Lecture: Calderon, From Secular Judaism to Jewish Renewal in Israel

Thurs., November 19th

PUBLIC LECTURE From Secular Judaism to Jewish Renewal in Israel – A Personal Story and Public Point of View Ruth Calderon Talmudic Scholar, Founder of ALMA Home for Hebrew Culture, Former Member of Knesset (2013-2015), Shalom Hartman Faculty Member   5:30 PM Reception, 6 PM Lecture Warren Room, 295 Boalt Hall   RSVP Here

New Article: Sharabi, Religious Revival Movement in Israel

Sharabi, Asaf. “Religion and Modernity. Religious Revival Movement in Israel.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 44.2 (2015): 223-48.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0891241614530159

 

 

Abstract

This article discusses the concept of zikui harabim (granting merit to the many) and attempts to show how it motivates and animates the religious renewal movements in Judaism (the teshuvah movements). I argue that zikui harabim is produced by “cycles of teshuva” in which the “repentant” person engages in facilitating the “return” of others to religious practice, even before he or she has undertaken the rigorous observance of religious commandments. I suggest that calculating rationality, often considered one of the hallmarks of modernity, is manifest in the teshuvah movement, as many teshuvah clients and entrepreneurs regard commandments, implicitly and explicitly, as a kind of currency they can amass for their own benefit. By so doing, I demonstrate how zikui harabim embeds a modern-capitalist logic, thereby showing how modernity manifests itself in religious revivalism.

 

Cite: Werczberger, Memory, Land, and Identity

Werczberger, Rachel. “Memory, Land, and Identity: Visions of the Past and the Land in the Jewish Spiritual Renewal in Israel.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 26.2 (2011): 269–289.

 

URL: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a937492388

Abstract

This study focuses on the creative reconstruction of Jewish history via a spiritual New Age perspective. Using the case of the Jewish Spiritual Renewal (JSR) narrative of the past and the land, this article aims to shed light on some of the cultural transformations which are taking place in contemporary Israeli public discourse, especially the reconfiguration of the association between Jewish history, contemporary spirituality, and the land. The JSR narrative recovers, reinterprets and remolds Jewish history in order to legitimize the claim for a spiritual renewal of the present. By offering new perspectives on the Jewish past and history, the JSR attempts to validate its post-modern and spiritual version of Judaism as an original, uncorrupted form of Jewish thought and practice. The comparison of the JSR narrative with the classical Zionist and Canaanite narrative reveals that the JSR spiritual narrative replaces particularistic and nationalistic values regarding the land with universal and global values concerning nature and the environment, in order to create a universal Jewish spirituality that caters to the identity needs of contemporary non-Orthodox Jewish Israelis.