Peace in the Home: Israel, the Law, and the Metonymic Home
Abstract
In the United States, a home is often glossed as a family's residence. However, in Israel, the home opens a space for the creation of material and symbolic metonyms for family itself. Due to the status of religion in Israeli law, couples can only marry or divorces through special religious courts. This policy affects a disparate collective of families and relationships, placing inter-religious, same-sex, and–in some cases–previously divorced couples, along with individuals without the correct religious heritage (e.g. Jewish maternal line for Judaism) into similar positions on the periphery of the law. Given this legal terrain, the home has become the terrain upon which family can be thought through and contested. This paper follows families and courts as they fabricate, rehearse, and perform the home as the location and physical manifestation of kinship, as well as examines the physicality of the home as a real force in peoples' abilities to define their own lives. The home in contemporary Israel has become a social location for creative resistance against the state and orthodox religion, but also a place where the state can confirm and solidify its powers.
Bio
Alexander Wamboldt works on law, kinship, and ritual in Israel. He examines the confluence of neoliberal lifestyles and romantic ideals with legal and religious regimes upon the lived experiences of individuals and families. He is interested in how people navigate their personal trajectories through these institutions throughout their lifetimes, and how these choices affect the nation-state, governance, Judaism as a religion and as a culture, gender, ritual meaning, and the assemblage of the social.
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In the United States, a home is often glossed as a family's residence. However, in Israel, the home opens a space for the creation of material and symbolic metonyms for family itself. Due to the status of religion in Israeli law, couples can only marry or divorces through special religious courts. This policy affects a disparate collective of families and relationships, placing inter-religious, same-sex, and–in some cases–previously divorced couples, along with individuals without the correct religious heritage (e.g. Jewish maternal line for Judaism) into similar positions on the periphery of the law. Given this legal terrain, the home has become the terrain upon which family can be thought through and contested. This paper follows families and courts as they fabricate, rehearse, and perform the home as the location and physical manifestation of kinship, as well as examines the physicality of the home as a real force in peoples' abilities to define their own lives. The home in contemporary Israel has become a social location for creative resistance against the state and orthodox religion, but also a place where the state can confirm and solidify its powers.
Bio
Alexander Wamboldt works on law, kinship, and ritual in Israel. He examines the confluence of neoliberal lifestyles and romantic ideals with legal and religious regimes upon the lived experiences of individuals and families. He is interested in how people navigate their personal trajectories through these institutions throughout their lifetimes, and how these choices affect the nation-state, governance, Judaism as a religion and as a culture, gender, ritual meaning, and the assemblage of the social.
[email protected]