ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the changing nature of contemporary Jewish subjectivity in Brooklyn and Jerusalem. The yeshiva has a rigorous curriculum and a faculty well-versed in Jewish law—the interpretations of which were at the center of the research. Reform scholars have reinterpreted Leviticus by suggesting that it was written as a way of teaching against Jews taking part in fertility cults—not as a condemnation against sexual relations between men and Conservative scholars have ruled that "when societal perceptions have changed and homosexual relations are no longer considered an abomination, the prohibition disappears". Yet, the clear majority of mainstream Orthodox rabbis continue to insist that the only valid interpretation of the verse is one of complete prohibition. Changing the focus of one's research from gay homonormativity in Singapore to the bodily politics of bareback pornography in London and Paris to gay men embracing Orthodox Judaism in the US and Israel is neither an expected nor conventional research trajectory.
