” deals with restrictions and discriminatory practices embedded in Israel’s domestic law. As in other nation-states, private life is governed by religious law, which traditionally favors male interests. For the Jewish population in Israel the stricter Orthodox interpretation of Halachah usually applies to marriage and divorce issues, flanked with a competing civil jurisdiction dealing strictly with property issues during divorce. During marriage, extramarital affairs carry far harsher consequences for women than for men. Divorce cannot take place without the husband granting his wife a formal bill of divorce. This opens the door to monetary extortion by which “anchored” wives (agunot) are willing to give up economic benefits in exchange for their freedom. Despite prohibitions on minor marriage and bigamy, there are frequent concessions made in the Muslim community governed by Shari’a law. In light of restrictions on marriage eligibility, many couples circumvent the law by seeking civil marriages abroad, or in the Jewish secular majority, by opting for nonmarital cohabitation. Same-sex couples have also won significant legal victories in the 1990s, notably in the area of adoption and reproductive rights. In the last decade, legislation was passed recognizing single-parent families, the majority of which are led by divorced women, and according them basic benefits. Israel’s familistic and pro-natalist ethos promotes reproductive technologies and protects and regulates surrogacy, but the Halachic provisions of paternity undermine the mothers’ equal status even in this area. Non-Jewish women’s status is equally precarious, notably that of Muslim women due to lesser access to a civil court system, and to the patriarchal social and national ethos that favors a more conservative interpretation of Sharia law. Despite the formal legal prohibition of polygamy and unsupervised unilateral divorce by the husband, the laws are not enforced. Guardianship is granted to mothers only during early childhood and later reverts to the father. Efforts by Muslim women’s organizations to increase access to a civil court system are opposed by male leaders of the community.
Nitza Berkovitch’s “Motherhood as a National Mission: The Construction of Womanhood in the Legal Discourse in Israel” approaches state law as a Zionist script, a cultural mechanism that produces the meaning of the social category of women. Specifically, the essay focuses on two early foundational laws, which do not pertain to Palestinian women: the law mandating military service, and the law promoting maternity. Berkovitch argues that despite the egalitarian emphasis in Zionist ideology its policies incorporate and mobilize women into the nation-state not as individuals and citizens but as wives and mothers. Israeli society is shaped by two interlinked gendering forces-.the public ethos of military service, and the private ethos of familial traditionalism. While Israel as a state extends citizenship privileges to all its members, as a nation it privileges ethnic, primordial identity based in the family. It also privileges the family as the primary construction of womanhood, though secondarily, women as public agents are expected to serve the state as warriors as well. Berkovitch’s reading of the legal statutes and the parliamentary discussion of them uses Foucault’s definition of discourse as rhetoric that both reflects and produces subjects, agents, and identities. The 1949 Defense Service Law is scrutinized because it exempts married and pregnant women from the military draft. This exemption was not contested in parliamentary debates, which seemed to agree that high birth rates and demographic priorities should take precedence over the right and duty of soldiering. Thus, the law both includes and excludes women from full Israeli citizenship. Motherhood is thus constructed as the highest priority, duty, and privilege of Jewish Israeli girls. The privilege of military duty is extended to Jewish Israeli girls only if it does not compete with a more urgent national mission. Diffe