Hastings Women’s Law Journal Volume 28 Article 7 Number 1 Winter 2017 Winter 2017 Changing Motherhood Paradigms: Jewish Law, Civil Law, and Society Avishalom Westreich Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj Part of the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Avishalom Westreich, Changing Motherhood Paradigms: Jewish Law, Civil Law, and Society, 28 Hastings Women's L.J. 97 (2017). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj/vol28/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Women’s Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WESTREICH_MACRO.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 1/6/2017 10:29 AM Changing Motherhood Paradigms: Jewish Law, Civil Law, and Society Avishalom Westreich* INTRODUCTION The focus of civil concepts of parenthood has moved in recent years from biological to functional parenthood. This paper reveals a similar paradigmatic change within Jewish law due to a fascinating interaction between three sides of a triangle: civil law, Jewish law, and society. The paper analyzes the mutual interaction between civil law and Jewish law regarding parenthood (and in particular: motherhood) in cases of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) on both the conceptual and the normative levels, and the influence of the societal reality on both. The paper argues that civil law and Jewish law are dynamic. They influence one another very deeply, and both are influenced by the social reality (which itself is, of course, dynamic by nature).