In some religious contexts, mainly Protestant Christianity, anthropologists often contend with th... more In some religious contexts, mainly Protestant Christianity, anthropologists often contend with the problem of presence that preoccupies believers – the simultaneous presence and absence of God. However, in the Hinduism of the Western Himalayas the problem of presence is quite different. The royal deities in this region are profoundly present, embodied in mediums and palanquins. Thus, followers of these deities are not puzzled by the concept of an absent god. Instead, they need to navigate in a world where gods are very tangible, in ways that can cause discomfort and anxiety. In this article I demonstrate the different roles of mediums and palanquins in the religious experience, and how palanquins are considered more reliable manifestations of the deities. I suggest that this is due to the need of the locals to maintain some degree of distance from the spirit mediumship in order to avoid excess presence of the deities.
Being a medium of a god is common and normative in the Western Himalayas. In this article I prese... more Being a medium of a god is common and normative in the Western Himalayas. In this article I present a case of three mediums who were regarded with mixed feelings by society, because their mediumship strongly criticized religious practices and the caste system. The villagers in the study area have cultural-religious practices that help them cope with deviant forms of mediumship-patterns such as ignoring a person or gossiping about them to express skepticism or to label the possession as inauthentic. These approaches were not effective in these cases. As a result, the biomedical concept of madness was invoked by some members of the community to put an end to what they regarded as deviant mediumship.
In many ethnographies, deities reflect social structures, represent power relations, or serve as a... more In many ethnographies, deities reflect social structures, represent power relations, or serve as a resource for individuals. However, believers usually do not doubt the existence of deities and their agency: that is, their ability to act and initiate change. The gap between these points of view narrows in the religious experiences in the Indian Himalayas. There, the local population, who communicate with local deities via mediums, face an epistemological problem: how to be certain that they are, indeed, talking with their gods. Furthermore, the believers are aware that they play a role in the decisions of the gods. These two aspects of the religious experience are expressed in the gradual transition of the gods from a Pahāṛī to a pan-Hindu identity, an indication of the way in which the agency of the gods is being challenged and is subject to negotiation by the locals.
Some village deities in the Western Himalayas are regarded as godskings, enacting their (politica... more Some village deities in the Western Himalayas are regarded as godskings, enacting their (political) agency through ritual representation by a method of theistic rule locally known as dev-raj or devta ka raj (government by deity). The article examines the ways in which these deities were evoked during Covid-19 pandemic. This pandemic is an opportunity to explore whether these deities are considered to be omnipotent gods. In the article we show that the deities sought to help prevent their followers from contracting Covid-19. In cases of illness from Covid-19 or death, the devtas said that they are subject to the laws of karma and cannot affect the destiny assigned to a person at birth (greh). Nevertheless, the balance between gods, karma, and greh is not explicit, as the followers of the devtas feel they can negotiate with the fruits of karma.
This paper, based on fieldwork conducted in a Jerusalem yeshiva, describes how the yeshiva, a tra... more This paper, based on fieldwork conducted in a Jerusalem yeshiva, describes how the yeshiva, a traditional institute of religious studies, also serves as an institution of healing and personal therapy in which sacred religious texts assume a central place. The article focuses on personal sessions between the rabbi who heads the yeshiva, and his audience of believers who turn to him for help in coping with personal hardships and tribulations. The paper contextualizes and elaborates upon the concept of 'deep healing' to describe how the rabbi uses his regular 'tool kit' to diagnose the problems of the person facing him and to offer optimal, personalized therapy. The rabbi uses religious texts to create textual deep healing processes that are tailor-made for the individual supplicant and are intended to accompany supplicants for a long period of time.
In the Indian Himalayas, mediums who operate as channels through which deities can communicate wi... more In the Indian Himalayas, mediums who operate as channels through which deities can communicate with their devotees, function alongside priests who serve these deities. In this article, we examine the relationship between these two religious roles with regard to the deity Mahāsū. At the individual-personal level we examine how their roles are linked to different sources of authority – whereas the priests' source of authority is traditional, the mediums rely on charisma. At the societal level, we maintain that their different caste backgrounds are essential for understanding their public role. While the priests are Brahmins, almost all the mediums of Mahāsū are Rajputs. Thus, the medium institution enables the Rajputs, who make up the vast majority of Mahāsū's devotees, to retain in their hands all decisions pertaining to the public sphere. Hence, they carry more political–social clout than the priests, because they can change the social-religious order or sustain it.
This article discusses the concept of zikui harabim (granting merit to the many), and attempts to... more 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.
As opposed to the approach which makes a dichotomous distinction between "rigid religiosity" and ... more As opposed to the approach which makes a dichotomous distinction between "rigid religiosity" and "soft religiosity", I would like to point to a reality in which these boundaries are blurred. I shall do so by examining the case of the religious revival movement in Israel (the "Teshuvah Movement"), which offers a broad range of Teshuvah styles, out of which Hozrim Beteshuvah (penitents) select "Teshuvah baskets", which they fill and pack themselves, according to their own personal preferences. These "Teshuvah baskets" are dynamic, in that their owners can fill, empty and modify their contents, while they conduct an ongoing critical "market survey". This dynamism creates a reality, accompanied by a discourse, which continuously blurs the symbolic boundaries separating the various types of religious “supply” sources. It demonstrates how practices and beliefs related to "soft religiosity" are expressed also by those participating in what is generally referred to as "rigid religiosity".
The concept of ‘boundary work’ generally refers to class, community, gender and ethnicity. This a... more The concept of ‘boundary work’ generally refers to class, community, gender and ethnicity. This article shows how ‘boundary work’ can be usefully applied to the religious arena as well. Drawing on fieldwork among two religious movements in Israel, I maintain that within Religious-Zionist teshuvah, ‘return to religion’ is construed through a binary with Sephardic-Haredi teshuvah, the former taken as intellectual/rational, the latter as traditional/emotional. The content and mode of action of the movement define the religious-Zionist teshuvah field as intellectual and modern, but this is greatly strengthened by contrast with the more traditional Sephardic-Haredi teshuvah.
In this article, we attempt to describe and analyze the social-cultural activities that take plac... more In this article, we attempt to describe and analyze the social-cultural activities that take place at Rabbi Yitzchak’s rallies, while emphasizing what we have named the “teshuva (repentance, lit. return) bargain” that is formed between the rabbi and the audience participants during the rallies. As part of the ritual healing performances carried out at the rallies during the “teshuva bargains,” individuals in the audience commit themselves to more meticulous religious observance and the rabbi, on his part, graces them with a blessing for healing and success, a blessing that is backed up by the spiritual force of the audience of believers that endorses this transaction. By describing the activity at the rallies as teshuva bargains, we seek to extricate the audiences in Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak ritual healing performances from their passive stance (to which they were relegated in previous studies carried out on these rallies) and place them center- stage in the social-cultural occurrences. In contrast to the approach that views the sermon as a one-directional process in which societal values are transferred from the darshan (preacher) to the audience of listeners, we portray Rabbi Yitzchak’s teshuva rally via an interactive prism as the stage for a dramatic cultural performance in which the desires of the audience come face to face with the desires of the preacher.
The article, based on fieldwork conducted among an extremist Hasidic group, demonstrates how reli... more The article, based on fieldwork conducted among an extremist Hasidic group, demonstrates how religious fundamentalism may be linked to modernism through the way in which modern ideas infiltrate fundamentalist culture. The authors examine the contract that is signed annually by members of the group, which reaffirms their acceptance of stringent regulations. The contract is signed by every individual by means of a performative act that consolidates the separatist Hasidic social fabric on the basis of contractual legal rationality and creates categories and values that bind the individual to the community, an act that circumscribes that cultural enclave.
In some religious contexts, mainly Protestant Christianity, anthropologists often contend with th... more In some religious contexts, mainly Protestant Christianity, anthropologists often contend with the problem of presence that preoccupies believers – the simultaneous presence and absence of God. However, in the Hinduism of the Western Himalayas the problem of presence is quite different. The royal deities in this region are profoundly present, embodied in mediums and palanquins. Thus, followers of these deities are not puzzled by the concept of an absent god. Instead, they need to navigate in a world where gods are very tangible, in ways that can cause discomfort and anxiety. In this article I demonstrate the different roles of mediums and palanquins in the religious experience, and how palanquins are considered more reliable manifestations of the deities. I suggest that this is due to the need of the locals to maintain some degree of distance from the spirit mediumship in order to avoid excess presence of the deities.
Being a medium of a god is common and normative in the Western Himalayas. In this article I prese... more Being a medium of a god is common and normative in the Western Himalayas. In this article I present a case of three mediums who were regarded with mixed feelings by society, because their mediumship strongly criticized religious practices and the caste system. The villagers in the study area have cultural-religious practices that help them cope with deviant forms of mediumship-patterns such as ignoring a person or gossiping about them to express skepticism or to label the possession as inauthentic. These approaches were not effective in these cases. As a result, the biomedical concept of madness was invoked by some members of the community to put an end to what they regarded as deviant mediumship.
In many ethnographies, deities reflect social structures, represent power relations, or serve as a... more In many ethnographies, deities reflect social structures, represent power relations, or serve as a resource for individuals. However, believers usually do not doubt the existence of deities and their agency: that is, their ability to act and initiate change. The gap between these points of view narrows in the religious experiences in the Indian Himalayas. There, the local population, who communicate with local deities via mediums, face an epistemological problem: how to be certain that they are, indeed, talking with their gods. Furthermore, the believers are aware that they play a role in the decisions of the gods. These two aspects of the religious experience are expressed in the gradual transition of the gods from a Pahāṛī to a pan-Hindu identity, an indication of the way in which the agency of the gods is being challenged and is subject to negotiation by the locals.
Some village deities in the Western Himalayas are regarded as godskings, enacting their (politica... more Some village deities in the Western Himalayas are regarded as godskings, enacting their (political) agency through ritual representation by a method of theistic rule locally known as dev-raj or devta ka raj (government by deity). The article examines the ways in which these deities were evoked during Covid-19 pandemic. This pandemic is an opportunity to explore whether these deities are considered to be omnipotent gods. In the article we show that the deities sought to help prevent their followers from contracting Covid-19. In cases of illness from Covid-19 or death, the devtas said that they are subject to the laws of karma and cannot affect the destiny assigned to a person at birth (greh). Nevertheless, the balance between gods, karma, and greh is not explicit, as the followers of the devtas feel they can negotiate with the fruits of karma.
This paper, based on fieldwork conducted in a Jerusalem yeshiva, describes how the yeshiva, a tra... more This paper, based on fieldwork conducted in a Jerusalem yeshiva, describes how the yeshiva, a traditional institute of religious studies, also serves as an institution of healing and personal therapy in which sacred religious texts assume a central place. The article focuses on personal sessions between the rabbi who heads the yeshiva, and his audience of believers who turn to him for help in coping with personal hardships and tribulations. The paper contextualizes and elaborates upon the concept of 'deep healing' to describe how the rabbi uses his regular 'tool kit' to diagnose the problems of the person facing him and to offer optimal, personalized therapy. The rabbi uses religious texts to create textual deep healing processes that are tailor-made for the individual supplicant and are intended to accompany supplicants for a long period of time.
In the Indian Himalayas, mediums who operate as channels through which deities can communicate wi... more In the Indian Himalayas, mediums who operate as channels through which deities can communicate with their devotees, function alongside priests who serve these deities. In this article, we examine the relationship between these two religious roles with regard to the deity Mahāsū. At the individual-personal level we examine how their roles are linked to different sources of authority – whereas the priests' source of authority is traditional, the mediums rely on charisma. At the societal level, we maintain that their different caste backgrounds are essential for understanding their public role. While the priests are Brahmins, almost all the mediums of Mahāsū are Rajputs. Thus, the medium institution enables the Rajputs, who make up the vast majority of Mahāsū's devotees, to retain in their hands all decisions pertaining to the public sphere. Hence, they carry more political–social clout than the priests, because they can change the social-religious order or sustain it.
This article discusses the concept of zikui harabim (granting merit to the many), and attempts to... more 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.
As opposed to the approach which makes a dichotomous distinction between "rigid religiosity" and ... more As opposed to the approach which makes a dichotomous distinction between "rigid religiosity" and "soft religiosity", I would like to point to a reality in which these boundaries are blurred. I shall do so by examining the case of the religious revival movement in Israel (the "Teshuvah Movement"), which offers a broad range of Teshuvah styles, out of which Hozrim Beteshuvah (penitents) select "Teshuvah baskets", which they fill and pack themselves, according to their own personal preferences. These "Teshuvah baskets" are dynamic, in that their owners can fill, empty and modify their contents, while they conduct an ongoing critical "market survey". This dynamism creates a reality, accompanied by a discourse, which continuously blurs the symbolic boundaries separating the various types of religious “supply” sources. It demonstrates how practices and beliefs related to "soft religiosity" are expressed also by those participating in what is generally referred to as "rigid religiosity".
The concept of ‘boundary work’ generally refers to class, community, gender and ethnicity. This a... more The concept of ‘boundary work’ generally refers to class, community, gender and ethnicity. This article shows how ‘boundary work’ can be usefully applied to the religious arena as well. Drawing on fieldwork among two religious movements in Israel, I maintain that within Religious-Zionist teshuvah, ‘return to religion’ is construed through a binary with Sephardic-Haredi teshuvah, the former taken as intellectual/rational, the latter as traditional/emotional. The content and mode of action of the movement define the religious-Zionist teshuvah field as intellectual and modern, but this is greatly strengthened by contrast with the more traditional Sephardic-Haredi teshuvah.
In this article, we attempt to describe and analyze the social-cultural activities that take plac... more In this article, we attempt to describe and analyze the social-cultural activities that take place at Rabbi Yitzchak’s rallies, while emphasizing what we have named the “teshuva (repentance, lit. return) bargain” that is formed between the rabbi and the audience participants during the rallies. As part of the ritual healing performances carried out at the rallies during the “teshuva bargains,” individuals in the audience commit themselves to more meticulous religious observance and the rabbi, on his part, graces them with a blessing for healing and success, a blessing that is backed up by the spiritual force of the audience of believers that endorses this transaction. By describing the activity at the rallies as teshuva bargains, we seek to extricate the audiences in Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak ritual healing performances from their passive stance (to which they were relegated in previous studies carried out on these rallies) and place them center- stage in the social-cultural occurrences. In contrast to the approach that views the sermon as a one-directional process in which societal values are transferred from the darshan (preacher) to the audience of listeners, we portray Rabbi Yitzchak’s teshuva rally via an interactive prism as the stage for a dramatic cultural performance in which the desires of the audience come face to face with the desires of the preacher.
The article, based on fieldwork conducted among an extremist Hasidic group, demonstrates how reli... more The article, based on fieldwork conducted among an extremist Hasidic group, demonstrates how religious fundamentalism may be linked to modernism through the way in which modern ideas infiltrate fundamentalist culture. The authors examine the contract that is signed annually by members of the group, which reaffirms their acceptance of stringent regulations. The contract is signed by every individual by means of a performative act that consolidates the separatist Hasidic social fabric on the basis of contractual legal rationality and creates categories and values that bind the individual to the community, an act that circumscribes that cultural enclave.
Mahasu is the joint name of four gods whose influence is widespread
throughout the Indian states ... more Mahasu is the joint name of four gods whose influence is widespread throughout the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Like other deities in the Western Himalayas, they are regarded as royal gods who rule over territories and people. This book traces changes in faith and practices surrounding the Mahasu brothers, and shows how the locals understand these changes by emphasizing the dominant role of humans in the decisions of the gods. The locals are also constantly testing the authenticity of the human mediumship. Thus, this book presents the claim that the gap between local conceptions of divinity and the perceptions of anthropologists regarding gods may be narrower than we think.
The Biography of a God: Mahasu in the Himalayas is based on ethnographic research, resulting in an important contribution to the study of Indian village deities, Himalayan Hinduism, lived Hinduism, and the anthropology of religion.
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by the spiritual force of the audience of believers that endorses this transaction. By describing the activity at the rallies as teshuva bargains, we seek to extricate the audiences in Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak ritual healing performances from their passive stance (to which they were relegated in previous studies carried out on these rallies) and place them center- stage in the social-cultural occurrences. In contrast to the approach that views the sermon as a one-directional process in which societal values are transferred from the darshan (preacher) to the audience of listeners, we portray
Rabbi Yitzchak’s teshuva rally via an interactive prism as the stage for a dramatic cultural performance in which the desires of the audience come face to face with the desires of the preacher.
by the spiritual force of the audience of believers that endorses this transaction. By describing the activity at the rallies as teshuva bargains, we seek to extricate the audiences in Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak ritual healing performances from their passive stance (to which they were relegated in previous studies carried out on these rallies) and place them center- stage in the social-cultural occurrences. In contrast to the approach that views the sermon as a one-directional process in which societal values are transferred from the darshan (preacher) to the audience of listeners, we portray
Rabbi Yitzchak’s teshuva rally via an interactive prism as the stage for a dramatic cultural performance in which the desires of the audience come face to face with the desires of the preacher.
throughout the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Like
other deities in the Western Himalayas, they are regarded as royal gods
who rule over territories and people. This book traces changes in faith
and practices surrounding the Mahasu brothers, and shows how the locals
understand these changes by emphasizing the dominant role of humans
in the decisions of the gods. The locals are also constantly testing the
authenticity of the human mediumship. Thus, this book presents the claim
that the gap between local conceptions of divinity and the perceptions of
anthropologists regarding gods may be narrower than we think.
The Biography of a God: Mahasu in the Himalayas is based on ethnographic research, resulting in an important contribution to the study of Indian village deities, Himalayan Hinduism, lived Hinduism, and the anthropology of religion.