Overview

There are more fertility clinics per capita in Israel that in any other country in the world. This phenomenon is not the result of high rates of infertility but on the centrality and political importance that the Jewish community has placed on reproduction. It was this statistic that prompted Susan Martha Kahn to embark on an ethnographic study of the social uses, cultural meanings and contemporary rabbinic responses to Israel's methods of artificial reproduction. To support her analytical perspectives Kahn draws on interviews with unmarried Israeli women who are using state-subsidized artificial insemination to get pregnant and her own experiences as a participant-observer in Israeli fertility clinics. After analyzing rabinnic kinship cosmology through close readings of relevant traditional Jewish texts, she explains how new reproductive technologies have been accommodated and even embraced by orthodox rabbis in Israel. Above all, ""Reproducing Jews"" reveals how unmarried Jewish women are explicitly valued as reproductive resources in Israel, whether they are encouraged to donate eggs for married Jewish women when undergoing their own fertility treatments, privileged as surrogate mothers in Israel's surrogacy legislation, or encouraged to reproduce autonomously via new reproductive technologies. Unlike birth control, Kahn explains, artificial insemination, ovum donation and in-vitro fertilization are subsidized by Israeli national health insurance and provided by fertility specialists who have emerged as global leaders in the research and development of these technologies. As the first scholarly account of assisted conception in Israel, this multisited ethnography should contribute to current anthropological debates on kinship studies. It should also interest those involved with Jewish studies.

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Reviews

"""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. The Israeli case is fascinating in the often counter-intuitive ways in which these new technologies are put into practice - especially the support of the state for the use of NRTs for single mothers, the problematic nature of Jewish sperm for orthodox couples, and the way in which the Halakhic system negotiates a conservatism into what could otherwise be a profoundly transformative development. The vitality of something like the Halakhic/Talmudic tradition, as a structure that has built into it a way to accommodate and assimilate modernity, is quite striking and offers an important contrast to arguments that accompany much writing on new technologies. Reproducing Jews offers a very different way of conceiving of the relationship between technological change and social life, particularly regarding embodiment, kinship, and religion. This book is 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 ""Reproducing Jews: a cultural account of assisted conception in Israel examines the often-conflicting relationship between Jewish and Israeli secular law on the question of making babies with a little help from the doctors. Dr. Kahn, who spent two years researching the subject, points out that it is official Israeli government policy to encourage its citizens to have a high birth-rate. Incentives include subsidised housing for families with more than three children. Fertility treatment is state-funded; family planning clinics are not.""--Jewish Chronicle, 12 January 2001"

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

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. The Israeli case is fascinating in the often counter-intuitive ways in which these new technologies are put into practice - especially the support of the state for the use of NRTs for single mothers, the problematic nature of Jewish sperm for orthodox couples, and the way in which the Halakhic system negotiates a conservatism into what could otherwise be a profoundly transformative development. The vitality of something like the Halakhic/Talmudic tradition, as a structure that has built into it a way to accommodate and assimilate modernity, is quite striking and offers an important contrast to arguments that accompany much writing on new technologies. Reproducing Jews offers a very different way of conceiving of the relationship between technological change and social life, particularly regarding embodiment, kinship, and religion. This book is 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 Reproducing Jews: a cultural account of assisted conception in Israel examines the often-conflicting relationship between Jewish and Israeli secular law on the question of making babies with a little help from the doctors. Dr. Kahn, who spent two years researching the subject, points out that it is official Israeli government policy to encourage its citizens to have a high birth-rate. Incentives include subsidised housing for families with more than three children. Fertility treatment is state-funded; family planning clinics are not. --Jewish Chronicle, 12 January 2001

Author Information

Susan Martha Kahn is Associate Director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School.

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