Ethical Complexity among Israeli Jews: Self-Fashioning, Religious-Nationalism and Tolerance

我的ESRC奖学金将通过发展出版物、网络、研究和专业技能来巩固我的博士学位。在以色列，与这个国家的面积相比，来自佛教的冥想练习的需求似乎是世界上最高的之一，而且这种做法目前正在被各种各样的犹太以色列人采用。我在剑桥大学攻读的社会人类学博士学位依赖于超过14个月的田野调查。它主要贡献于伦理学人类学的新兴研究领域，该领域分析人们相对地过上美好生活的尝试。在我的论文中，我考察了民族主义的东正教犹太人和争取巴勒斯坦人权的左翼犹太活动家使用佛教冥想技术追求各自的政治和宗教目标的不同方式。我的论文关注的是，在我的不同对话者中，通过冥想发展美德的方式，与拥有多重且往往相互冲突的政治和宗教承诺所带来的困境联系在一起。因此，这项研究有助于人类学上关于自我改造、不同宗教传统之间的相遇以及伦理与政治之间的关系的辩论。我的奖学金将依赖于我的博士实地调查的结果，但将专注于超出我博士学位的主题。首先，它将分析当代宗教犹太复国主义者中个人自我完善、资本主义和救世主犹太民族主义的融合。这一群体的成员自1967年以来一直站在以色列在被占领的西岸定居点项目的最前线，这对以色列-巴勒斯坦和更广泛的区域都产生了戏剧性的后果。此外，自20世纪70年代以来，随着以色列世俗和社会主义犹太“先驱”影响力的下降，宗教犹太复国主义者正在逐渐确立自己作为该国新的霸权集团的地位。其次，我的博士论文的一部分分析了以德系犹太人为主的左翼以色列活动家和他们的巴勒斯坦同行之间有限的文化共鸣。在我提议的项目中，我将把这些互动与米兹拉希姆(中东和北非犹太人)对巴勒斯坦人实行的非自由但有效的宽容模式进行比较，我也目睹了这种模式。在这样的米兹拉希-巴勒斯坦关系中，尊重地生活在一起取决于保持坚定的民族和宗教边界。学术上关于宽容的讨论倾向于做出自由的假设：他们假设，从普遍意义上理解，个人比他们的群体从属关系更重要，并认为跨越国家和宗教界限是有价值的。相反，社会科学家已经证明，从土著澳大利亚人到拉脱维亚人，再到以色列人和巴勒斯坦人，各种人都对这种假设提出异议，因此，促进自由容忍的倡议往往无效。然而，对宽容的不同理解，即人们接受不同种类的“他者”的术语，还没有系统的比较研究。我的项目将催生一个新的跨学科研究领域，对不同的容忍模型进行比较分析。此外，我将提供对和解的见解，不同于标准的、由国际赞助的“和平进程”，它在文化上引起大多数以色列人和巴勒斯坦人的共鸣。第三，我的博士学位包括对哈雷迪(极端正统派)犹太人采用借鉴佛教的“外国”做法的方式的研究。据报道，哈雷迪姆在以色列、美国和英国死于新冠肺炎的死亡率高得异乎寻常。我将在我的发现的基础上，就以何种方式与宗教少数群体接触的方式提供见解，这种方式对宗教少数群体的成员来说不那么可怕，因此比通常情况下更有效。

My ESRC fellowship will consolidate my PhD through developing publications, networks, and research and professional skills. In Israel, the demand for meditation practices drawn from Buddhism appears to be among the highest in the world when compared to the size of the country, and such practices are currently being employed by a striking variety of Jewish Israelis. My PhD in Social Anthropology at Cambridge relies on over 14 months of fieldwork. It contributes primarily to the burgeoning research field of the anthropology of ethics, which analyses people's attempts to lead good lives comparatively. In my dissertation, I examine the diverse ways in which nationalist orthodox Jews, and left-wing Jewish activists for Palestinians' human rights, employ Buddhist meditation techniques for pursuing their respective political and religious goals. My dissertation focuses on the ways in which among my different interlocutors, the development of virtue through meditation is linked with the dilemmas entailed in having multiple, and often-conflicting, political and religious commitments. The study thereby contributes to anthropological debates concerning self-transformation, encounters between different religious traditions and the relationship between ethics and politics. My fellowship will rely on the findings of my doctoral fieldwork but will focus on themes that exceed those of my PhD. First, it will analyse the confluence of individual self-improvement, capitalism and messianic Jewish nationalism among contemporary religious Zionists. Members of this group have been at the forefront of Israel's settlement project in the occupied West bank since 1967, which has had dramatic consequences on both Israel-Palestine and the broader region. Moreover, following the declining influence of Israel's secular and socialist Jewish 'pioneers' since the 1970s, religious Zionists are gradually establishing themselves as the country's new hegemonic group. Second, a part of my PhD dissertation analyses the limited cultural resonance between predominantly Ashkenazi (European-Jewish) left-wing Israeli activists and their Palestinian counterparts. In my proposed project, I shall compare these interactions with the non-liberal yet effective models of tolerance that Mizrahim (Middle-Eastern and North-African Jews) enact with Palestinians, which I also witnessed. In such Mizrahi-Palestinian ties, living together respectfully relies on maintaining firm national-religious boundaries. Academic discussions of tolerance tend to make liberal assumptions: they presume that the individual, understood in universal terms, is more significant than their group affiliations, and valorise the crossing of national and religious confines. Conversely, social scientists have illustrated that people ranging from indigenous Australians, to Latvians, to Israelis and Palestinians contest such suppositions, and that consequently, liberal tolerance-promotion initiatives are often ineffective. And yet there is no systematic comparative study of different understandings of tolerance, namely people's terms for accepting 'otherness' of different kinds. My project will instigate a new interdisciplinary field of research that will comparatively analyse diverse tolerance models. Additionally, I will provide insights into reconciliation that unlike the standard, internationally-sponsored 'peace process', culturally resonate with most Israelis and Palestinians. Third, my PhD has included an examination of the ways in which Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews adopt 'foreign' practices borrowed from Buddhism. Haredim have reportedly suffered unusually high death rates from COVID-19 in Israel, the USA and the UK. I will build on my findings to provide insights concerning the ways in which largely-secular societies may engage with religious minority groups in a manner that is less intimidating for their members, and thus more efficacious, than is usually the case.