This article takes a Talmudic parable as the starting point to consider the ethical as immanent and imminent in an ethnographic case study of contemporary Jewish prayer. I consider the role of blessings and curses at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, as speech acts in protests over Jewish legal interpretation and state-sanctioned laws. I demonstrate how women’s prayer performances, directed to the divine, also reflect judgments about felicitous gendered worship, and, at the same time, passionately solicit ongoing engagement in argumentation and debate with those who have seemingly incommensurable interpretations. Drawing on Das and Lambek’s notions of ordinary ethics, together with Jewish thinkers, I suggest a reading of what happens at the Western Wall that locates ethics not in transcendent, rationally formalized religious rules that frame women’s visits to this sacred site; rather, ethics is immanent and imminent in their practices of interpretation, judgment, and encounter with those statutes.

中文翻译：

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耶路撒冷西墙的神法和道德内在

本文以塔尔木德比喻为起点，在当代犹太祈祷的人种学案例研究中，认为伦理学是内在的和即将来临的。我认为祝福和诅咒在耶路撒冷西墙的作用，因为演讲是在抗议犹太人的法律解释和国家批准的法律。我展示了针对神的女性祈祷表演如何也反映了对男女平等敬拜的判断，同时又热情地要求正在进行的辩论和与那些看似无法理解的人进行辩论。我借鉴达斯和兰贝克的普通伦理学概念，以及犹太思想家的思想，来读一读在《西墙》中发生的将伦理学定位于非超越的事情，合理形式化的宗教规则构成了妇女对这个神圣地点的访问；相反，道德在解释，判断和与这些法规的交往中是内在的和迫在眉睫的。