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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.

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November 16, 2022
Read more about the article Article: Canaanites and Neopagans in Canaan – A Comparison between Two Israeli Movements over the past Century
Feminism gender and sex / Geography / History / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Magic and paganism / Myth / State politics and law / Typology and comparative study

Article: Canaanites and Neopagans in Canaan – A Comparison between Two Israeli Movements over the past Century

This study (some 10,500 words, in Hebrew) is a comparative research of two Israeli pafan movements from the last centurt: the Canaanites and the Neopagans. Some surprising similarities, as well as salient differences are revealed, while focusing on questions of land, Identity, politics, gender, and more. The article ends with a table that summarizes the comparison.

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October 6, 2022
Read more about the article Article: Thank God for India – A Look at Jewish Israelis in Light of the Easternization of the West Thesis
Critical theory / Geography / Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Myth

Article: Thank God for India – A Look at Jewish Israelis in Light of the Easternization of the West Thesis

This article examines the special contribution of the journet to the orient to the Jewish identity and relation to religion of Israeli backpackers. It includes the "easternization of the west" thesis and a variety of criticisms on the thesis is surveyed. These criticisms serve in turn to the analysis of processes that the Jewish Israeli identity undergo, following the meeting place with religions in India (and more generally, Far east). Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. (Ending lines of the poem "The City", C. P. Cavafy)

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January 20, 2022
Read more about the article A research Article: “Jew Age – Jewish Praxis in Israeli New Age Discourse”
Identity / Israel / Judaism and Kabbalah / Typology and comparative study

A research Article: “Jew Age – Jewish Praxis in Israeli New Age Discourse”

In this article, I've first coined the category "Jew Age" that interconnects "Jew" and "New Age". What's unique in the Israeli-Jewish New Age, in comparison with the global arena of New Age? It is a society in which the central religion is Judaism, while in the western worls the main religion is Christianity (indeed, it is mainly a "secular" society in both cases, but it's hard to classify a spiritual sector as "secular"...). In order to study this significant difference, and reveal the unique Israel-Jewish coping eith the values of the new and global alternative spirituality, we've focused on a major difference between Judaism and Christianity - the issue of Halakha (law, praxis), the practical execution of commandments. The article presents the glocal (global+local) character of New Age in Israel, and the New-Ageization processes which Judaism and Halakha undergo.

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January 18, 2022
Read more about the article Article: Historians as Storytellers – A Critical Examination of New-Age Religion’s Scholarly Historiography
Critical theory / Disputation or conflict / Education and higher education / History / Methodology and models / Myth / Science/medicine and technology

Article: Historians as Storytellers – A Critical Examination of New-Age Religion’s Scholarly Historiography

It seems the past is not fixed, but rather ever-changing. This study isn't about the history of New Age religion, but rather a critical analysis of the history sceince as it manifests in the scholarly discourse on the history of New Age.

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January 17, 2022
Read more about the article Article: Israeli Government Reports on New Religious Movements – ‘Tell me Who your Enemies are…’
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
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.

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January 17, 2022