E Teman
Biographic Data
| ID | 22367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | E Teman |
| GIVEN NAMES | E |
| FAMILY NAME | Teman |
| SIGNATURE | TEMAN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ruppin Academic Center |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8353-9965 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 115 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The uncomfortable science in the womb: How biological experience disrupts surrogacy narratives
The discourse surrounding surrogacy portrays pregnancy as a temporary process, depicting surrogates as neutral "carriers" whose involvement concludes at birth. This narrative minimizes gestation's biological significance despite evidence of its lasting effects on both women and children. We interviewed 47 retired Israeli surrogates using thematic analysis to examine how they navigate biological experiences. Surrogates employ frameworks that dismi…
Rethinking the Jewish Womb in Israel
This article revisits questions about the womb's role in conferring Jewish identity in Israel. Judaism is transmitted matrilineally, yet orthodox rabbis increasingly view babies from non-Jewish eggs as requiring conversion. Through interviews with 25 orthodox Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who see surrogacy as an act of "loving-kindness" (chesed), we explore how they navigate halakhic uncertainty surrounding the Jewish status of babies the…
Dimensions of time and comparative analysis in surrogacy research
This article argues that long-term ethnographic immersion, combined with ongoing comparative discussions between the authors shed light on temporal aspects of the evolving social practice of surrogacy in new ways. First, the longitudinal perspective each of us had adopted helped to illuminate the changing cultural meanings of surrogacy in our research sites, the US and Israel, respectively. Second, comparative discussion of our findings provided …
Individual responsibility or trust in the state: A comparison of surrogates’ legal consciousness
Drawing on ethnographic research in the United States and Israel, two countries that have long-term experience with surrogacy, we compare surrogates’ understanding of, approaches to, and expectations about regulation. Women who become surrogates in these two countries hold opposite views about regulation. US surrogates formulate their rejection of standardized regulation—including standardized screening and contracts—by emphasizing their own resp…
Becoming Sincere: Why Do Jewish Inmates in Israeli Prisons Embrace Religion
Why do Jewish inmates in Israeli prisons embrace religion? What initially motivates them to participate in prayers during incarceration and what are their motivations to make a deeper commitment to observe orthodox Judaism while in prison? We conducted 30 qualitative interviews with 29 Jewish–Israeli men who underwent a process of “religious invigoration” or “religious strengthening” during their prison term and chose to continue being observant …
Pregnancy and the Reproductive Habitus of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women
Anthropological scholarship frames pregnancy as an out of ordinary embodied event, rarely focusing on mothers of more than four children. We interviewed 49 ultra-orthodox Jewish [Haredi] women in Israel and the US who birthed up to 16 children. We suggest that Haredi women are acculturated to the routines of pregnancy, childbirth, and a habitual position of receptiveness toward continuous childbearing as an act of religious devotion. This "circum…
Surrogacy as a Family Project: How Surrogates Articulate Familial Identity and Belonging
This paper explores how surrogates negotiate the meaning of familial belonging and family identity when they discuss surrogacy with their husband, children, and other relatives. We suggest that surrogacy necessitates reflexive explication of what a family is and how this family is implicated in surrogacy. Our comparative study analyzes ethnographic data on Israeli and US surrogates to illuminate key similarities in surrogates' strategies vis-a-vi…
Shouldering Moral Responsibility: The Division of Moral Labor among Pregnant Women, Rabbis, and Doctors
This article contributes to the anthropology of morality through an ethnographic focus on the consultations of religiously observant Jews with rabbis and medical specialists regarding dilemmas surrounding prenatal diagnosis of fetal anomalies. Our ethnography looks at religious couples who consult rabbinic authorities on their reproductive dilemmas rather than making autonomous decisions and the procedures of decision-making that rabbis enact. We…
The Power of the Single Story: Surrogacy and Social Media in Israel
Analyzing interviews with 20 Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who gave birth in 2014-2016, I examine the common narrative structure of their personal stories and the way that this becomes what Adichie calls a "single story". This idealized, romanticized, utopian story includes: 1. an intimate bond between surrogate and intended parents; 2. an epic birth; 3. a happy ending, told publicly. After illustrating this structure, I present the conse…
The “Watchful Eye of God”: The Role of Religion in the Rehabilitation and Reentry of Repentant Jewish Prisoners
Can participation in a religious rehabilitation program benefit a released prisoner’s reentry into the community, and if so, how? Which elements of the religious worldview can be translated into tools for promoting desistance? Using a qualitative approach, we conducted 30 interviews with released prisoners from 3 months to 5 years beyond release who participated in a Jewish faith-based rehabilitation program administered by Israel’s Prisoner Reha…
Pregnant Metaphors and Surrogate Meanings: Bringing the Ethnography of Pregnancy and Surrogacy into Conversation in Israel and Beyond
This article explores the way that surrogacy and normal pregnancy share cultural assumptions about pregnancy. Through a juxtaposition of our ethnographic studies of two groups of Jewish-Israeli women-women who have undergone "normal," low-risk pregnancies and women who have given birth as gestational surrogates-we argue that surrogacy and pregnancy emerge as potent metaphors for one another. Both pregnant women and surrogates divided their bodies…
Surrogate non-motherhood: Israeli and US surrogates speak about kinship and parenthood
Drawing on a comparison of two ethnographic research projects on surrogacy in the United States and Israel, this paper explores surrogates' views about motherhood and parenthood, relationships and relatedness. The paper challenges three myths of surrogacy: that surrogates bond with the babies they carry for intended parents, that it is immoral not to acknowledge the surrogates' maternity, and that surrogacy upsets the moral order of society by de…
Obligatory Effort [Hishtadlut] as an Explanatory Model: A Critique of Reproductive Choice and Control
Childbirth, midwifery and concepts of time – Edited by Christine McCourt; foreword: Ronnie Frankenberg
Reflections on Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction 1
God-sent ordeals and their discontents: Ultra-orthodox Jewish women negotiate prenatal testing
Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self
This is an ethnography which probes the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavour. "Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative en…
Embodying Surrogate Motherhood: Pregnancy as a Dyadic Body-project
This article examines pregnancy as a dyadic body-project within surrogate motherhood arrangements. In gestational surrogacy arrangements, the surrogate mother agrees to have an embryo that has been created using IVF, with the genetic materials of the intended parents or of anonymous donors, surgically implanted in her womb. Based on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish-Israeli surrogates and intended mothers involved in these arrangements, this…
Expectant Israeli Fathers and the Medicalized Pregnancy: Ambivalent Compliance and Critical Pragmatism
The social construction of surrogacy research: An anthropological critique of the psychosocial scholarship on surrogate motherhood
Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction by Susan Markens
The Birth of Surrogacy in Israel by D. Kelly Weisberg
Book Review| November 01 2006 The Birth of Surrogacy in Israel by D. Kelly Weisberg The Birth of Surrogacy in Israel, Weisberg, D. Kelly. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. 304 pgs. $59.95 Elly Teman Elly Teman The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2006) 2 (3): 114–115. https://doi.org/10.2979/MEW.2006.2.3.114 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Sha…
Coming Out of the Coffin: Life-Self and Death-Self in Six Feet Under
This article discusses how the dominant approach to life and death as binary structures in American society influences the social construction of the self. Through the analysis of the television series Six Feet Under, we identify two types of selves: a 'life-self' and a 'death-self.' Questioning this binary, we offer the concept of 'transitory movements' to suggest instead that a 'waltzing' movement between life and death endows the self with mea…
The Medicalization of "Nature" in the "Artificial Body: Surrogate Motherhood in Israel
In this article, I draw on anthropological and feminist scholarship on the body and the nature/culture divide as a framework for understanding the place of surrogate mothers in a conceptual ideology that connects motherhood with nature. I explore links between the medicalization of childbirth in Israel and the personal agency of surrogate mothers as relayed through interviews. Taking the patriarchal context of the Israeli surrogacy law of 1996 in…
The Medicalization of "Nature" in the "Artificial Body: Surrogate Motherhood in Israel
In this article, I draw on anthropological and feminist scholarship on the body and the nature/culture divide as a framework for understanding the place of surrogate mothers in a conceptual ideology that connects motherhood with nature. I explore links between the medicalization of childbirth in Israel and the personal agency of surrogate mothers as relayed through interviews. Taking the patriarchal context of the Israeli surrogacy law of 1996 in…
Shouldering Moral Responsibility: The Division of Moral Labor among Pregnant Women, Rabbis, and Doctors
This article contributes to the anthropology of morality through an ethnographic focus on the consultations of religiously observant Jews with rabbis and medical specialists regarding dilemmas surrounding prenatal diagnosis of fetal anomalies. Our ethnography looks at religious couples who consult rabbinic authorities on their reproductive dilemmas rather than making autonomous decisions and the procedures of decision-making that rabbis enact. We…
The social construction of surrogacy research: An anthropological critique of the psychosocial scholarship on surrogate motherhood
Embodying Surrogate Motherhood: Pregnancy as a Dyadic Body-project
This article examines pregnancy as a dyadic body-project within surrogate motherhood arrangements. In gestational surrogacy arrangements, the surrogate mother agrees to have an embryo that has been created using IVF, with the genetic materials of the intended parents or of anonymous donors, surgically implanted in her womb. Based on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish-Israeli surrogates and intended mothers involved in these arrangements, this…
The Power of the Single Story: Surrogacy and Social Media in Israel
Analyzing interviews with 20 Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who gave birth in 2014-2016, I examine the common narrative structure of their personal stories and the way that this becomes what Adichie calls a "single story". This idealized, romanticized, utopian story includes: 1. an intimate bond between surrogate and intended parents; 2. an epic birth; 3. a happy ending, told publicly. After illustrating this structure, I present the conse…
God-sent ordeals and their discontents: Ultra-orthodox Jewish women negotiate prenatal testing
Pregnant Metaphors and Surrogate Meanings: Bringing the Ethnography of Pregnancy and Surrogacy into Conversation in Israel and Beyond
This article explores the way that surrogacy and normal pregnancy share cultural assumptions about pregnancy. Through a juxtaposition of our ethnographic studies of two groups of Jewish-Israeli women-women who have undergone "normal," low-risk pregnancies and women who have given birth as gestational surrogates-we argue that surrogacy and pregnancy emerge as potent metaphors for one another. Both pregnant women and surrogates divided their bodies…
Surrogacy as a Family Project: How Surrogates Articulate Familial Identity and Belonging
This paper explores how surrogates negotiate the meaning of familial belonging and family identity when they discuss surrogacy with their husband, children, and other relatives. We suggest that surrogacy necessitates reflexive explication of what a family is and how this family is implicated in surrogacy. Our comparative study analyzes ethnographic data on Israeli and US surrogates to illuminate key similarities in surrogates' strategies vis-a-vi…
Coming Out of the Coffin: Life-Self and Death-Self in Six Feet Under
This article discusses how the dominant approach to life and death as binary structures in American society influences the social construction of the self. Through the analysis of the television series Six Feet Under, we identify two types of selves: a 'life-self' and a 'death-self.' Questioning this binary, we offer the concept of 'transitory movements' to suggest instead that a 'waltzing' movement between life and death endows the self with mea…
Rethinking the Jewish Womb in Israel
This article revisits questions about the womb's role in conferring Jewish identity in Israel. Judaism is transmitted matrilineally, yet orthodox rabbis increasingly view babies from non-Jewish eggs as requiring conversion. Through interviews with 25 orthodox Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who see surrogacy as an act of "loving-kindness" (chesed), we explore how they navigate halakhic uncertainty surrounding the Jewish status of babies the…
Surrogate non-motherhood: Israeli and US surrogates speak about kinship and parenthood
Drawing on a comparison of two ethnographic research projects on surrogacy in the United States and Israel, this paper explores surrogates' views about motherhood and parenthood, relationships and relatedness. The paper challenges three myths of surrogacy: that surrogates bond with the babies they carry for intended parents, that it is immoral not to acknowledge the surrogates' maternity, and that surrogacy upsets the moral order of society by de…
Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self
This is an ethnography which probes the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavour. "Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative en…
Individual responsibility or trust in the state: A comparison of surrogates’ legal consciousness
Drawing on ethnographic research in the United States and Israel, two countries that have long-term experience with surrogacy, we compare surrogates’ understanding of, approaches to, and expectations about regulation. Women who become surrogates in these two countries hold opposite views about regulation. US surrogates formulate their rejection of standardized regulation—including standardized screening and contracts—by emphasizing their own resp…
Pregnancy and the Reproductive Habitus of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women
Anthropological scholarship frames pregnancy as an out of ordinary embodied event, rarely focusing on mothers of more than four children. We interviewed 49 ultra-orthodox Jewish [Haredi] women in Israel and the US who birthed up to 16 children. We suggest that Haredi women are acculturated to the routines of pregnancy, childbirth, and a habitual position of receptiveness toward continuous childbearing as an act of religious devotion. This "circum…
Reflections on Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction 1
The Medicalization of "Nature" in the "Artificial Body: Surrogate Motherhood in Israel
In this article, I draw on anthropological and feminist scholarship on the body and the nature/culture divide as a framework for understanding the place of surrogate mothers in a conceptual ideology that connects motherhood with nature. I explore links between the medicalization of childbirth in Israel and the personal agency of surrogate mothers as relayed through interviews. Taking the patriarchal context of the Israeli surrogacy law of 1996 in…
The Birth of Surrogacy in Israel by D. Kelly Weisberg
Book Review| November 01 2006 The Birth of Surrogacy in Israel by D. Kelly Weisberg The Birth of Surrogacy in Israel, Weisberg, D. Kelly. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. 304 pgs. $59.95 Elly Teman Elly Teman The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2006) 2 (3): 114–115. https://doi.org/10.2979/MEW.2006.2.3.114 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Sha…
Coming Out of the Coffin: Life-Self and Death-Self in Six Feet Under
This article discusses how the dominant approach to life and death as binary structures in American society influences the social construction of the self. Through the analysis of the television series Six Feet Under, we identify two types of selves: a 'life-self' and a 'death-self.' Questioning this binary, we offer the concept of 'transitory movements' to suggest instead that a 'waltzing' movement between life and death endows the self with mea…
Expectant Israeli Fathers and the Medicalized Pregnancy: Ambivalent Compliance and Critical Pragmatism
The social construction of surrogacy research: An anthropological critique of the psychosocial scholarship on surrogate motherhood
Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction by Susan Markens
Embodying Surrogate Motherhood: Pregnancy as a Dyadic Body-project
This article examines pregnancy as a dyadic body-project within surrogate motherhood arrangements. In gestational surrogacy arrangements, the surrogate mother agrees to have an embryo that has been created using IVF, with the genetic materials of the intended parents or of anonymous donors, surgically implanted in her womb. Based on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish-Israeli surrogates and intended mothers involved in these arrangements, this…
Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self
This is an ethnography which probes the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavour. "Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative en…
Childbirth, midwifery and concepts of time – Edited by Christine McCourt; foreword: Ronnie Frankenberg
Reflections on Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction 1
God-sent ordeals and their discontents: Ultra-orthodox Jewish women negotiate prenatal testing
Obligatory Effort [Hishtadlut] as an Explanatory Model: A Critique of Reproductive Choice and Control
The “Watchful Eye of God”: The Role of Religion in the Rehabilitation and Reentry of Repentant Jewish Prisoners
Can participation in a religious rehabilitation program benefit a released prisoner’s reentry into the community, and if so, how? Which elements of the religious worldview can be translated into tools for promoting desistance? Using a qualitative approach, we conducted 30 interviews with released prisoners from 3 months to 5 years beyond release who participated in a Jewish faith-based rehabilitation program administered by Israel’s Prisoner Reha…
Pregnant Metaphors and Surrogate Meanings: Bringing the Ethnography of Pregnancy and Surrogacy into Conversation in Israel and Beyond
This article explores the way that surrogacy and normal pregnancy share cultural assumptions about pregnancy. Through a juxtaposition of our ethnographic studies of two groups of Jewish-Israeli women-women who have undergone "normal," low-risk pregnancies and women who have given birth as gestational surrogates-we argue that surrogacy and pregnancy emerge as potent metaphors for one another. Both pregnant women and surrogates divided their bodies…
Surrogate non-motherhood: Israeli and US surrogates speak about kinship and parenthood
Drawing on a comparison of two ethnographic research projects on surrogacy in the United States and Israel, this paper explores surrogates' views about motherhood and parenthood, relationships and relatedness. The paper challenges three myths of surrogacy: that surrogates bond with the babies they carry for intended parents, that it is immoral not to acknowledge the surrogates' maternity, and that surrogacy upsets the moral order of society by de…
Shouldering Moral Responsibility: The Division of Moral Labor among Pregnant Women, Rabbis, and Doctors
This article contributes to the anthropology of morality through an ethnographic focus on the consultations of religiously observant Jews with rabbis and medical specialists regarding dilemmas surrounding prenatal diagnosis of fetal anomalies. Our ethnography looks at religious couples who consult rabbinic authorities on their reproductive dilemmas rather than making autonomous decisions and the procedures of decision-making that rabbis enact. We…
The Power of the Single Story: Surrogacy and Social Media in Israel
Analyzing interviews with 20 Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who gave birth in 2014-2016, I examine the common narrative structure of their personal stories and the way that this becomes what Adichie calls a "single story". This idealized, romanticized, utopian story includes: 1. an intimate bond between surrogate and intended parents; 2. an epic birth; 3. a happy ending, told publicly. After illustrating this structure, I present the conse…
Becoming Sincere: Why Do Jewish Inmates in Israeli Prisons Embrace Religion
Why do Jewish inmates in Israeli prisons embrace religion? What initially motivates them to participate in prayers during incarceration and what are their motivations to make a deeper commitment to observe orthodox Judaism while in prison? We conducted 30 qualitative interviews with 29 Jewish–Israeli men who underwent a process of “religious invigoration” or “religious strengthening” during their prison term and chose to continue being observant …
Pregnancy and the Reproductive Habitus of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women
Anthropological scholarship frames pregnancy as an out of ordinary embodied event, rarely focusing on mothers of more than four children. We interviewed 49 ultra-orthodox Jewish [Haredi] women in Israel and the US who birthed up to 16 children. We suggest that Haredi women are acculturated to the routines of pregnancy, childbirth, and a habitual position of receptiveness toward continuous childbearing as an act of religious devotion. This "circum…
Surrogacy as a Family Project: How Surrogates Articulate Familial Identity and Belonging
This paper explores how surrogates negotiate the meaning of familial belonging and family identity when they discuss surrogacy with their husband, children, and other relatives. We suggest that surrogacy necessitates reflexive explication of what a family is and how this family is implicated in surrogacy. Our comparative study analyzes ethnographic data on Israeli and US surrogates to illuminate key similarities in surrogates' strategies vis-a-vi…
Individual responsibility or trust in the state: A comparison of surrogates’ legal consciousness
Drawing on ethnographic research in the United States and Israel, two countries that have long-term experience with surrogacy, we compare surrogates’ understanding of, approaches to, and expectations about regulation. Women who become surrogates in these two countries hold opposite views about regulation. US surrogates formulate their rejection of standardized regulation—including standardized screening and contracts—by emphasizing their own resp…
Rethinking the Jewish Womb in Israel
This article revisits questions about the womb's role in conferring Jewish identity in Israel. Judaism is transmitted matrilineally, yet orthodox rabbis increasingly view babies from non-Jewish eggs as requiring conversion. Through interviews with 25 orthodox Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who see surrogacy as an act of "loving-kindness" (chesed), we explore how they navigate halakhic uncertainty surrounding the Jewish status of babies the…
Dimensions of time and comparative analysis in surrogacy research
This article argues that long-term ethnographic immersion, combined with ongoing comparative discussions between the authors shed light on temporal aspects of the evolving social practice of surrogacy in new ways. First, the longitudinal perspective each of us had adopted helped to illuminate the changing cultural meanings of surrogacy in our research sites, the US and Israel, respectively. Second, comparative discussion of our findings provided …
The uncomfortable science in the womb: How biological experience disrupts surrogacy narratives
The discourse surrounding surrogacy portrays pregnancy as a temporary process, depicting surrogates as neutral "carriers" whose involvement concludes at birth. This narrative minimizes gestation's biological significance despite evidence of its lasting effects on both women and children. We interviewed 47 retired Israeli surrogates using thematic analysis to examine how they navigate biological experiences. Surrogates employ frameworks that dismi…
Reproductive Health and Technologies (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (8 works) · Judaism (8 works) · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (7 works)