On Wednesday, October 24 at 12:00pm, Ayala Emmett, Associate Professor of Anthropology, will share her current work, “Feminism, Religion, and Justice: How Rebellion Came to Dwell in the House of God.” Please RSVP to sbai@rochester.edu by October 20 if you plan to join! The paper will be circulated prior to the event.
Abstract from Dr. Emmett:
Situated on the contested boundaries of religion and the public sphere, this paper asks how secular ideas have entered places of worship in America, and more specifically how feminism has entered synagogues committed to tradition to produce rebellion and a historically transformed Judaism. Following the flow of ideas from the public sphere to religious practices challenges theories of tradition/modernity past/present religion/secularism divide and antagonism. The trail of rebellion complicates theories of antagonism between religion and the public sphere; rebellion indicates that secular ideas have been entering places of worship in America since the 18th century. I propose that inserting rebellion in places of worship produced an ethic of social justice that linked religious communities and the public sphere in a shared moral universe; this ethic of justice has been under cultural construction, that is, an ethic on a persistent problematic road; attempts to repair/expand it produce a shared moral universe.
