The Bride's Voice: Religious Women Challenge the Wedding Ritual

Halakhic marriage fixes the status of a woman as property. This status is, of course, not mutual and certainly not acceptable to me. . . . In general, I don't think it is healthy for a couple to live in consciousness of such power relations. . . . So it is completely unnecessary for a normal, healthy woman to submit herself to such nonsense. It is not respectful; it is not respectful of the institution, of the couple, of their relationship.

(Tehila)

Tehila thus expressed her discomfort with her sense that the traditional Orthodox Jewish wedding ceremony amounts to a ritual of acquisition—a conviction she shares with a broader group of women. For my doctoral dissertation I chose to interview twenty-five women, each of whom sought to challenge, resist, and adapt her performance of the ritual by producing alternative interpretations and practices aimed at creating change in the religious system. This article begins by describing the different strategies of interpretation the women employed and then moves to the strategies of action they used to address their wedding rituals. It centers on the brides, but in order to place their actions in context, I shall also remark upon the responses of the rabbis with whom they negotiated regarding the actions they took.²

The women I studied comprise a fairly homogeneous group. All were in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties at the time of their marriage, and all of the marriages took place within the past decade; all are well educated and consciously identify as both religious and feminist; and all lived in Jerusalem while single, specifically in the neighborhoods of Rehavia, Katamon, and Baka.³ Since they identify as religious, they feel constrained (to varying degrees) to abide by Jewish law (halakhah). Thus, they evinced a desire to have Orthodox weddings—either because they personally felt committed to religious Orthodoxy, or because their fiancés, parents, or communities were committed to Orthodoxy. They did not feel that they could take the path of some non-Orthodox women who opt for egalitarian ceremonies that are not acknowledged by the Orthodox rabbinate, the only body authorized to register Jewish marriages in Israel. Such marriages can be registered only by means of a civil ceremony performed outside the country—a route followed by many secular Israelis in order to avoid the religious ceremony altogether.⁴

Moreover, all but one of the marriages I studied received rabbinic certification. That is, the weddings were performed by rabbis certified by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which requires that they abide by its rules in performing wedding ceremonies—rules framed not only by halakhah but also by the policies and politics of the Rabbinate, as some of the rabbis pointed out. The rabbis allowed the women varying degrees of flexibility in modifying the ritual; indeed, they also varied in the degree to which they themselves identified with the Rabbinate. Notwithstanding these variations, they all located themselves on the liberal side of the religious spectrum. Some of them belong to a religious Zionist organization of rabbis called "Tzohar," which is known for its liberal attitude toward Orthodox marriage. Although the women I interviewed are still a local vanguard, I believe this phenomenon is expanding and increasing its influence on the wider Orthodox community and its discourse in Israel.

I collected the data for this study through in-depth narrative interviews, which took place in the women's homes and lasted two to three hours each. Jerome Bruner⁵ has written of the narrative interview as a window into the inner world of the interviewee, as well as an effective way to explore the individual's notions of existing power constructs, norms, and social assumptions—all of which were important objectives in my research. I used two main theoretical approaches in analyzing the data: narrative analysis and discourse analysis. One of the ways to do narrative analysis is via a voice-centered approach that seeks to unpack and distill the many threads that make up the story as it is articulated during the interview.⁶ Discourse analysis emphasizes the performative qualities of language and...