own way and at her own pace. Elisheva is a 42-year-old Haredi woman who adheres strictly to the norms of personal modesty, as reflected in her dress (including her head covering) and, most significantly, in her self-identification. She is adamant and forthcoming about her commitment to the Haredi community and her sense of belonging to it. Nonetheless, this is her story:

Up until the age of thirty… I was a typical Haredi woman. I studied at a girl’s school, I got married in an arranged marriage, I had a child every year and a half, and I was a teacher at a Beit Yaacov girls school. My husband studied Torah. Of course, I had no driver’s license, and my main “outings” were to go with the children to the supermarket. But now for 15 years, I am no longer in that place…. I went to university to study, I stopped teaching at a girl’s school. My husband stopped studying in a Kolel [an institute for religious studies for married men] which allowed him to work as well, thank God. I have Internet and a smart phone, I have a driver’s license and other things. I go to the Knesset [Israeli Parliament] to speak, and I protest in the town square. I am no longer a typical Haredi woman.

What is striking about Elisheva’s testimony is that she is very much aware of her diversion from the norms of the community, but she remained insistent on noting that she does not believe that she has diverted from her religious belief system or from her identity as an orthodox woman.

From our interviews, it became apparent that women who actively choose personal development even though it opposes the norms of the community—rather than choosing to exit the community—seek to expand the community’s boundaries. Esti, for example, referred to her choice to progress toward academic studies while comparing her process to that of other Haredi women:

When I went into academia, I thought of personal development and my desire to progress in life. But other women I speak to–more from the mainstream of the community–they say they do it out of a kind of choice, but the choice is to support the family and to enable their husbands to study Torah.

Etti, who does not always follow the Haredi “path”, is not the only one who has diverged from the path but is still considered Haredi. From her narrative, we can understand that the subjective widening of the boundaries of the community in the long run actually creates new boundaries for the community:

There is the mainstream Haredi path, and I do not follow that path… for all kinds of reasons—some from choice and others not. Divorce was not my decision. But the “title” [of divorcee] is my decision. There [are] all kinds of turns on the path–right and left–where my life has taken me. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I think that everyone in the Haredi community–their life takes them in different directions and they need to take all kinds of small turns on the road… and that is okay.

It is important to note that the experiences that the women spoke about during the interviews were diverse. Nonetheless, there was a shared discussion that repeated itself in different variations: on the one hand, there were those who believed that the space the community allows for divergence was very limited, but on the other hand, there were those who actually saw that space as much wider. Miri, for example, felt that the Haredi woman has the ability to maneuver between her own personal needs and those of the community:

I want to say that, in general, most Haredi women feel good in the place in which they exist. Are there parts of the community of women who feel that they are restricted–because of their gender, their social status, their particular Haredi stream? It could be. Yes… there are those women. But I think that today most Haredi women succeed in fulfilling themselves according to what is important to them.

Like Miri, the narratives that many of the women told about themselves included very wide margins. Leah also spoke about how she felt that the community allowed her a wide range of freedom of choice. She noted that the margins of the community have come to include a wide variety of ways to define and fulfill oneself:

Nowadays, the stereotypical Haredi woman has many possibilities. In every way… she knows there are difficulties and prices to pay, but there are opportunities, many more than there were in the past. The margins have widened significantly. The community has expanded–today there is much more “periphery”—different schools, different localities… many more possibilities.

II.

Social location, political participation, and belonging

Membership in the community not only entails modes of emotional identification but also serves as an indicator of social location. The social location of the Haredi community in Israeli society lies between the cultural and political axes, and as such, it occupies two intersecting social spaces: one traditional and conservative and the other politically privileged in terms of access to power and resources. Haredi women are, therefore, part of the hegemonic majority in terms of their Jewish and ultra-orthodox identity, but they are also part of a highly patriarchal minority in terms of the cultural and religious identity of the Haredi community. Hence, given this highly gendered and patriarchal religious/cultural location, many of the political privileges available to the Haredi community impact women only indirectly. Hence, their intersectional identity produces ambivalent and indeed contradictory modes of identity subjugation and privilege.

In their narratives, the women referred to what it means for an orthodox woman to occupy a privileged social location built on highly gendered, male practices such as Torah learning, rabbinical authority, and exclusively male political representation. They spoke openly about the ways in which these privileges affect women and the ways in which they experience membership in the community. Finally, they spoke rather extensively about the different ways in which they attempt to challenge male practices, thereby claiming access to the influence and power intrinsic to Haredi membership.

All the women interviewed were acutely aware—and critical—of the gap between the political influence and power of the Haredi community through its political parties and the powerlessness of Haredi women. Living in urban settings and needing to juggle between caring for multiple children and working and between their community responsibilities and their own personal interests, they were all sharply aware of the fact that the extensive resources available to the community are often not geared toward improving women’s lives. Most of them attributed this situation to the lack of descriptive representation, i.e., the fact that there are no Haredi women in positions of power. The intersection of their gender identity with their identity as members of a privileged community (vis-à-vis Israeli society) weakens the element of privilege, rendering the women in the community unrepresented and hence, in effect, powerless. Fayege, a married woman with two children who works in a medical supplies company, provided a very clear explanation of the need for descriptive representation:

In the park behind my house, there was a lovely shady bench. And I said to my girlfriend wow it’s amazing to have that; nowhere else we can find such a bench. So she told me, yes, it is there because the mayor’s wife lived nearby and came to the playground. And she told her husband that there is no shade for mothers in this playground. So, he fixed it. And I told her if there was a woman representative in the municipality, then she would make sure that there would be such benches all over, not just in the park near my house. When the park was renovated, this bench was removed and not returned. It was because he is no longer a mayor, so his wife is no longer influential…it’s shocking.

Naomi—who has seven children—provided an interesting follow-up to Fayege’s comment by speaking even more explicitly about the element of corruption prevalent in Haredi politics:

The “politics” of the community, in general, and the representatives specifically never hear the women, because there is no-one in the area to come and whisper in their ear [about our needs]. By the way, this did not happen by chance: they made sure that there would be no women [in local and national politics]. And I don’t think it’s because they don’t want women, it’s because they owe a lot of jobs and positions to people who helped them, so in practice there are more men there and basically no women at all.

Alongside the widespread agreement regarding the patriarchal and gendered nature of the privileged social location of the Haredi community, many of the women interviewed spoke about the ways in which they are able to challenge their exclusion—some in subtle ways and others in more outspoken ways. In the following quote, Menucha, a university-educated political activist and journalist and a mother of three, talks openly about her relationship with politics and with Haredi political representatives. From her words as well as her tone, it is evident that, despite her awareness of the lack of attention to women’s needs, she takes great pride in belonging to a community whose representatives are so attentive to the needs of their constituents as a community. It is also evidently clear that she is aware of the power that the particular social and political location of the community enjoys and admits that, even though this power does not necessarily promote all the values that are important to her, they promote many of the interests of her community, and this, for her, is part of the meaning of membership to the Haredi community. She takes great pride in her political representatives and feels that they promote the community. In the following quote, social location is clearly connected to her sense of belonging. Thus, despite the fact that access to the privilege inherent in her social location is highly gendered, it nonetheless provides her with access to power as well:

I have very, very complex relations with the ultra-orthodox parties… [Nonetheless] I feel that ultra-orthodox Knesset members work very, very well for their public… We received a letter at home from a member of the Knesset who is a representative of the Belz community with his phone number. I have personally spoken to him several times on his cell phone. He always answered. And he knows that I am an activist and I am against the fact that there are no women in the party. There is something very, very impressive in ultra-orthodox politics. Very, very effective, very, very significant work for the public. They work for a certain public. They work on behalf of some council of rabbis that I don’t know how representative it is. But many times, unlike other MKs [members of the Knesset], there is a feeling that they really get to work. Even if the goals do not match my goals.… I often use their assistance, even if I don’t vote for them… I feel that their politics is ultimately working for me. It excludes me, really, really excludes me and doesn’t see me in general matters, but yet I always have an answer or assistance to my personal inquiries... they take care of small details.

Fayege, on the other hand, portrayed a more radical position, stating that the only way to change reality is with force:

For many years, I dreamed about being involved in politics, being a consultant, a speaker, or something like this, but I couldn’t take part due to health issues. However, it really feels like in recent years… things are starting to move. I was very glad that Mrs. Bloch [the mayor of Beit Shemesh] was elected, but the ultra-Orthodox community did not accept this as something okay... And, in my view, this must change. And, in my view, the only way it will change is by coercion. Because I do not see how the ultra-orthodox parties can share their power with women, because they are not democratic parties… I think that we need to pass a law that parties that do not have women’s representation cannot run for the Knesset; this should be changed.

Elisheva, for example, decided to take things into her own hands, learning how to maneuver between different political representatives and thus playing the political game herself:

I am involved in everything–neighborhoods, community and national politics; this is all so important and relevant to us. You can say I am an activist, I visit the Knesset often, I sit in meetings and committees, I write policy papers, MKs know me–both from secular and religious parties… I work for Haredi communities and people with disabilities. I think Haredi women have to be in the Knesset. I think there are issues in which men cannot represent us, the women… It happened that I arrived at the Knesset, and there was no adequate representation and I needed members from non-religious Knesset parties to represent me and my interests. And it’s a shame; I didn’t have an ultra-orthodox female Knesset member to do that. There is a lot of room for women to act and to participate, a woman volunteer will do more than a man; she will look at the whole picture. And we need women in politics.

When asked whether she faces resistance to her activities, Elisheva responded by demonstrating her piety.

Everything that I do and act, I do with the rabbi’s permission. I don’t do things according to my views alone. [For example]… when I reached some more critical points, let’s say, when I was offered a position to be an MK, I went to him and I acted according to what he said… because in the end I do think there are things I can’t do, that I’m also not objective … but, he gave me his blessing for my other activities, in my way.

Thus, an additional strategy challenging male power was to play by their rules and, in this way, gain legitimacy. For example, in challenging the patriarchal leadership, Orit—a political and social activist, a divorced mother of four, and a self-proclaimed feminist—is guided by a sense of duty to vote and to try to have an impact that is deeply linked to a sense of commitment to the community. She is committed to raising the awareness of other Haredi women in order to change the nature of the leadership:

… even in the years when I didn’t have anyone to vote for…because I don’t vote for parties that exclude women … it is very, very important to me to vote… I won’t give up this right that women fought for so that we could do this, it’s not obvious… I talk to ultra-orthodox women, many times women don’t even know–aren’t aware… They say the representatives are very nice but [I say:] what have they done for you, as a woman with needs that are specific to women? On the contrary, they block the promotion of interests that are related to women. So, in my opinion there is a lot of ignorance… and ultra-orthodox women are also really busy, both making a living and raising their children and their heads are not in that place. In my opinion, they still don’t understand the need. I’m not saying this from a patronizing place or anything, it’s simply an existing reality that I encounter all the time, so it’s like I don’t see it changing, unless some kind of movement like “Nivharot” [Haredi Women’s Movement (https://www.nivcharot.com/home, accessed on 25 July 2023), identified with the slogan “no voice, no vote”] will really be more significant…

Finally, Rivka seems to adopt two strategies: the first is to seemingly play along with the rules of the game, promoting a more moderate approach to activism. At the same time, she normalizes the exclusion of Haredi women by arguing that all citizens feel frustration:

I like politics, reading about it, not doing it! I’m not going to any demonstrations or anything! I’ll just read and get angry at home. I think that integrating ultra-orthodox women into politics is a very complex thing, and there was an attempt to do such a thing that was not successful. I think there is still a long way to go until the day comes when there will be ultra-orthodox women in Israeli politics. And there’s a reason they don’t go there. In my opinion, a valid reason. I don’t know how suitable this place is for an ultra-orthodox woman. The size of the exposure... I think it is possible to do amazing and stunning politics [backstage], without being in the front, without being a member of the Knesset. Ah... as Elisheva does. I understand from her words that she does amazing things and that she really has an impact even without being in the front. I don’t think that ultra-orthodox women must be at the front in the Knesset. Do I feel that I have representation in the Knesset? I think I am frustrated like many other Israeli citizens regardless of being ultra-orthodox. I know the Knesset is a complex place regardless of religious view or religious ideology.... I do vote in the elections, but eh... There are parties that represent me as a citizen, with similar political views, but not as a woman.

3. Discussion and Conclusions

Two themes were apparent in the narratives. The first was that each woman was aware of the fact that she paid certain “prices” for the choices that she had made. The second was that, nonetheless, belonging to the community was central to the women’s identity. This theme came across in direct statements but also indirectly. For some, belonging was presented as instrumental, as a matter of “convenience” or of securing the goods that came with membership—childcare and other forms of community aid. For others, the sense of community and the solidarity that accompanied it was itself presented as a type of social capital that warranted the high prices that these women often had to pay to maintain membership. For others, the sense of community had to do with belief and the need to be part of a community of like-minded believers. Out of the 25 women who participated in these groups, only two of them questioned their membership in the Haredi community. Thus, for almost all the women, belonging to the Haredi community was a significant good, which was seen as a form of social capital and for which they were willing to pay a price.

Thus, in response to one of the questions that we posed at the outset of this research (how do women narrate their belonging to a community that seems to defy the very values that their education has promoted?), it appears that there are two main mechanisms that the women employ. The first is the idea of social exchange, which hinges on the fact that for these women, the prices they have paid are well worth it because of what they have received in exchange, namely, childcare, solidarity, and a community of belief. Indeed, as shown in our analysis, the women often reverted to a cost–benefit type of rhetoric when discussing their daily lives—namely, speaking of identity in terms of choice, with the choice itself informed by a calculus of benefits. It is clear from the narratives that belonging to the Haredi community is definitely a form of social capital expressed through its networks of relations, the levels of trust that characterize those relationships, and the benefits that are gained by virtue of those social ties.

The second mechanism is one that we call normalization. As we demonstrated in our analysis above, many of the women presented their own choices and their own differences as mainstream. As they repeatedly said, every Haredi woman makes choices, and all Haredi women diverge from the path at a certain point. Thus, they seemed to generalize their own conditions and their ability to make choices. In addition, by generalizing their own status, they extend to it a certain legitimacy and authority. If most Haredi women fall from the path at a certain point, then the interviewees are not that different from those women. In the narratives, the women seemed to be saying: we might have once been on the margins, but those margins are now part of the center.

In terms of the different strategies that the literature has attributed to Haredi women in their encounters with change (Layush 2015), the educated, working Haredi women who we interviewed seemed to merge a variety of strategies in order to assimilate their own contradictions; they were both accepting and critical of their own society; they were acutely aware not only of its weaknesses but also of the benefits accrued from membership; and finally, they saw their actions and their choices not necessarily as transgressive, but rather as constituting the reform that was needed to change Haredi society from within. Indeed, the presumption that educated women would oppose conservative religiosity altogether is ill-founded.

Thus, if we return to the theory of Yuval-Davis (2006, 2011), it becomes clear that the two components of her theory are intertwined. The identity narratives that the women presented were integrated into their perceptions of power, and all the women, when referring to the social location of their community, referred to it in terms of personal stories. It was hard to distinguish the reverberations of power from the stories of identity, and this overlap came across most significantly in three arenas: issues of choice regarding personal status, the women’s visibility in the public sphere, and the women’s thoughts about political power. This last arena was embodied in common references to the authority of the rabbis and their impact on the women’s decisions; in discussions of the ability of the community to impose norms and values on women; and in discussions of politics, especially the intersection of the women’s deep desire to be able to express their own preferences and choices for their community and the extreme difficulty in fighting the patriarchal structure of the Haredi community. Perhaps, this is the main insight from the narratives. These women, who have seemingly crossed every boundary possible, represent more than an example of a change in the margins of Haredi society; rather, they seem to embody the potential of a much more significant and widespread change in what it means to be a member of the Haredi community. The current research serves as a solid basis for further comparative investigations into the sense of membership and belonging in conservative communities both in Israel and abroad (Stolzenberg and Myers 2022), as well as longitudinal studies that could follow these trends over time within the ultra-orthodox communities in Israel.