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.
Below is the lecture’s presentation, and some other useful links.
Among others, a lecture on this subject took place in the annual conference of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, at Wisconsin (Milwaukee) USA, on October 2011, and at the 28th conference of The Association for Israel Studies at University of Haifa, on June 2015.
(For examples of Hebrew presentations of this research – see this page.)
Abstract
Between 1982 and 2011, four Israeli governmental reports addressing ostensible dangers from “cults” (New Religious Movements) were issued. The reports issued during the 1980s use a collectivistic discourse, in which the state sees itself as defending the collective’s borders from external threats and as representing the various sectors within it, while seeking consensual values. The report from the 1990s expresses an interim stage, in which the state tried to find a balance between protecting individual liberties and protecting the interests of broad sectors. The 2011 report focuses solely on the question of harm to individuals.
Previous research has demonstrated that the way societies react to NRMs can teach us a great deal about the societies themselves. We further argue that as a society changes, so do its views of NRMs. Correspondingly, we find that in every point in time NRMs represented a different perceived threat to Israeli society.
The paper demonstrates how the four Israeli reports reflect milestones in three processes of change that have taken place in Israeli society: from a collectivist-hegemonic ethos to a multi-sectorial one; from a focus upon society to a focus on the individual; and from nationalistic values to universalistic ones.
