Mind and psychology

Read more about the article Article: Current Jewish Spiritualities in Israel – A New Age
Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Feminism gender and sex / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Mind and psychology / Typology and comparative study

Article: Current Jewish Spiritualities in Israel – A New Age

This fundamental article (about 6500 words) - that gained dozens of scientific citations - surveys and maps the junction between New Age and Judaism, in Israel. It presents the scenes of Jewish-New-Agey meeting, with many examples, and it deals with the question, how such a thriving and vibrant space may avoid the research gaze.

0 Comments
November 16, 2022
Read more about the article Encyclopedic entry: “New Age Judaism”
Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Mind and psychology / Myth / Typology and comparative study

Encyclopedic entry: “New Age Judaism”

This Encyclopedic entry presents one of the main reseach specialties of Ruah-Midbar Shapiro - The meetingplace of Judaism and New Age spirituality. It includes several exemplifications of the phenomena generated in this meetingplace, such as Jewish Reiki, Jewish Shamanism, Jubu, contemporary alternative spiritual versions of Kabbalah and Hassidism.

0 Comments
November 14, 2022
Read more about the article Course: Spirituality in Education
Critical theory / Education and higher education / Mind and psychology

Course: Spirituality in Education

In this course, the students encounter the various combinations of spirituality and education. The focus of the course is wide and theoretical, namely - we address different approacher to spiritual education and their principals. The course has multitude online creative activities, intended for learning and self practicing the material (see examples in the galery).

0 Comments
November 14, 2022
Read more about the article Article: Jewish Forms of Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy
Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Mind and psychology

Article: Jewish Forms of Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy

Article: Jewish Forms of Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy This article is included in a book dedicated to studies on spiritually integrated psychotherapy aroun the globe, published by APA (American Psychological Association). This article is unique in addressing the meetingplace between this realm and the Jewish tradition - the subject of our pioneering research project, that combined gathering data in quantitative and qualitatinve tools, and surveyed this emerging field in Israel which has yet to be studied. The article is chapter 14 in a volume that presents studies included in an international research project, funded by a competitive budjet from the Templeton fund.

0 Comments
November 13, 2022
Read more about the article Lecture: Science as Religion – The Scientific Discourse of Hypnosis and Its Correlation with Religious and Spiritual Phenomena
Critical theory / Disputation or conflict / Mind and psychology / Science/medicine and technology / State politics and law

Lecture: Science as Religion – The Scientific Discourse of Hypnosis and Its Correlation with Religious and Spiritual Phenomena

What is "hypnosis"? It seems we all know the answer… but - do we indeed? In this research the sceintific discourse (of hypnosis) becomes an object of critical examination. It appears that the scientific controversy revolvong the simple question of "what hysnosis is" is so fierce, that in fact the answer isn't clear at all. Actually, the spiritual-religious sphere is a "significant other" that influences the formation of the sceintific discourse. The sceintific definitions bear significat implications both on the therapuetic aspect and the public and legal ones. The lecture's title at the conference was: "Science as Religion – A Critical Outlook at the Scientific Discourse of Hypnosis and Its Correlation with Religious and Spiritual Phenomena".

0 Comments
February 9, 2022
Read more about the article Article: The Attitude towards Ugly People in Rabbinic Literature versus European Folktales
Critical theory / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Mind and psychology / Myth / Typology and comparative study

Article: The Attitude towards Ugly People in Rabbinic Literature versus European Folktales

One must refrain from ugliness And from what is ugliness-like, And from what is in its likeliness. (BaMidbar Raba 10:8) This article compares two corpora of folktales in Israeli culture - early rabbinical texts and European folktales. The article presents major examples of folktales of ugliness, and the attitude towards ugliness in both corpora, and analyses them in various manners (philosophical, gender-wise, anthropological).

0 Comments
February 7, 2022
Read more about the article Lecture: Bio-Medicine and Alternative Medicine – From a Modernistic Paradigm to a Postmodernistic Paradigm
Magic and paganism / Mind and psychology / Postmodernism / Science/medicine and technology / Typology and comparative study

Lecture: Bio-Medicine and Alternative Medicine – From a Modernistic Paradigm to a Postmodernistic Paradigm

This study compares the conventional bio-medicine's worldview with the one of complementary/alternative medicine, indicating the parallel lines between those worldviews to modernism and postmodernism (respectively). The studt identifies a new and innovative group of therapy, with a logic yet to exist - neiter in the modern nor the traditional world (thus we also present a comparative reference to traditional, pre-modern, therapy). The comparison's focus is the issue of language's role in the therapeutic process. The novel worldview isn't caracteristic to every new or alternative therapy, thus I named this innovative group of therapy methods "the new alternative medicine".

0 Comments
January 19, 2022
Read more about the article Article: Abracadabra! Postmodern Therapeutic Methods – Language as a Neo-Magical Tool
Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Mind and psychology / Postmodernism / Science/medicine and technology / Typology and comparative study

Article: Abracadabra! Postmodern Therapeutic Methods – Language as a Neo-Magical Tool

"There are only two things in the world – nothing and semantics." (Werner Erhard) This paper (some 6,000 words) argues that a new genre of therapy has appeared in the arena of contemporary spiritual alternative healing, which expresses an outlook never-before-seen in the history of medicine: postmodern therapy. Postmodern therapeutic methods (PTMs) express a popularization of postmodernist philosophy in regards to language and its role in the therapeutic process. These methods will be illustrated, and then analyzed in comparison to two other groups of methods: traditional magic, and modern medicine. In addition, we shall characterize PTMs as neo-magic, as they exercise the psychologization and rationalization of magic.

0 Comments
January 17, 2022