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:
Co-Lecturer |
Subject of Lecture |
Subject of Session |
Place of Conference |
Name of Conference |
Date |
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Virtual Spirituality and Self Confidence: Imitators, Equivalents and Better-than-Original |
Jewish Mysticism and Contemporary Spirituality |
Tel Aviv University |
The 7th ICSCS |
May 3, 2015 |
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Thinking of the New Age as an "Ideational Network" |
Spirituality Now - Israel 2016: Theory, Major Trends and Central Issues |
University of Haifa |
The 8th Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities |
December 31, 2015 |
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Dr. Lila Moore |
The Film Noah (2014) as an Intersection Between Alternative Spiritualities and Popular Culture |
Case Studies II |
Van Leer Jerusalem Institute |
CESNUR International Conference |
July 5, 2017 |
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Lilith's Comeback in Contemporary Feminist Spiritualities |
New Religious Movements |
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan |
The 2nd Annual Conference of the Israeli Association for the Study of Religion on the Scriptures |
March 11, 2018 |
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The Contemporary Emergence of a Sacred Alternative Geography in the Galilee |
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Tel-Hai College, Qiryat Shmona |
The International Inaugural Workshop of the Tell-Hai Center for the Study of Religions |
March 1, 2018 |