Milligan, Amy K. Jewish Bodylore: Feminist and Queer Ethnographies of Folk Practices. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019.

Over the last decades, embodiment has gained increased academic attention in the field of religious studies.However, research on feminist and queer religious rituals as embodied practices that extend beyond mere opposition to traditional religion remains an underdeveloped field.Amy Milligan's book with the somewhat enigmatic title, Jewish Bodylore: Feminist and Queer Ethnographies of Folk Practices, is a resourceful contribution to the academic understanding of religious bodies at the margins of contemporary Judaism, especially in a Reform American context.Using the methodology of bodylore, deriving from folklore studies, Milligan explores an array of embodied practices, from religious and secular practices to non-Jewish and domestic rituals.Based on her inventive fieldwork, the author analyses the body as well as the context it influences, and is influenced by.Milligan deeply engages with feminist and queer theory and argues that the Jewish body and the intersections it embodies are fundamental to comprehending the complexities of the contemporary Jewish experience.The introductory chapter lays the foundation for exploring the contemporary folklore of Jewish embodiment.Milligan first considers several stereotypical conceptualizations of the Jewish body.She then introduces bodylore as her main frame of analysis.Milligan eloquently describes bodylore as a methodology which focuses on the way the body tells stories, viewing the body as communicative and performative, and as a carrier of symbols.She argues that the body should not merely be seen as a vessel for expressing identity and culture, but as a literal, physical object worthy of scholarly attention.Further developing the approach to Jewish feminist bodylore, Chapter 1 explores how Jewish feminist women subvert patriarchal norms by reclaiming their physical bodies in communal spaces, using them as tools of resistance.The practical use of bodylore as a method starts in the second chapter, by applying bodylore to the Jewish Renewal movement.The author highlights how women redefine their bodies through innovative rituals by reclaiming symbols previously unavailable to them.The third chapter offers a thick description of