Why do you conceal your body? Or cover your head with cloth? Why do you abstain from sex during your period? These were the questions Federica Valabrega asked as she photographed Jewish women in Orthodox communities from Brooklyn to Jerusalem. By lacing together these smaller details of conservative behavior, Valabrega, 31, was really looking to understand a more complex and personal question: What does it mean to be a religious woman?

Beginning in 2010, as an assignment for a photography workshop, Valabrega stopped women on the streets in Brooklyn's Borough Park and Crown Heights neighborhoods. "It was a reality I had on my doorstep," she said. Valabrega has been raised with traditional Jewish customs in Rome—keeping kosher, observing religious holidays, and lighting candles for Shabbat—but because her mother was not born Jewish (and the lineage of the faith passes through the mother), she is not considered Jewish by many Orthodox observers. How could her degree of Jewishness be valid in one community but not another? When she met Orthodox women, she told them she was curious.

"I wanted to just shine light on what I thought were 'daughters of the king'—the religious Jewish women that nobody saw [and] the beauty within them," said Valabrega over the phone from Israel, where she is currently living. Slowly, she was allowed into their homes, invited to dinner and then to weddings. She became a quiet background detail able to photograph women in unguarded states.

In her upcoming book of photographs, The Daughters of the King, Valabrega reveals the private lives of Jewish women in Paris, Morocco, Tunisia, Israel, and New York. The line comes from the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. "The beauty of the daughter of a king—a religious woman—lies within the secrets of herself," Valabrega explained. "So you don't have to show who you are to the world by wearing a low-cut skirt or a cleavage-showing T-shirt. You know who you are and you are okay with who you are."

The contemplation of modesty is a central focus of Valabrega's work. In one image, women tread the beach in stocking feet and sweaters, wading ankle deep with small children while bare-chested men splash in deeper water. In the foreground, a non-Orthodox girl in shorts, a bikini top, and a belly button ring is smiling. Valabrega's photographs contrast the norms of modern life with those of conservative religious tradition. Modesty, she found, was expressed outwardly by wearing all black or shaving one's head (which varies in each community), as a way of preserving the self for God and family alone.

"If you are as precious as the Torah, you will want to cover yourself," Valabrega said, explaining what she learned over the course of her project. For Valabrega, who mirrored her subjects' dress in order to photograph them, Orthodox fashion—at first oppressive in the heat of late summer—grew to feel like an important gesture of respect. "The dress code empowers you if you believe in what you are doing."

In New York she met Orthodox women who worked on Wall Street and taught at Columbia University, but who also raised and provided for large families—sometimes tending to 13 children. "Although they are religious, they are women first and foremost," Valabrega noted. Her images reveal an element of the quotidian: a band of small children, mostly boys in matching striped shirts with ringlets falling from their temples, playing in front of an apartment building half-obscured by a garbage pile. A single woman, clutching a baby, has her attention focused on a neighbor in the frame.

"The woman doesn't really worship the man; in fact, it's the opposite. The woman is the column of the family," Valabrega observed. "The woman has control of the whole house and the children's educations … so the husband is completely, 100 percent dependent on the woman."

Her photographs reveal this air of reverence toward women. Cast in heightened shadows, women pray or cook alongside their children, who stare directly at the lens. Valabrega used a bright flashbulb to create a stark black-and-white contrast that intentionally portrays the subjects in an ethereal, almost ghostly light. She wanted the women to appear "as these enlightened beings," she explained, almost elevated from the earth by the zealous nature of their faith. Valabrega's bride appears to float as she prepares for her wedding, her neck jutting forward to capture a spray of perfume.

While the photographer acknowledged that the community is not without sexism (or scandals of abuse and discrimination), she was more surprised by the sense of joy and satisfaction she encountered in Orthodox homes. "You see these women sometimes beaming with a different kind of happiness. From the beginning of the day you have a routine that is completely determined by God and how you see the world through the eyes of God. ... What I am saying [is that] a life of rules is simpler."

Valabrega, who lives with the uncertainty of a freelance lifestyle, admired the satisfaction she saw in the practice of strict routine. After spending time with the women, Valabrega returned to the Torah and learned to bake challah, offering, "They sometimes say if you are interested, you are a Jew, because you are interested in understanding."

Rebecca Moss Producer Rebecca Moss is a producer for ELLE.com.

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