Event

The Ethics of the Mothers: Field notes on Mizrahi women's religion of care

Date
28 Oct 2025
Time
14:15 UK time
Speakers
Dr Angy Cohen
Where
St Anne's College, Seminar room 5, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Series
Israel Studies Seminar
Organiser contact
Audience
Members of the University only
Booking
Required
This talk explores the notion of obligation towards others at the intersection of Jewish feminist thought and the lived religious practices of Sephardi women in Israel. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and her involvement in Arevot — the only Sephardi feminist beit midrash in Israel — Dr Cohen examines how women who engage in practices of blessing, healing, and intercessory prayer construct a moral and spiritual authority grounded in caregiving, vulnerability, and responsibility for others. Focusing on figures such as Tamar, Menuja, and Shoshi — women of Moroccan, Bukharan, and mixed Mizrahi backgrounds — she argues that their everyday religious actions constitute a form of ‘domesticated religion’ (Lévy & Lévy), often overlooked by normative Judaism, yet central to the ethical imagination of Mizrahi feminist thought. These women’s rituals challenge the dichotomy between public and private, legal and affective, tradition and innovation.

Dr Angy Cohen is a Ramón y Cajal research fellow at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Middle East at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). She holds a PhD from the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has held academic positions at Tel Aviv University, Concordia University (Canada), and the University of Calgary (Canada). Her research focuses on Sephardi and Mizrahi communities in Israel and in the diaspora—particularly in Argentina—with special attention to migration memories and experiences, women's religiosity, Sephardi feminism, and the everyday moral experiences of Sephardi women. She combines ethnographic fieldwork with feminist theory and Jewish thought to explore questions of tradition, care, and ethics and subjectivity.