The Religion of Relating: Kinship and Spirituality among Middle Eastern Jewish Women in Jerusalem

A participant observer study is reported. It is argued that, for elderly Jewish women in a Day Center in Jerusalem, the mundane relational realities of life are given religious significance, so that relationships become `sacralized'. It is also shown that, for these women, religious duties are couched in relational terms. Relationships are not so much a series of discrete activities but rather the paradigm through which they interpret and organize the sacred and the profane. For these women the aim of religious ritual is to relate the sacred to interpersonal relationships.