Back for the Future? Haredi feminist activists' narrative "temporal labor" as a means of legitimizing leadership and claiming authority

• In Event: The Time and Space of Feminism: Women Renarrating Jewish Authority and Leadership

Abstract

In recent years, haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) society in Israel has been characterized as highly dynamic, shaped by profound changes on an "axis of conservativism and modernity" (Cahaner 2020), and the tensions between them. While multiple factors and areas of life are at play, gender relations are a central site of contention and transformation; affecting haredi society and its interactions with Israel writ large. The patriarchal and highly stratified character of haredi society – upheld by educational, religious, and political institutions, both communal (Haredi) and national (Israeli) – accords limited and strictly gendered norms and roles for haredi men and women. As traditional gendered cultural scripts crack, failing to make good on their promises or "keep up with the times", feminist haredi activists feel called upon to revise these scripts. Yet, feminist haredi activists, invested in shepherding radical transformations in women's roles while working within a collectivist conformist society and conservative tradition, are somewhat confounded.
These activists focus on three main questions: (1) How to claim voice, knowledge, and positions of authority, when haredi women are barred from public leadership roles and socialized into a limited form of modest Jewish femininity? (2) How best to frame and legitimize their claims for "change" within a culture rooted in loyalty to ancient patriarchal religious traditions and stringent norms, who idealizes reproducing an imagined past, and is contemptuous of novelty and difference? (3) How to join and gain power through a feminist herstory, when they – as haredi women – are rejected, marginalized, or doubted by Western, modernist, secular, liberal feminist traditions?
Based on a qualitative analysis of haredi feminists' narratives, this paper examines how activists navigate temporal uncertainties, in an effort to articulate their experiences and demands. It explores how, as part of narrating their political project and making sense of their own stories, activists engage in "temporal labor" – creative re-visions of past, present, and future, and a re-working of the linkages between them. They do so by questioning what was, undermining the inevitability of what is, and broadening and diversifying what may be possible; as well as claiming a stake in, and critiquing, multiple and sometimes contradictory temporal logics and narratives culturally available to them.

Author

• Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Hebrew University of Jerusalem