When the State Winks: The Performance of Jewish Conversion in Israel(5 Religion, Culture, and Public Life)

Religious conversion is often associated with ideals of religious sincerity. But in a society in which religious belonging is entangled with ethnonational citizenship and confers political privilege, a convert might well have multilayered motives. Over the last two decades, mass non-Jewish immigration to Israel, especially from the former Soviet Union, has sparked heated debates over the Jewish state's conversion policy and intensified suspicion of converts' sincerity. When the State Winks carefully traces the performance of state-endorsed Orthodox conversion to highlight the collaborative labor that goes into the making of the Israeli state and its Jewish citizens. In a rich ethnographic narrative based on fieldwork in conversion schools, rabbinic courts, and ritual bathhouses, Michal Kravel-Tovi follows conversion candidates-mostly secular young women from a former Soviet background-and state conversion agents, mostly religious Zionists caught between the contradictory demands of their nationalist and religious commitments. She complicates the popular perception that conversion is a "wink-wink" relationship in which both sides agree to treat the converts' pretenses of observance as real. Instead, she demonstrates how their interdependent performances blur any clear boundary between sincere and empty conversions. Alongside detailed ethnography, When the State Winks develops new ways to think about the complex connection between religious conversion and the nation-state. Kravel-Tovi emphasizes how state power and morality is managed through "winking"-the subtle exchanges and performances that animate everyday institutional encounters between state and citizen. In a country marked by tension between official religiosity and a predominantly secular Jewish population, winking permits the state to save its Jewish face.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Prologue: The Naked Truth on Tel Aviv’s Beaches Introduction: Taking Winking Seriously Part 1. The Conversion Mission 1. National Mission 2. State Workers Part 2. The Conversion Performance 3. Legible Signs 4. Dramaturgical Entanglements 5. Biographical Scripts Epilogue: Winking Like a State Glossary Notes References Index

About the Author :
Michal Kravel-Tovi is associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Tel Aviv University. She is coeditor of Taking Stock: Cultures of Enumeration in Contemporary Jewish Life (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2016).

Review :
[This] book is well organized ... it is essential reading for anyone who wants to get a deeper understanding of how the conversion process really operates. This book is required reading for students and scholars who are interested in religion and state in contemporary Israel, reproduction, gender, and of course, conversion In addition to its contributions to the fields of political anthropology and the anthropology of religion, When the State Winks is a model of a methodologically and theoretically rigorous ethnography written in an accessible language. Important, challenging book. This is a masterpiece to recommend to all those concerned about research into political states and the related concepts of governmentality and biopolitics. This study is well-written and readable. It combines academic professional writing with relevant, informative stories from the field. The result is an informative and beautifully written book. When the State Winks is written in an engaging style that will instantly draw in both a specialist and a non-specialist reader. It can be recommended to a wide range of academic audiences and is a must-read in anthropology of religion at the intersection with political anthropology and anthropology of the state. [A] stunning ethnographic study...Highly recommended. A beautifully written and engaged ethnography of the overlooked topic of state-sponsored conversion to Judaism. Kravel-Tovi illustrates how the complicated playing field of conversion is constrained with tensions between state secularism and religion; Zionism and Judaism; and bureaucracy and sincerity. In addition to its contributions to the fields of political anthropology and the anthropology of religion, When the State Winks is a model of a methodologically and theoretically rigorous ethnography written in an accessible language that would make an excellent addition to undergraduate- and graduate-level syllabi. This book is highly recommended. When the State Winks is a superb ethnography of state-run conversion to Judaism in Israel. The book offers a wonderful synthesis between an animated ethnographic description and a sharp analytical account. [It] makes an important contribution to both the anthropology of the state and the ethnography of communication. When the State Winks is a milestone, or even a breakthrough, in the understanding of the state. Kravel-Tovi directs her look at the generally overlooked bodily part of the state: its face; not at the way in which the state “sees” or “hears” but at the way in which its shifting gestures and expressions create a double entendre. In her stimulating and engrossing book, Michal Kravel-Tovi deploys the classic anthropological concept of ‘winking’ . . . Kravel-Tovi is to be congratulated for a political ethnography that achieves a satisfying balance among macro-contextual analysis, mobilization of social science, vivid and detailed vignettes of the objects of her study, and authorial self-reflection. In this probe of state-religion relations in Israel, Michal Kravel-Tovi brings the critical but sympathetic curiosity of a skilled ethnographer to explore the use of religious conversion for the purpose of creating national belonging. Addressing the substantial divergence between rabbinical practice and theological ideals and portraying converts whose reasons for choosing Judaism are often practical rather than spiritual, she shows how officials of state as well as rabbinical judges wink collusively at the short shrift given to doctrinal requirements in favor of well-trained performances of sincerity. The question of who is allowed to convert to Judaism in Israel, and how and when, is deeply charged with both spiritual and political commitments. Kravel-Tovi’s insightful, thoughtful book helps us to understand the nature of these contradictions and their consequences and the way that converts themselves come to experience their conversion. When the State Winks is an excellent, original work that uniquely situates its analysis not just within an anthropological framework but also within a broad, humanistic one. Kravel-Tovi tells a compelling story about the political and personal complexities of conversion in Israel, and it will be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists, and historians as well as scholars of Judaism and religion more generally. The best recent ethnography of state bureaucratic practice in Israel and the best ethnography of state-assisted conversion more broadly. With clarity of prose, pathbreaking ethnography, and a humanizing argument, Kravel-Tovi’s work moves beyond accounts that treat ‘the state’ as a monolithic and inimical entity. Real people—rabbis, converts, and state workers—emerge from these pages, not stick figures of the sociological imagination.