Navigating Change: Agency, Identity, and Embodiment in Haredi Women's Dance and Theater

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Jerusalem with a dance school and the playwright and cast of a Haredi musical, this article explores the formation of religious ethical personhood, Haredi women's forms of agency and critique, and the integration of secular and religious knowledge in the Haredi world in Israel today. The by-women-forwomen arts space, created by increasingly stringent interpretations of modesty and gender separation norms, and influenced by returnees to the faith, has become a site of critique and agency for Haredi women. In the dance school, because the teachers have invested in maintaining extremely modest standards of dress, they are able to critique the broader impact of stringent modesty standards on mental and physical health, incorporating secular and religious values into their ideal for religious ethical womanhood. The play, which seeks to address the topics of domestic violence, infertility, and poverty, critiques aspects of religious life which place undue pressure on women, while establishing a purely Haredi ideal of religious womanhood, manhood, and marriage, which integrates aspects of secular knowledge that complement religious ethics. This article, through a focus on Haredi women in Israel, contributes to broader scholarly understandings of non-liberal religious women.