Typology and comparative study

Read more about the article Lecture: How the Deluge Myth became a Symbol of the Ecological Crisis – A Comparative Cinematic Study
Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Critical theory / Disputation or conflict / Feminism gender and sex / Geography / History / Judaism and Kabbalah / Myth / Popular culture and mass media / Science/medicine and technology / Typology and comparative study

Lecture: How the Deluge Myth became a Symbol of the Ecological Crisis – A Comparative Cinematic Study

The deluge myth was used by generations of commentators as a tool for social criticism - it provided them with an opportunity to explain what kind of humanity deserved total annihilation. In recent films, connections are made between the current ecological crisis and the deluge... Are we (yes, we!) this generation that deserves to be destroyed, and why? This lecture presents a comparative study of Hollywood films throughout the last century, all of which have allusions to the biblical flood myth. The focus will be on how the flood becomes a symbol of the worsening ecological crisis nowadays.

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May 26, 2024
Read more about the article Article: The Sixties Did (Not Altogether) Skip Israel – Rosh Pinna’s Hippie Community
Disputation or conflict / Feminism gender and sex / Geography / History / Identity / Israel / Science/medicine and technology / State politics and law / Typology and comparative study

Article: The Sixties Did (Not Altogether) Skip Israel – Rosh Pinna’s Hippie Community

An article that presents the story of the first spiritual-alternative community in Israel, which was a bubble of the sixties at the heart of the mobilized Zionist miliee at the time. The hippy community of Rosh Pinna was an extraordinary refuge where a fascinating "social laboratory" functioned, which also gave birth to other spiritual and alternative Israeli spaces. The article includes a comparison between hippie and Zionist values - from the fields of society and the law to the attitude to nature and music. It includes unique illustrations and photographs.

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March 21, 2024
Read more about the article Lecture: The Status of Symbols in Virtual Divinasion – Between Iconography and Arbitrariness
Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Magic and paganism / Methodology and models / Popular culture and mass media / Science/medicine and technology / Typology and comparative study

Lecture: The Status of Symbols in Virtual Divinasion – Between Iconography and Arbitrariness

Does the statue represent God? Is the flag sacred? What is the status of the sacred symbols, and what happens to them when they move to the cyberspace? In this lecture, computerized icons in religious/spiritual/magical ceremonies and their status were examined and analyzed. The lecture is part of a research project in which an article was published and lectures were presented in other directions.

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November 3, 2023
Read more about the article Lecture: Recycled Witches – The Retelling of Narratives from Rabbinical Literature within Contemporary Alternative Spirituality
Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Feminism gender and sex / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Myth / Popular culture and mass media / Typology and comparative study

Lecture: Recycled Witches – The Retelling of Narratives from Rabbinical Literature within Contemporary Alternative Spirituality

This lecture presents a surprising and innovative spiritual-alternative strategy of Israeli-Jews to refer to the Jewish tradition - an interpretation of the tradition while identifying with the anti-heroines of an ancient Jewish legend. In this way, the characteristic approach of the "spiritual-but-not-religious" (SBNR) trend that criticizes the religious establishment is expressed, while adopting the criticism inherent in the ancient Jewish sources. In our case it's the retelling of an ancient Jewish legend - about a witch hunt conducted by Rabbi Shimon ben Shatach in Ashkelon in the second century BC.

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October 13, 2023
Read more about the article Lecture: Meditation in the Eyes of Medical Research – On the Border between Spiritual and Scientific
Critical theory / Magic and paganism / Science/medicine and technology / Typology and comparative study

Lecture: Meditation in the Eyes of Medical Research – On the Border between Spiritual and Scientific

Is there a connection between the fact that Mindfulness has become fashionable in the cultural space and the scientific recognition it has received? How did Mindfulness turn from a spiritual practice to a evidence-based scientific practice? In this lecture, we presented the development process of the scientific-medical discourse about Mindfulness, in an unusual context: observing this phenomenon as part of a cultural process. One of the main conclusions was that the intensity of the secularization and the Westernization of the meditation is a predictor of the degree of its acceptance in the Western discourse.

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June 27, 2023
Read more about the article Lecture: The Mindfulness Trend Conquers the Scientific-Medical Discourse
Critical theory / Magic and paganism / Science/medicine and technology / Typology and comparative study

Lecture: The Mindfulness Trend Conquers the Scientific-Medical Discourse

this lecture presented the scientific-medical discourse on mindfulness, in which this meditation became an accepted and desirable trend. In order to illustrate the success of mindfulness - a comparison with the status of Transcendental Meditation in the scientific-medical discourse is also presented.

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June 27, 2023
Read more about the article Lecture: “And the Canaanite was then in the land” – Local Deities from Ba’al to Mother Earth in the Last Century
Feminism gender and sex / Geography / History / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Myth / State politics and law / Typology and comparative study

Lecture: “And the Canaanite was then in the land” – Local Deities from Ba’al to Mother Earth in the Last Century

Two Israeli Pagan movements of the last century have glorified an ancient panteon of god. What is the difference between them? In this lecture we've presented both similarities and differences in the relation to deities in the two movements.

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May 17, 2023
Read more about the article Article: The Doors of Creativity Shall Never be Barred – The Iconization Process of the Piyyut “Im Nin’alu” in Contemporary Pop Music
Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Critical theory / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Methodology and models / Popular culture and mass media / Postmodernism / Typology and comparative study

Article: The Doors of Creativity Shall Never be Barred – The Iconization Process of the Piyyut “Im Nin’alu” in Contemporary Pop Music

Yes, the liturgical poem (piyyut) “Im Nin'alu” signifies orientality. But what is Orientality? Is this traditional, perhaps even religious, Yemenite Judaism? Is this Yemen similar to exotic India? Is this a symbol of the mystical/spiritual "other" (as we already mentioned India...)? And maybe it is a symbol of Kabbalah, another contemporary "Other" that turns out to be similar to all the other "Others", including the "Other East"... In this article we follow the change process of “Im Nin'alu” as a symbol, which symbolizes different things each time. The peyote has - it turns out - gone a long way, erasing traditional Yemenite Judaism into the contemporary universal and spiritual-alternative space.

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January 10, 2023
Read more about the article Article: Outdoing Authenticity – Three Postmodern Models of Adapting Folklore Materials in Current Spiritual Music
Art (music\film\literature etc.) / Critical theory / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Methodology and models / Popular culture and mass media / Postmodernism / Typology and comparative study

Article: Outdoing Authenticity – Three Postmodern Models of Adapting Folklore Materials in Current Spiritual Music

The liturgical poem “Im Nin'alu” got various popular musical adaptations in recent decades. These adaptations raise questions - and provide different answers - regarding authenticity, identity, tradition, and more. Each of them embodies a different way of coping with the postmodern situation. The article presents three different models of relation to traditional materials, which are different ways of dealing with the problems of individuals in relation to these questions.

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January 9, 2023