ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the "domestication of religion" as a process in which people who profess their allegiance to a wider religious tradition personalise the rituals, institutions, symbols and theology of that wider system in order to safeguard the well-being of particular individuals with whom they are linked in relationships of care. It argues that individuals who have a great deal invested in interpersonal relationships, and who are excluded from formal power within an institutionalised religious framework, tend to be associated with a personally-oriented religious mode. The religious role of guarding one's family is a function of both age and gender; men and younger women have much more limited contact with ancestors and have almost no responsibility—in the spiritual sphere—for the welfare of their descendants. In describing the religious lives of the Oriental Jewish women, the chapter emphasizes how rituals or symbols become transformed when they enter or leave the domestic realm.
