Cara Rock-Singer's *Gestating Judaism: The Corporeal Technologies of American Jewish Religion*: A Postpartum Conversation

Cara Rock-Singer's Gestating Judaism: The Corporeal Technologies of American Jewish Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2026) employs Jewish technologies such as kinship, rituals, and texts to reveal how individual and collective Jewish bodies are creatively reproduced. The book combines ethnographic fieldwork in the United States and Israel with readings of biblical and rabbinic literature, resulting in a hybrid form Rock-Singer terms ethnodrashy (ethnography plus midrash), to center gendered imaginaries and sexed bodies that have not been normative within the intellectual traditions of either rabbinic Judaism or “the West.” Through immersion in traditionally religious practices like the ritual bath (mikveh) and seemingly secular practices like birth education classes, it becomes clear how reproductive bodies are central to the intellectual, political, and spiritual life of American Judaism. This roundtable will discuss Gestating Judaism’s contributions to science and technology studies, American religion, gender and sexuality studies, political theology, and Jewish studies.