Katz Center Fellow Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar trains her anthropologist’s lens on ultra-Orthodox and Amish communities
2 min. read
Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar is a senior lecturer at Sapir Academic College in Sderot, Israel, where she teaches courses on research methods, communication, religion, and gender. She is one of 18 current Fellows at Penn’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. This year’s 2024–25 fellowship year is devoted to the study of Jews and health, exploring health through the intersection between bodies and systems, language and physicality, religion, and science.
Neriya-Ben Shahar finds women’s voices in deeply religious communities; her research centers on the interconnection between religion, gender, and media.
“My research specifically examines women from two of the Western world's most conservative religious groups—the Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews—as they illuminate the complex relationships between religion, gender, and technology. Recently, health has emerged as a fourth dimension in my work,” she says. “My upcoming project will investigate Amish and ultra-Orthodox women’s perspectives on family size.”
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