Abstract
This ethnographic study follows the emergence of Kabbalat Shabbat rituals over the last decade in a secular Jewish community in Israel. Drawing on the fieldwork, we argue that this community’s celebration of the transition to Shabbat forms a distinct time that embodies religiosity and liberal values in three dimensions – personal, communal, and theological. First, community members use meditation as a tool for personal change. Second, they redesign various rituals, including a blessing for the sick, thus expressing solidarity with members’ suffering. Third, over the years, they have sorted out the images and meanings of God to suit their own values, and criticize the image of God in its Orthodox sense. Against secular purism on the one hand and religious orthodoxy on the other, this community imbues the transition from Friday to Shabbat with secular meanings inserted into a post-secular time. Their Kabbalat Shabbat is a litmus test for understanding the formation of secularism in Israel at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In a broader theoretical context, a pragmatic analysis of post-secularism suggests further developing the critique of the sociological secularization thesis by pointing out processes of change and the formation of specific dimensions, such as time, in a local secular community.
Translated title of the contribution | Post-secular time: Forming Kabbalat Shabbat rituals in an emerging Jewish Israeli community \ |
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Original language | Hebrew |
Pages (from-to) | 239-268 |
Journal | קריאות ישראליות |
Issue number | 5 |
State | Published - Feb 2024 |