This page presents concentrated information about the research project of the liturgical poem Im Nin’alu (lit., “if were locked”), carried out by Omri Ruah-Midbar and Marianna Ruah-Midbar Shapiro. The research…
This panel concluded the 9th Israeli Conference (and the last one - 2018) for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities. It included four Israeli spiritual teachers who examined contemporary society, in Israel in particular, and its challenges, from the spiritual aspect they are occupied with.
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.
We create our own reality - this is a major idea in the contemporary cultural discourse. But how? From the Matrix to a magic stick, from positive psychology to mind control technics. Various lectures presented the research on this spiritual (or perhaps actually secularized) theme...
This lecture, for the general public, addressed the story of the hippies at Old Rosh Pinna, the history of the community they've created, and their influence on the character of the whole settlement till this day.
This lecture (about 30 min.) surveys and maps the various ways in which New Age and Judaism meet and mix together. The full name of the lecture was: "Jewish Spirituality in the New Age - Emerging Jewish-Israeli Phenomena in the Junction with New Age Culture". It presents ten "types" of these meeting places, accompanied by many examples, while presenting a relevant theoretical background, and discussing the characteristics and trends of this emergent multifaceted space, one of them being the exotization of Judaism process in the New Age realm.
This lecture (see 30-min. film and a presentation, in Hebrew) took place in a seminar celebrating the publication of an anthology of researches which included my article on the meeting place of Judaism and New Age in Israel, at Ben Gurion University. The lecture focused on the characteristics of Israeli New Age Judaism, especially the exotization of Judaism within those circles.
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).
This lecture opens with the Neo-Shamanism in Israel, and presents two modes in which the local alternative spirituality approaches Judaism - positively and negatively. The lecture focuses on the demonstration of a negative connection with Judaism, in an Israeli Neo-Shaman text. The text is an alternative nrrative of a rabbinic legend of a witch hunt conducted by one of the Rabbis in Ashkelon in the days of the Hasmonean Kingdom. The text was analysed in a few publications (one in English) . The lecture took part at a conference in Zefat Academic College.
This recorded lecture (in Hebrew) was given at an evening in honor of the inaguation of Semadar Cherlow's book "Who moved my Judaism? Judaism, postmodernism and contemporary spiritualities" (Resling publisng house). The evening took place on June 27th 2016 at Matan (Women's Institute for Torah Studies) in Ra'anana.