Frum mames : faire la maternité, le genre et la judéité parmi les femmes juives hassidiques de Montréal

Abstract

Based on fieldwork observations and interviews, this article offers both a theoretical and methodological reflection on the study of the maternity among Hasidic Jewish women at the crossroads of two approaches. The first considers motherhood from a feminist phenomenological perspective, emphasizing the lived and embodied dimension of the feminine; following Butler and queer theorists, this translates into a vision of motherhood and more broadly of gender, as doing. The second propose to consider Jewishness rather than Judaism, and grasp it as a «lived discursive tradition» in the wake of Talal Asad and the lived religion approach. The preliminary results of my research illustrate the heuristic scope of this framing, highlighting the gendered character of Jewishness and especially underling how doing motherhood, gender and Jewishness is strongly intertwined and displayed through acts of daily care. It is through these gestures, among other things, that these women develop and foster their connection both with the divine and the past and the future of Jewish people.