Notions of Agency: Conceptual Paradigms of Gender, Family, and Propriety Among Adherents of an Ivorian Neo-Jewish Community

Very little of the recent scholarship dealing with neo-Jewish communities in the Global South—groups whose members either profess a genealogical link to Ancient Israel, or who have formally converted to rabbinic Judaism for spiritual reasons—has undertaken an analysis of perspectives related to the foundational paradigms of gender and family. This essay seeks to remedy the aforementioned lacuna by using an ethnographic lens to examine viewpoints concerning such paradigms among adherents from a Judaizing community centered in Abidjan, commercial capital of the Ivory Coast. Points of inquiry include the following: understandings of issues involving halachah (Jewish law); family responsibilities; historical female Jewish role models; community involvement; textual interpretation; and workplace equality.