Description
Book SynopsisExplores the debates about reproductive technologies in Israel and how they fit with Orthodox Jewish laws concerning parentage and Jewish identity.
Trade Review“This is a deeply compelling and timely book situating Israeli debates about the use of reproductive technology within the context of kinship theory.”—Sarah Franklin, author of
Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception"Susan Kahn has given us a first class example of how contemporary ethnography can illuminate the cultural dimensions of the brave new world of new reproductive technologies.
Reproducing Jews offers a very different way of conceiving of the relationship between technological change and social life. Sophisticated and well-written, it will be welcomed not only by scholars in a number of fields—anthropology, sociology, feminist studies, Jewish studies, medical anthropology, bioethics—but by those who are curious as to how science, religion, and the desire for children intersect within a particular context."—Faye Ginsburg, New York University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 "The time arrived but the father didn't": A New Continuum of Israeli Conception 9
2 Not Mamzers: The Legislation of Reproduction and the "Issue" of Unmarried Women 64
3 Jewish and Gentile Sperm: Rabbinic Discourse on Sperm and Paternal Relatedness 87
4 Eggs and Wombs: The Origins of jewishness 112
5 Multiple Mothers: Surrogacy and the Location of Maternity 140
6 Consequences for Kinship 159
Conclusion: Reproducing Jews and Beyond 172
Appendixes 176
Notes 197
Bibliography 217
Index 223
