Borns Jewish Studies Program

Alongside modern Israel's technological growth and scientific affluency, some folk superstitions, magical patterns of thinking, and kabbalistic influences have left noticeable traces in Israeli arts, mass media, religious practices and popular imagination. This course will explore a subterranean reservoir of motifs, material objects which exude unique auras, and cultural practices, which seem to contradict Israeli culture's image of rational knowledge and pioneering. The course will offer a multimedia introduction to protean aspects of Israeli culture, proposing its interpretation through the lens of contemporary theories, especially phenomenology of religious experience, miracle theory, and philosophical approaches to the realm of supernatural. Topics to be discussed in class includes: sacred spaces and the invention of religious spatiality, in particular, pilgrimages to the graves of prominent kabbalists', the question of the holy language versus multi-lingualism raised in Nurit Aviv's movies, spiritual possession (dybbuks) as represented in the arts, magical talismans protecting from the evil eye, the auratic character retained by the reproduced portrait-photographs of the Lubavitscher Rebbe (Menachem Mendel Schneerson), and feminist identification with the lowest divine hypostasis of Shekhinah associated with the female element.

Fulfills GenEd A&H ; CASE A&H