"A Womb of Living Water ": A Gender-Based Examination of Video Artworks about Tevilah in the Context of Jewish Expression in Israeli Art

Gender and ethnicity, and their place in Jewish rituals, have recently begun to gain stronger representation in the Israeli art field, among both Orthodox women artists and male and female artists who do not practice a religious way of life—including some who converted to Judaism and others who define themselves as neither secular nor Orthodox but masorti, i.e., traditional. As Meir Buzaglo points out, many religious women and men do not subscribe to the clear-cut dichotomy of “religious” vs. “secular” in the Israeli Jewish discourse (Buzaglo 2009). Moreover, some scholars remark on the influence of the post-secular approach, in which secularity and religiosity are not mutually exclusive but become linked (Bracke 2008; Braidotti 2008). In this complex context, I wish to focus on video artworks of contemporary Israeli women that emphasize the feminine experience of "performing" tevilah in the mikve. They express a broad range of approaches : for some, tevilah represents purification and healing, as well as an act of ethnic identity—a reaffirmation within "sisterhood" ritual gatherings. For others, it is a liminal ceremony that combines exclusion and inclusion, attraction and repulsion, dealing with an implicit authoritative male gaze and at times, as in the conversion ceremony, an explicit male presence. Since these video art works are displayed in an artistic context , the immersion " into" the public domain may also be interpreted as an erotic voyeuristic practice that questions the possibility and the terms of a shared platform for both secular and religious Jewish art.