Ḥiloniyot maʼaminot

Women, Secularism and Belief is an original and groundbreaking book that traces the supposed "anomaly" of secular believers by combining the knowledge areas of sociology, Jewish and Christian theology, religion studies, and feminist thought. The book points out the relatively large extent of the phenomenon (according to a rough estimate, about one-quarter of the Jewish population in Israel consists of secular believers), identifies new feminist voices of women secular believers, and brings their stories to the fore. It demonstrates convincingly that secular belief is not a social anomaly. Instead, it is a component of identity that is quite common in Israel but has not been studied until now because of the uncritical clinging to the customary epistemic assumptions, primarily the assumption that religion and secularism, or belief and secularism, are contrary categories. Beyond the richness of the narrative, the book offers a new theoretical framework that combines sociology and secularism (in which secularism is not a default or an empty category) and the sociology of belief (in which belief is not only a religious phenomenon) and emphasizes the gendered aspects of the phenomenon and their implications. All these delineate a nascent possibility of Jewish postsecular and feminist theological thought in Israel.