Abstract
This chapter discusses gay couples’ experiences with transnational surrogacy arrangements as well as the laws and bureaucratic protocols that are necessary to make children that belong to the commissioning fathers rather than to the surrogate mothers. It demonstrates that the procedures that are necessary to establish a legal relationship between father and child are shaped by rabbinic kinship principles even though the Orthodox rabbinate neither approves of these family formations nor recognizes the children as Jews. Thus, the bureaucratic procedures surrounding fatherhood tests entrench the rabbinate’s power to define what a Jew and a Jewish family are and, at the same time, facilitate the formation of families that transgress these definitions. Their encounters with bureaucracy remind gay couples of the ongoing discrimination they face but also shed light on their power to mobilize financial, social, and cultural capital.
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Notes
- 1.
This number was announced by Doron Mamet at Conference of Tammuz International. New Paths. 10 February 2013. Personal Fieldnotes.
- 2.
In 2016, the Tel Aviv Family Court ruled that the child of a gay couple can be registered even without a DNA test. The court maintained that the couple had proven the genetic relationship between the father who provided the sperm and the child by other evidence, such as legal and medical documents of the surrogacy process that took place in the United States. See: plonit v. The General Attorney (Hebrew), FC Tel Aviv 32901-05-14, 7 August 2016. https://www.nevo.co.il/psika_html/mishpaha/SM-14-05-32901-33.htm. Accessed 5 June 2020.
- 3.
The agent-caretakers are often former surrogate mothers or egg donors themselves and thus share the same socioeconomic background (Deomampo 2013a, 168).
- 4.
D.G., N.R., B.Y. v. The Office of the District Attorney Jerusalem (Hebrew), FC Jerusalem 28240/09, 19 March 2010. Found on: https://www.psakdin.co.il/Court.
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Lustenberger, S. (2020). DNA Tests, mamzerut, and the Bureaucracies of Transnational Surrogacy. In: Judaism in Motion. Contemporary Anthropology of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55104-9_3
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