Ultra-Orthodox culture embraces elaborate, high-resolution scales of religiosity. A prominent example is the hierarchy among those institutions which issue kashrut certification, particularly when it comes to the certification of ritual slaughter.
Written By Professor Gideon Aran
First, there exists a fundamental distinction between “regular” Continue reading kashrut Certification and Ritual Slaughter
Gideon Aran was interviewing for Euronews about price tag attacks, mostly anti-Arab hate crimes by Jewish radicals and about Jerusalem – one city for three religions.
“The political or religious conflict is imposed upon the national one. And the two of them together obviously are harder to solve and are much more bitter.”
To Watch the full video click Prop. Gideon Aran
This paper (co-authored with Z. Gurevitch) challenges the predominant conception of the place in traditional and modern Judaism. We argue that, not only Diaspora Jews but modern Israelis and their ancient Israelite predecessors were “never in place”.
Written By Gideon Aran
The implications of this documented thesis, buttressed by historical and phenomenological analysis, raise questions relating to the ever changing contours of the State’s borders, the discontents that inhere in the Zionist collective experience, the catch of biblical heritage and the Territories, the ironic side of the relations with the Palestinians, the façade of Jerusalem’s authenticity and the high-voltage cable that links it with Tel Aviv, the idea of the desert and the sense of local patriotism, the paradox of Jewish nativism, and the improbability of the Land of Israel as axis mundi. Continue reading Hamakom (the Place)
On Religiosity and Super Religiosity essay submits a thesis on radical religion, discusses the measures of religion and proposes the concept of Super-Religiosity. It will be followed by a second essay (in an upcoming issue of Numen, 4, 2013) that presents a contemporary “case” to which the analytic model of Super-Religiosity is applied.
Written By Prof. Gideon Aran
Though the two essays systematically relate to each other and are complementary, they can be read independently of one another.
The theoretical core of the essay addresses the issue of the measurability of religiosity. It supports the recent claim that religion in general and religious extremism in particular, is not so much a matter of belief or experience but rather it is essentially a matter of performance of the self and the group. It then argues that advancing our understanding of religious extremism requires turning the spotlight from a performance oriented towards religion’s environment to religious inward-facing performance. Continue reading Gideon Aran: On Religiosity And Super Religiosity – Abstract