Judaism, Jews, and the Anthropology of Jewish Life

Despite the Jewish background of some influential early anthropologists, the anthropology of Judaism has lagged (compared to related fields like the anthropology of Christianity or of Islam) in the generation of a sustained and coherent theoretical discourse. In some cases, the anthropology of Jewish communities has been framed through a trope of nostalgia and loss reminiscent of salvage anthropology. In others, it has focused on Ultra-Orthodox and Mizrahi communities portrayed as isolated religious and cultural enclaves. This chapter argues that the work of contemporary scholars, particularly those inspired by the anthropology of gender, kinship, and reproduction, and by phenomenological or experience-near approaches, could provide the locus for a new shared theoretical discourse around Jews and Judaism. This will require us to consider alternatives to taxonomies grounded primarily in a Christian or post-Christian cultural context, which have proven equally inadequate to Jewish historical categories as they have to the diverse experience of contemporary Jews.