Finding MeaningPub Date : 2021-10-21DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0013
Michal Pagis
{"title":"Transcending Locality","authors":"Michal Pagis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the rising popularity of Buddhist meditation in Israel and the self-identity that bodily based mindfulness offers its practitioners. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork among Israeli practitioners of vipassana meditation, this chapter illustrates how in periods characterized by doubt and uncertainty, Israelis find in meditation an embodied anchor for selfhood which substitutes dependency on the social world. Through meditation practice, Israelis recede into the body, temporarily liberating the self from local social embeddedness. Yet, at the same time, this same withdrawal to the body produces universal, humanistic-based identifications. The chapter detects four dimensions in the attempt to transcend local social context: an ideological rejection of particularism, the meditation center as a space without a place, the distancing of social roles and identities in vipassana practice, and a connection to humanity at large through loving-kindness. In meditation experience, considered by practitioners as the most personal, “private” withdrawal into the self, Israeli vipassana practitioners find a universal anchor that transcends social locality.","PeriodicalId":153152,"journal":{"name":"Finding Meaning","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133572345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Finding MeaningPub Date : 2021-10-21DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0015
M. Shapiro
{"title":"Judaism Is the New Orient","authors":"M. Shapiro","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0015","url":null,"abstract":"The spiritual journeys that Israeli-Jews make to the Far East do not merely provide them with experiences and revelations, but also help them reclaim meaning, answer life’s questions, and shape their identity and lifestyle. Surprisingly, some journeys end in embracing Jewish tradition. Why—and how—do secular Israelis, who have never shown any interest in the spiritual matters and aspects of their native tradition, find, following their journey, that Jewish spirituality is relevant to their quest for meaning? This chapter conducts a critical discussion on the Easternization thesis (which claims the West is undergoing a profound paradigmatic transformation), culminating in the conclusion that the East is not Westerners’ and Israelis’ true object of desire, but rather an object on which they project their Western/Israeli discomfort, passions, and images. Judaism, which has been going through an exoticization process within the framework of local New Age ideas—much like the Far East in global spirituality—has been adapting itself to this coveted imagined model.","PeriodicalId":153152,"journal":{"name":"Finding Meaning","volume":"33 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114116794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Finding MeaningPub Date : 2021-10-21DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0006
B. Beit-Hallahmi
{"title":"The Meaning of Denial","authors":"B. Beit-Hallahmi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Could denial be a source of meaning? The meaning of denying death is clear, and most religions have been doing it for millennia. Claiming an immortal soul and thus denying the annihilation of our individual consciousness is something humans have embraced for more than 100,000 years. This chapter examines a group known as Physical Immortality, that many considered more bizarre than other belief minorities, because it promises its adherents eternal life in the same physical body they are inhabiting in this life. The author’s observations of the group and its members taught him that while the beliefs were indeed unusual, the members were ordinary and normal. It turned out to be an early manifestation of New Age activities in Israel. The group did not develop a distinct identity in its members, which was one reason for its decline. What characterized most followers was a playful openness to building up the self through support, belonging, and positivity, even if expressed in absurdities.","PeriodicalId":153152,"journal":{"name":"Finding Meaning","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126783301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Finding MeaningPub Date : 2021-10-21DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0011
A. Agbaria, Mohanad Mustafa, Sami Mahajnah
{"title":"On Secular and Religious Politics of Belonging","authors":"A. Agbaria, Mohanad Mustafa, Sami Mahajnah","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the search for meaning and belonging of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel by discussing how belonging is framed in Arab politics in Israel. More specifically, the chapter maps and analyzes three narratives in the Arab politics of belonging: the romantic, the practical, and the visionary. The first advocates belonging to what the authors term a “lost paradise” of Palestine and Islam. This nostalgic type of belonging yearns for idealized places, times, and characters in the history of Palestine and Islam. The second narrative, the practical, defines belonging first and foremost as a developmental act, practiced at the community level through voluntary and charity programs. The third, the visionary, promotes belonging as an ideological position to be articulated and educated for at the national level. These three concepts are circulated and mobilized by both secular Arab political and Muslim religious actors but in different versions and to different extents.","PeriodicalId":153152,"journal":{"name":"Finding Meaning","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122060532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Finding MeaningPub Date : 2021-10-21DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0005
Samuel Peleg
{"title":"In Search of Meaning and Holy Redemption","authors":"Samuel Peleg","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190910358.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter analyzes the case of the Hilltop Youth, a radical, violent, and lawless group of young Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. The major argument is that an explanation to their extremist ideology and messianic activism can be found is their yearning for meaning in what they deem as an increasingly precarious and unstable reality. In their struggle to alleviate and solidify the world they live in, they opt for a very militant reading of their faith as a guiding and reassuring compass toward redemption. Such a path is fraught with violence and aggression toward Palestinians as well as toward Israeli authorities. On the road to what these unruly adolescents believe will lead them to their ultimate salvation, everyone else is a threat and every means is sacred. The chapter emphasizes the rapid degradation of recognized “truths” around them and their young age—malleable and vulnerable to unrestrained calls for action—as the Hilltop Youth main catalysts for embracing fierce lawlessness as their quest of choice for meaning.","PeriodicalId":153152,"journal":{"name":"Finding Meaning","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129134166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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