Orit Avishai

I am an ethnographer who is interested in how ideology and culture, very broadly defined, shape social institutions, identity categories, political dialogue, cultural practices, and processes of knowledge production. Before pursuing a Sociology Ph.D. at Berkeley (where I also earned a graduate certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies), I earned law degrees from Tel Aviv University and the Yale Law School, clerked in the Israeli Supreme Court, and worked briefly as a lawyer. The scope of my scholarship reflects this broad training. I have written about breast-feeding and the politics of motherhood in the United States, gendered and sexual regimes in Israeli Jewish Orthodoxy, women in conservative religions, feminist knowledge production, and the marriage education movement in the United States. My most recent research focused on Orthodox Jewish LGBT activism and experiences in Israel, and my book Queer Judaism: LGBT Activism and the Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy was published by NYU Press in 2023.