ISSN 1556-3723 (print) Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion __________________________________________________________________ Volume 8 2012 Article 6 __________________________________________________________________ Meaning Making Under the Sacred Canopy: The Role of Orthodox Jewish Marriage Guidebooks Nurit Novis-Deutsch* Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israeli Law, Economy and Society University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California Ari Engelberg Department of Sociology and Anthropology Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem, Israel *
[email protected] Copyright © 2012 Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion is freely available on the World Wide Web at http://www.religjournal.com. Meaning Making Under the Sacred Canopy: The Role of Orthodox Jewish † Marriage Guidebooks Nurit Novis-Deutsch Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israeli Law, Economy and Society University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California Ari Engelberg Department of Sociology and Anthropology Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem, Israel Abstract Marriage guidebooks for Orthodox Jews in Israel have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Previous research has shown that Jewish Orthodox Israelis are exposed to liberal Western ideals about romantic love and gender egalitarianism while continuing to uphold conservative family values. To gain insight into how leaders of Orthodox Jewish groups deal with these conflicting meaning systems, a representative sample of thirty guidebooks written for Re- ligious Zionist and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel was analyzed by using a qualitative grounded theory analysis.