Post-Liturgical Women’s Rituals Among Western Ukrainian Female Labor Migrants in Israel

This article develops the analytical concept of post-liturgical female rituality to examine informal religious practices created by Western Ukrainian female labor migrants in Israel. Drawing on approaches that conceptualize ritual as flexible, embodied, and processual, it focuses on women’s ritual activities that take place in close temporal and symbolic proximity to official church liturgy while remaining outside canonical frameworks. Rather than directly challenging institutional religion, these practices extend and reinterpret patriarchal liturgy through gendered forms of ritual engagement. The analysis is based on qualitative research among Ukrainian Greek Catholic women in Israel, including 27 in-depth interviews, participant observation, and digital ethnography. The findings highlight three interconnected dimensions: collective gatherings following church services; post-liturgical practices involving food, singing, and embodied performance; and national-religious rituals expressing emotional belonging to Ukraine in the context of war. The article argues that post-liturgical female rituals constitute a distinct form of women’s religious agency that operates within institutional Christianity while reworking its meanings, contributing to feminist scholarship on ritual, migration, and war.