Gay Orthodox Jews in Fictional Texts: An Examination of Twenty-first Century “Bad” Religion
Within the past decade, depictions of Orthodox Jews in same-sex relationships have entered American and Israeli fictional popular culture, and the portrayals, overwhelmingly, present Orthodox Judaism as incompatible with public expressions of gay sexuality. By building on Robert Orsi’s distinctions...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
2011
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| In: |
Theology & sexuality
Year: 2011, Volume: 17, Issue: 2, Pages: 181-197 |
| Further subjects: | B
Homosexuality
B Orthodox Judaism B Sexuality B Gay |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Within the past decade, depictions of Orthodox Jews in same-sex relationships have entered American and Israeli fictional popular culture, and the portrayals, overwhelmingly, present Orthodox Judaism as incompatible with public expressions of gay sexuality. By building on Robert Orsi’s distinctions of “good/bad” religion, this essay argues that acceptance of gays and lesbians is becoming a twenty-first-century litmus test for deeming religious groups as modern, respectable and “good,” particularly among Jews. By uniformly presenting Orthodox Judaism as incongruous with same-sex relationships, these fictional works gesture to how sexuality can be used as a discursive strategy for designating select groups and traditions, in Orsi’s terminology, as “bad religion.” These works offer a reverse discourse to Orthodox claims of exclusive Jewish authenticity and narrow prescriptions for how to be Jewish, illustrating Helene Meyers’s argument that, in the twenty-first century, homophobia, not homosexuality, is a Jewish abomination. |
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| ISSN: | 1745-5170 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Theology & sexuality
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1558/tse.v17i2.181 |