Corrective conversion: unsettling citizens and the politics of inclusion in I srael

Abstract

G auri V iswanathan's notion of religious conversion as an ‘unsettling’ political event has recently figured prominently in the scholarship on conversion. However, although numerous scholars have productively applied V iswanathan's understanding in their work, primarily in the context of conversion to religious minorities within the nation‐state, to focus too heavily on conversion's unsettling effects risks overlooking political constellations in which it might have rather settling effects. In contrast to the scholarly focus on conversion's disruptive qualities, this article offers an ethnographic account of the ‘settling’ ambitions and logics that underwrite the state politics of J ewish conversion ( giur ) in contemporary I srael. By looking ethnographically into the mundane discursive, pedagogic, and bureaucratic processes through which the J ewish state converts non‐ J ewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, I demonstrate how religious conversion works to restore the bureaucratic logic of I sraeli nationalism, thereby reinstating unambiguous forms of J ewish belonging. Religious conversion can also be an act of taxonomic repair.

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