Meeting Moses Mendelssohn at the Mikveh: an Ethnodrashy

Abstract This paper is a methodological response to the dominance of masculinist, logocentric, and discursive frameworks for the “modern” “scientific” study of religion. By combining feminist theory, rabbinic texts, and modern Jewish thought with ethnographic accounts of American Jewish women’s intimate embodied lives, I playfully contort the relations among subjects and objects of religious studies. In so doing, I ask how the commingling of multiple modalities of textual engagement can meet the present moment in the study of religion.