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Kosher Science

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Kosher Science examines how religious groups legitimize science by themselves, and for themselves. Whereas most scholarship on religion and science focuses on perceived theological ‘tensions’ between science and religion, we develop a nuanced and bottom-up understanding of the ways religion and science are negotiated and legitimized in everyday life.

 

While a recent wave of studies has diversified science communication by emphasizing gender, race, and disability. In a recent co-authored piece "The Four R's:  Strategies for tailoring science for religious publics and their prices", Public Understanding of Science (2024) we focus on the understudied lens of religion. Based on an analysis of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) science journalism and its readership, we identify four main strategies for tailoring science, which we call the four “R”s—removing, reclaiming, remodeling, and rubricating science. By analyzing how science communication is produced by and for a particular religious group, we reveal the diverse ways a religious-sensitive science communication is shaped by community gatekeepers, while also exploring the ethical and epistemological tensions this tailoring entails.

Between 2022-2024, we examined the pioneering publication of Niflaot (Hebrew: ‘Wonders of the World’), the first National Geographic ‘kosher’ Haredi magazine, launched in March 2021. Funded by an INSBS research grant, we combine content analysis and interviews with Niflaot’s editorial staff, public relations team and magazine consumers, to capture the ways scientific knowledge is tailored for religious children.​​​

 

In a recent co-authored piece "Science, Not Scientists: Reflections on Science, Culture, and Their Mediators" Science Communication (2024), we lay out a research agenda for studying religion and science communication that moves beyond theological and moral tensions to include embodied knowledge practices and orientation toward particular vocational futures. Based on findings from our case study of a National Geographic Kids magazine tailored for Orthodox Jews, we argue that diversifying science communication includes navigating embodied knowledge practices and competing “imagined futures” regarding science-related vocations. Advancing recent conversations at the nexus of religion and science communication, our case study highlights the generative possibilities that arise when centering religion amid other processes of science communication diversification.​

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