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Book
Keeping Women in Their Digital Place: The Maintenance of Jewish Gender Norms Online
(2024)
Abstract
Since its inception, the internet has been theorized as a democratic force, a public sphere in which hierarchies are flattened. But the internet is not a neutral tool; it has the power to amplify and mirror certain opinions and, as a result, can concretize social norms. So what happens when matters of religious practice and gender identity collide in these—often unregulated—online spaces?
In Keeping Women in Their Digital Place, Ruth Tsuria explores how Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States and Israel have used “digital enclaves”—online safe havens created specifically for their denominations—to renegotiate traditional values in the face of taboo discourse encountered online. Combining a personal narrative with years of qualitative analysis, Tsuria examines how discussions in blogs and forums and on social media navigate issues of modesty, dating, marriage, intimacy, motherhood, and feminism. Unpacking the complexity of religious uses of the internet, Tsuria shows how the participatory qualities of digital spaces have been used both to challenge accepted norms and—more pervasively—to reinforce traditional and even extreme attitudes toward gender and sexuality.
Keywords
- Gender Studies,
- Jewish Studies,
- Religious Studies & Religion,
- Judaism,
- Sociology of Religion,
- Sociology
Disciplines
Publication Date
2024
Publisher
The Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN
9780271097183
Citation Information
Ruth Tsuria. Keeping Women in Their Digital Place: The Maintenance of Jewish Gender Norms Online. University Park(2024) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ruth-tsuria/28/