Ayala
Fader
Ayala Fader
Research Topic
Haredi Jews, Health, and Legal Cultures
Bio
Ayala Fader is professor of anthropology at Fordham University. She is the author of the award-winning books, Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn (Princeton University Press, 2009) and Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age (Princeton University Press, 2020). Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Fader’s current book project examines the trend of American Orthodox Jews aligning themselves with a new form of religion on the Christian Right—a public, political, racialized, and biblical philosophy, redefining postwar Judeo-Christianity in the contemporary political landscape. As the founding director of Fordham’s Center for Public Anthropology, Fader is currently collaborating on the Demystifying Language Project, which makes linguistic anthropology a social justice resource for public high schools.
Fader received her Ph.D. from New York University.
Selected publications
- With Rachel Feldman, “Illiberal Jewish-Christian Encounters: Political Temporalities in Amish Country Tourism,” Journal of American Academy of Religion 92.1 (2024): 61–87.
- “Illiberal Jewish-Christian Encounters at the Interstices of Gendered Wellness,” a response to Birgit Meyer, in a special Issue of Material Religion 20.5 (2024): 402–5.
