Name: Marianna Ruah-Midbar Shapiro

Position: Department Head and Founder; Senior Lecturer

Department: Mysticism and Spirituality

Phone Number: 972-4-6927854

Email: M.RuahMidbar@GMail.com 

Areas of Interest: 

• Alternative Spiritualities; 
• Contemporary Religion; 
• Invention of Tradition in Contemporary Judaism; 
• New Religious Movements in their crossroads with mainstream as aperture to cultural critic

Teaching: 

An assortment of courses:

• Introduction to Contemporary Spiritualities; 
• Spiritual Perceptions of Time; 
• Gender, Religion and Spirituality; 
• Alternative Medicine and Spiritual Healing – A Cultural Outlook; 
• Spirituality in the Internet, the Internet in Spirituality; 
• Judaism in the New Age

Awards: 

An assortment:

• John Templeton Foundation – “Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapies” (a co-reseach on “Jewish Psychology Methods in Israel – Between Orthodox and Secular Jews, Religion and Spirituality”)

• Zefat Center for the Study of Communities and Cultures in the Galilee (Neo-Shamanism in the Galilee)
• The Mindscapes Program, University of Haifa (prize for my course “Jewish Spirituality in the New Age”)

Publications:

Articles in Refereed Journals – an assortment:

• Ruah-Midbar, Marianna (2012). “Current Jewish Spiritualities in Israel: A New Age”, in Modern Judaism – A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience 32.1 (February 2012): 102-124.
• Ruah-Midbar, Marianna, and Nurit Zaidman (2013). “'Everything Starts Within' – New Age Values, Images, and Language in Israeli Mainstream Advertisements”, Journal of Contemporary Religion 28.3: 421-436. 
• Ruah-Midbar, Marianna, and Adam Klin Oron (2013). “'Tell me who your Enemies are' – Israeli Government Reports on NRMs”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52.4: 810–826.
• Ruah-Midbar, Marianna (2014). “A channeler, a healer, and a shaman meet at the rabbi’s: The roadmap of Israeli Judaism(s) in the New Age”, in Iyunim: Multidisciplinary Studies in Israeli and Modern Jewish Society – Thematic series 7 (Special issue edited by Gideon Katz, Shalom Ratzabi, Yaacov Yadgar: Beyond Halacha: secularism, traditionalism and ’New Age’ culture in Israel). Sde Boker: Ben-Gurion Institute for the study of Israel and Zionism, 2014. pp. 498-528. [Hebrew]
• Ruah-Midbar, Marianna (2014). “The Sacralization of Randomness – The Theological Imagination and the Logic of Computerized Divination Rituals”, in Numen – International Review for the History of Religions 61.5-6 (2014): 619-655.
• Ruah-Midbar Shapiro, Marianna, and Ruah Midbar, Omri (2017). “Outdoing Authenticity: Three Postmodern Models of Adapting Folklore Materials in Current Spiritual Music”, in Journal of Folklore Research – An International Journal of Folklore Research 54.3 (Sep.-Nov. 2017): 199-231.
• Ruah-Midbar Shapiro, Marianna (2018). “Abracadabra! Postmodern therapeutic methods: Language as a neo-magical tool”, in Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 17.49 (Spring 2018): 3-17. 
• Ruah-Midbar Shapiro, Marianna, and Sharon Warshawski (2018). “Trance, Meditation and Brainwashing – The Israeli Use of Hypnosis Law and the New Religious Movements Scene”, in The Journal of CESNUR 2.4 (July-August 2018).
• Ruah-Midbar Shapiro, Marianna. “'It's a Game Everybody's Already Playing' – Versions of the ‘Creating-Our-Reality’ Motif in the Discourse of Alternative Spiritualities”, in Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 17.51 (Winter 2018): 115-133.
• Ruah-Midbar Shapiro, Marianna (Forthcoming). “The Temptation of Legitimacy – Lilith’s Adoption and Adaption in Contemporary Feminist Spirituality,” in Modern Judaism – A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience.

Ph.D. Dissertation: 

• Ruah-Midbar, Marianna (2006). The New Age culture in Israel: A methodological introduction and the ‘conceptual network’‏. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University. [Hebrew]

Presentations:

A few examples: