‘Teshuvah baskets’ in the Israeli teshuvah market

Abstract

As opposed to the approach that 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’.

Keywords:

• anthropology of religion
• religion and modernity
• religious revival
• teshuvah movement

Notes

 1. At the level of the individual, it is difficult to identify an exact parallel of the phenomenon of the teshuvah movement in the non-Jewish world, since ‘conversion’, ‘re-affiliation’ and being ‘born again’ – terms used to describe similar phenomena elsewhere – do not accurately reflect the Jewish case. It appears that of these three terms ‘born again’ best befits our discussion, since ‘conversion’ serves to describe the passage from one religion to another, and ‘re-affiliation’ denotes the movement from one group to another within the same religion (Stark 2009). However, Hervieu-Leger (1999, in Meintel 2007) expands the conventional definition of conversion and enumerates three classes under this phenomenon, two of which resemble the Jewish case: conversion from lack of faith to faith and religious affiliation, conversion from formal affiliation to actual religious behaviour, and a subjective sense of belonging to the faith.

 2. For further discussion of Religious Zionism, see Schwartz (2009) and Aran (1991); for further treatment of haredi society, see Heilman (1992) and Heilman and Friedman (1991); for the Sephardi haredi stream, see Lehmann and Siebzehner (2006) and Leon (2009).

 3. Social scientists regularly divide the Jewish population in Israel into two major ethnic groups: Ashkenazim – roughly, Jews who immigrated to Israel from European countries and their descendents, and Mizrahim – roughly, Jews who immigrated to Israel from Muslim-majority countries. To a great extent, Israel's stratified social structure overlaps its ethnic structure. Over the years, the Ashkenazi population has become overrepresented among the upper deciles of the socio-economic ladder, while the Mizrahi population became overrepresented in the lower deciles. For historical reasons, the term ‘Sephardi’ has become more common than ‘Mizrahi’ in the religious context and will be used more frequently in this article.

 4. See the discussion pertaining to the scope of the phenomenon in Caplan (2007, 101–2) and Ilan (2000, 215–17).

 5. See, for example, the report of the Inter-ministerial Committee for Examining the Issue of ‘Sects’ (the ‘New Groups’) in Israel (known as the ‘Taesa-Glazer Report’), which was submitted as a letter to the Minister of Education by the Chair of the committee, MK Miriam Taesa-Glazer, in January 1987.

 6. The establishment of the ‘Machon Meir’ beit midrash (place of Torah study) in Jerusalem in the 1970s marks the beginning of the Religious-Zionist teshuvah, along with the establishment of small religious communities (‘religious kernels’) in several peripheral cities in Israel.

 7. Among the Sephardic-Orthodox teshuvah, they are also known as ‘Mezakei Rabim’ (Those who bring merit to the community at large).

 8. Alias, the Rabbi referred to was not interested in revealing his real name.

 9. The inspiration for this activity can be found in the ‘Shlichim’ (messengers, in Hebrew) culture of the Hasidic Chabad movement (Heilman and Friedman 2010).

10. Many of them use the verb ‘resonate’ (‘lehitchaber’) and its various inflections in order to describe how close or distant they felt in relation to each organisation, style or rabbi they were exposed to. Garb (2005) notes that the expression ‘to resonate’, as opposed to ‘getting stronger’, has become one of the distinct characteristics of the new age activists. He further notes that this terminology is seeping into other social circles. And indeed throughout this entire paper, one gets the impression that this terminology has penetrated the teshuvah discourse, including its more religiously ‘rigid’ regions, such as the Sephardic-Orthodox teshuvah.

11. Researches from the economic approach to religion claim that contrary to what was popularly believed, those who convert to another religion do not do so as a result of the appeal of the religious ideology, in order to satisfy some unmet needs. Rather, these researchers claim their studies indicate that one of the conditions for religious conversion of an individual is the formation of close personal bonds with those who are already members of the new faith (Lofland and Stark 1965; Stark 1996; Stark and Bainbridge 1985). A long time before joining a new faith or religion, individuals gain great confidence in the new faith or religion as the product of a close personal relationship with those who already belong to the same faith. Although in my opinion, hazara beteshuvah should not be considered to be the same as conversion, I too note that in the many stories of the teshuvah journey of the subjects I interviewed, close friends (and personal relationships in general) played a central role. See also statistical findings on the matter: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (2011).

12. For further reading on Breslov, see Sobel (1993).

13. See also Giddens (1991) and his argument that in the current age the self has become a reflective project, in the framework of which the self becomes the product of introspection and design, which includes the designing of the body.

14. While I was conducting fieldwork I encountered many momentary guests, who attend one lesson or several lessons and then never come back. Thus, for example, the first woman I interviewed as part of my fieldwork, I met with once again two years later. She told me she had stopped going to Torah lessons and that her ‘love affair’ was over with the etshuvah world. What do these momentary guests or people who have undergone a more significant process bring back to ‘general society’ once they decide to ‘turn back’? This question calls for more thorough research. Furthermore, many remain neither ‘here’ nor ‘their’, ‘stuck’ in a teshuvah process that goes on for many years.