Mira Niculescu
EHESS-Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, CEIFR, Graduate Student
Research Interests: Buddhism, Asian Studies, Aesthetics, Ethics, Visual Studies, and 13 moreSelf and Identity, Comparative Philosophy, Visual Culture, Hybridity, Bricolage, Identity (Culture), Religious Pluralism, Judaism, History of Western Philosophy, Transformational Identities, Multiplicity In Identity, Social Constructs of Identity, and Buddhism & Hinduism
In this article, I analyze the emergence of a new hybrid practice within American Judaism: “Jewish mindfulness”. Jewish mindfulness is a new meditation practice inspired from “mindfulness meditation”, a westernized form of Buddhist... more
In this article, I analyze the emergence of a new hybrid practice within American Judaism: “Jewish mindfulness”. Jewish mindfulness is a new meditation practice inspired from “mindfulness meditation”, a westernized form of Buddhist meditation. I look at the role played in the Internet in the rapid success and in the geographical unfolding of this new practice within the transnational English speaking Jewish religious networks. First, I retrace the emergence of the practice of Jewish mindfulness and the role played by Internet in this process. Second, I focus on the genealogical and geographical structure of today’s Jewish mindfulness networks. Finally, through focusing comparatively on two groups offering the practice of “Jewish mindfulness”, I show how the Internet becomes the surface of expression of hybrid discourses that are not necessarily expressed as such. In conclusion I suggest that electronic networks can be used to support, rather than to replace “offline” religious connections.