Abstract
Outside of the academic debate, coming mainly on the positions of feminist critique, we often think of love, relationships and intimacy as something purely private - as a matter of personal preference in the private sphere. Desire is portrayed as having an almost primordial quality of solely personal preference and decision, as pre-order and pre-politically given, outside of the particular discursive order. However, desire is not shaped outside of social and political structures and thus is a matter of politics. Dating preferences, relationships and marriages reflect broader structures of power relations.
The paper focuses on the construction of ethno-religious identity with questions of relationship preferences and dating patterns of secular Israeli Jews. By placing matters of personal status and family affairs under the jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts in Israel, every Jewish person is born into a legal category with specific rights and obligations on both the civil and religious levels. The ethno-religious construction of Jewish identity thus operates not only on a symbolic level, but it also has very concrete implications and practical consequences for the lives of its subjects. Relational patterns and preferences may represent certain latent meta-narratives linked to questions of belonging and the preservation of collective identity and nationhood.
The paper brings unique and novel data based on ethnographic fieldwork and reveals the multiplicity of meanings of being both secular and Jewish. Furthermore, it shows the limits of negotiating one's identity through relationality.