Jewish New Age and the Middle Class: Jewish Identity Politics in Israel under Neoliberalism

Kaplan, Dana Evan; Werczberger, Rachel

doi:10.1177/0038038515595953

Cited by 17 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Mads M. Jæger (2009), for instance, describes the different channels through which cultural capital affects educational choices of Danish parents and children and their outcomes. Thus, one may speculate that similar to the Israeli Jewish New Age participants I studied with Dana Kaplan (Kaplan and Werczberger, 2017), the cultural capital of middle‐class adherents of Jewish spirituality allows them to easily navigate diverse cultural repertoires and to move smoothly between various spiritual and Jewish configurations.…”

Section: Switching Matching and Mixing: Hybridizing Of Jewish Spiritu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Secularize, psychologize, neoliberalize: The entangled Jewish self of North American Jews

Werczberger¹

2023

Ethos

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This article unpacks the construction of the Jewish spiritual self in three current projects of Jewish spirituality in North America—Jewish mindfulness, the neo‐Musar movement, and the nascent Positive Judaism—and explores their relations with the neoliberal economic regime and ideology. Based on the content analysis of 30 popular online and offline texts, among them promotional websites, podcasts, and published works, and data gathered during long‐term ethnographic study on Jewish spirituality in Israel and North America, the article argues that the highly individualized Jewish spirituality has become an institutionally mediated form of Jewish self‐expression. By building on anthropological works about the cultural implications of neoliberalism on the self and following the lead of the foundational works linking Jewish cultural production and neoliberalism in North America, this article offers a perspective on Jewish spirituality that recognizes the relations between neoliberalism, self‐cultivation, and community life. Fusing the spiritual, therapeutic, and neoliberal discourses, projects of Jewish spirituality package neoliberal ideals such as choice, emotional, resilience, well‐being, and happiness as Jewish spiritual commodities. At the same time, the subjectivity cultivated in these projects is a Jewish‐specific formation—a self that is highly individualized but remains strongly connected to its religious‐ethnic community and cultural tradition. Jewish spirituality is thus used here as a case study for how neoliberalism affects contemporary forms of religious practice and creates new ethical orientations to communal belongings.

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Section: Switching Matching and Mixing: Hybridizing Of Jewish Spiritu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Secularize, psychologize, neoliberalize: The entangled Jewish self of North American Jews

Werczberger¹

2023

Ethos

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“…Instead, members convened several times during the week for the purpose of learning and praying together. Both communities attracted the typical participants of New Age culture in Israel: upper-middle class, of Ashkenazi (European) origin and secular-the characteristics of Israel's veteran elites (Kaplan and Werczberger, 2017). Although, both communities were relatively successful among Israeli New Agers, neither stood the test of time and both fell apart after only 6 years of activity.…”

Section: Naj In Israelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, Kaplan and Werczberger suggest that engagement of middle-class Israeli seculars with NAJ is related to local identity-based struggles for recognition between the Jewish-Israeli Ashkenazi (European born) seculars and the lower-class Orthodox and masorti (traditional) of Mizrachi (Middle East) origins. By engaging with Judaism, argue Kaplan and Werczberger, NAJ middle-class participants attempt to accrue and further their cultural capital (Kaplan and Werczberger, 2017;Werczberger and Kaplan 2019).…”

Section: Choosing To Be Authenticmentioning

confidence: 99%

The making of Jewish authenticity: The hybrid discourse of authenticity of New Age Judaism and the complexities of religious individualization

Werczberger

2020

Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses

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This article offers an ethnographically informed discussion of the hybrid discourse of authenticity of two New Age Judaism (NAJ) communities that were active in Israel in the beginning of the millennium. The article argues that the discourse of authenticity of the two communities was a hybrid discourse which interweaved two overlapping understandings of expressive authenticity: genealogical or historical (origin) and identity or correspondence (expressive content). The members of the communities aspired for self-realization and fulfillment by discovering their authentic self and at the same time articulated and legitimized their mission of renewal by referring to earlier, allegedly more spiritual time periods in Jewish history. This discourse is understood in terms of the “inward turn” and the “turn to tradition” of contemporary Jewish life as well as the penetration of consumer logic into Jewish forms of spirituality. As such it showcases the complexities of Jewish individualization whereby the focus on the self and self-authenticity is tightly linked to the cultivation of identity and communal belonging.

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“…Those who define themselves as secular may in fact be practicing different forms of Jewish‐ or non‐Jewish‐based spiritualties (Ezrachi ). Studies find in Israel many different vibrant “spiritual” circles and groups, including, among others, meditation groups, rainbow gatherings, channeling, or the more Jewish‐based circles such as Kabbalah teachings, Hassidic groups, and varied Jewish renewal circles (e.g., Kaplan and Werczberger ; Klin‐Oron and Ruah‐Midbar ; Werczberger and Azulay ). However, these trends are much less institutionalized, are not organized under one cultural or religious leadership, and so far, have had little influence on state religious institutions.…”

Section: Israel–united States As a Transitional Social Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel

2018

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Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields (TSFs), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different parts of the TSF, demonstrating how processes of translation reflect larger social and political struggles over questions of identity. As a case study, we focus on the attempt of actors from Israel and the United States to institutionalize spiritual care in Israeli health‐care organizations. The analysis reveals how spiritual care functioned as a porous cultural object, open to a wide range of interpretations and debates. While actors in New York saw in spiritual care the opportunity to bridge to Israeli Jews and create a global Jewish identity, Israeli actors split between using spiritual care as a vehicle for creating a local Israeli Jewish identity and seeing in spiritual care the opportunity to establish universal identities, broader than the Jewish one. The disagreement and conflicts between the groups influenced the translation process, turning it into a contentious struggle that involved different positions on the continuum between particularism and universalism.

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Jewish New Age and the Middle Class: Jewish Identity Politics in Israel under Neoliberalism

Cited by 17 publications

References 57 publications

Secularize, psychologize, neoliberalize: The entangled Jewish self of North American Jews

Secularize, psychologize, neoliberalize: The entangled Jewish self of North American Jews

The making of Jewish authenticity: The hybrid discourse of authenticity of New Age Judaism and the complexities of religious individualization

Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel

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