ארכיון Identity - Page 5 of 6 - Prof. Marianna Ruah-Midbar Shapiro (PhD)

Lecture: Israeli Government Reports on “cults” – a critical study

A critical study of the struggle revolving "cults" in the Israeli society, through an analysis of formal Israeli reports - lectures on the subject of this research project featured in various forums (in English and Hebrew), and some articles were published in this project's framework.

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January 17, 2022

Disputation or conflict / History / Identity / Israel / Popular culture and mass media / State politics and law / Typology and comparative study

Article: Israeli Government Reports on New Religious Movements – ‘Tell me Who your Enemies are…’

The nature of the society's response to new religious movements actually illumonates us on the society itself. For example, in the U.K. and the U.S., the cults were mainly accused of brainwashing; in the U.S., they were also held responsible for the breakdown of the family and various economic crimes; in France, NRMs were portrayed as engaging in political plots and subverting the secular French nationality (Laïcité), which mandates separation between religion and state; in Germany, NRMs were presented as failing to make their national insurance payments and as a danger to democracy; in Japan, they were suspected of harming young people’s chances of succeeding in the workforce. And what about Israel? A study of the reports written by governmental bodies regarding "cults" serves us as to analyse the Israeli society, its major values, processes and transformations.

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January 17, 2022

Read more about the article Article: “The State of Israel vs. The Cults – The Anti-Cult Discourse and the Israeli Public Discourse in Government Reports”

Disputation or conflict / History / Identity / Israel / Popular culture and mass media / State politics and law / Typology and comparative study

Article: “The State of Israel vs. The Cults – The Anti-Cult Discourse and the Israeli Public Discourse in Government Reports”

In the state of Israel, four govenmental reports were written against "cults". What is disturbing in this phenomena? Is it likely that each one of the reports finds different kind of problems with regard to the new religious movements in Israel? What can we understand from this? What can we learn about the Israeli society from those various reports? In this study, we've analysed the wording of the reports (from a discoursive angle), and indicated the similarity as well as the difference between them. The study serves of course a mirror for the Israeli society and processes it undergone in the last decades.

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January 17, 2022

Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Feminism gender and sex / Identity / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Mind and psychology / Myth / Popular culture and mass media

Lecture: Lilith’s Comeback in Contemporary Feminist Spiritualities

What a glorious career did Lilith had in thousands of years! Alas, always as a negative and dark image… However, in the last decades, in the feminist spirituality she's actually admired. So, what does she represent for the contemporary feminist spirituality? Not one thing, but rather different things. The lecture presents a research, that was also published in an Article. See below links to relevant items. The lecture took place at a panel on "New Religious Movements" at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Israeli Association for the Study of Religion, dedicated to the Scriptures (their nature and place in religions). The conference was conducted at Bar Ilan University on March 11th-12th, 2018. This conference's session took place in English. For the conference's program in English.

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January 16, 2022

Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Feminism gender and sex / Identity / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Mind and psychology / Myth / Popular culture and mass media

A lecture: Lilith’s Image in Contemporary Feminist Spirituality and its Meanings

"Lilith sets inspiration fo women and men in the contemporary femenist spirituality, a sourse of theological/thealogical imagination, and an image for mimicry." This lecture, on Lilith's Image in Contemporary Feminist Spirituality, took part inSchocken Institute for Jewish Research's workshop on Feminine Spiritual Leadership. The research was awarded a scholarship from the Institute. The research project on Lilith includes more articles and lectures.

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January 16, 2022

Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Disputation or conflict / Feminism gender and sex / History / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Myth / Popular culture and mass media / Typology and comparative study

Article: The Witch Hunt in Ashkelon as Retold by Contemporary Spiritualities: From Embarrassment to Treasure Trove

Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, dozens of witches operated at the promiscuous city Ashkelon. This study (some 8,000 words; and a similar one published in English - as follows) deals with contemporary spiritual interpretations of an ancient Jewish legend - on a witch hunt executed by Rabbi Shim'on ben Shatach at Ashkelon in the 2nd century B.C.. It presents a comparison of three spiritual leaders in Israel, each re-designing the old story in a different way, thus expressing various values - in relation to Judaism, to their feminism's character, and to the place of magic in the world. The article was published in the anthology "Between Times - Ritual and Text in a Changing Society", edited by Haim Hazan, Rachel Shar'abi, and Inbal Esther Sikurel, in the Hermeneutics and Cuture series at Carmel publishimg house.

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January 5, 2022

Read more about the article Lecture: The gates of creativity shall never be locked – A comparative study of the spiritual-musical adaptation of the liturgical poem ‘Im Nin’alu’ in contemporary pop-culture

Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Critical theory / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Popular culture and mass media / Postmodernism / Typology and comparative study

Lecture: The gates of creativity shall never be locked – A comparative study of the spiritual-musical adaptation of the liturgical poem ‘Im Nin’alu’ in contemporary pop-culture

This lecture is part of the research project on the current reincarnation of the liturgical poem 'Im Nin'alu' in contemporary western pop-culture. The lecture deals with issues and challenges of coping in the postmodern situation, and presents three models of contemporary spirituality through the study case that is discussed: a spirituality of return to tradition, a spirituality of yearning to the Other, and a remix-postmodern spirituality. I've co-published an English article on this subject in the journal Folklore. The lecture took place in the 2nd international conference of the center of Yemenite Judaism and its culture, conducted on September 2018, marking 400 years of Shalem Shabbazi's birthday, at Yad Ben Zvi in Jerusalem. A simultaneous translation (Hebrew-English) has been executed in the conference.

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January 3, 2022

Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Typology and comparative study

A research Article: “Secular by the Letter, Religious by the Spirit: The Attitudes of the Israeli New Age to Jewish Law”

This Article (some 10,000 words in Hebrew) identifies a new religious category in Israel - Spiritual Secularity. It presents Jewish Israeli New Agers' attitude to Jewish Law (Halakha) and custome, and deals with the tension between alternative spiritual values and Jewish traditional ones, and its various solutions - ranging from indifference to Halakha on the one end, and rejecting New Age on the other. Nevertheless, the more interesting attitudes have to do with the processing of Halakha in the spirit of New Age (New Ageization). The article was published in Israeli Sociology, the most renowned journal of social sciences in Israel. An article on a similar subject was published in English, and the research was also presented in conferences.

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December 21, 2021

Read more about the article Article: Witch-Hunt or Women’s Oppression? The Secularization and Re-Enchantment of the Witches of Ashkelon Tale by Contemporary Spiritualities’ Leaders

Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Disputation or conflict / Feminism gender and sex / History / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Myth / Popular culture and mass media / Science/medicine and technology / Typology and comparative study

Article: Witch-Hunt or Women’s Oppression? The Secularization and Re-Enchantment of the Witches of Ashkelon Tale by Contemporary Spiritualities’ Leaders

This study (some 10,500 words; and a similar one published in Hebrew- as follows) deals with contemporary spiritual interpretations of an ancient Jewish legend - on a witch hunt executed by Rabbi Shim'on ben Shatach at Ashkelon in the 2nd century B.C.. It presents a comparison of three spiritual leaders in Israel, each re-designing the old story in a different way, thus expressing various values - in relation to Judaism, to their feminism's character, and to the place of magic in the world. The article was published in the important journal of Jewish Studies, pronted by the Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies - Journal of Jewish Studies.

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December 14, 2021

Identity / Israel / Methodology and models

Doctoral Dissertation: The New Age Culture in Israel (A Methodological Introduction and the “Conceptual Network”)

The doctoral dissertation was written in the Program of Interdisciplinary Studies of Hermeneutics and Culture at Bar-Ilan University, with the supervision of Prof. Moshe Idel (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) and Prof. Adiel Schremer (Bar Ilan University). The work is written in Hebrew, but entails a long abstract and detailed contents in English. It holds over 450 pages, in two volumes, and was approved in 2006. It was a pioneer big work in the area of the Alternative Spirituality in Israel, and served many dozens of researches that followed. The work surveys the phenomena and trends of New Age culture in Israel, and deals with an array of methodological issues concerning the New Age studies. It offers a model of cultural interpratation - "the ideational/conceptual network". This work was carried out under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Idel (Department of Jewish Tought), Hebrew University, and the supervision of Prof. Adiel Schremer, (Department of Jewish History), Bar-Ilan University.

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December 9, 2021