This book, based on the author's ethnographic fieldwork in the Palestinian West Bank from 1995 to 1996, aims to provide an honest, authentic, and accurate accounting of the nitty-gritty, day-to-day challenges, rewards, failures, and successes of doing fieldwork in a conservative village setting. By focussing on the intimate, typically obscured aspects of the fieldwork experience this memoir is intended for students planning to do fieldwork in any locale.

The Palestinian Muslim village of Artas is cradled in the lap of four mountains in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Although Artas has experienced the violence of Israeli occupation, Spirits of Palestine does not focus exclusively on the villagers' experiences of violence, terrorism, or loss. This ethnography looks instead at the daily lives of Palestinian women and men and how they relate to tragedies and difficulties both large and small. Through stories of possession by the jinn, spirits that appear throughout the Koran, anthropologist Celia Rothenberg takes the reader past the dramatic, violent world of street battles and stone-throwing to more intimate realms of power--in homes and prisons, family and neighborhood relations, and personal experiences of migration and diaspora. Rothenberg shows how remarkably far-reaching jinn stories can be; they provide commentary on the constructed nature of kinship, strong social mores, and those who are both on the margins and at the center of a Palestinian community. Jinn stories remind us that power in all its forms has gaps and inconsistencies. Spirits of Palestine is a truly original ethnography and an essential addition to scholarship on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East that will be of interest to cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and women's/gender studies scholars.

This edited volume explores a range of experiences and conceptualizations of New Age Judaism, an imprecise term denoting new and evolving forms of North American Judaism that are typically innovative, combinative, and often controversial. Chapters analyze the phenomenon of New Age Judaism from theoretical, theological and ethnographic perspectives. As a result, they offer a broad sampling of some of the most fascinating forms of Jewish religious expression and philosophy in North America today. Rothenberg explores the teachings of Jewish shamanism and Jewish yoga. Vallely explores the revitalization of Jewish ritual practices achieved through the embrace of Buddhism. Other chapters cover an ethnographically rich account of one synagogue's re-framing of wealth as a form of ""energy,"" a women's ritual within ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal; the 'inclusive' writings of New Age Jewish Renewal leader Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi, which claim not to be combinative at all, but rather a ""retrieval"" of ancient Jewish wisdom. Experimentation with yoga, drumming, meditation, eclectic musical forms, Buddhism, and egalitarian prayer - once the province of the most marginal of Jewish religious practices - are now being embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm within mainstream Jewish denominations, revealing the gradual ""normalization"" and incorporation of New Age Judaism's religious forms. New Age Judaism focuses much needed scholarly attention on these new forms and expressions of Judaism both within and outside of the synagogue setting.

This edited volume explores a range of experiences and conceptualizations of New Age Judaism, an imprecise term denoting new and evolving forms of North American Judaism that are typically innovative, combinative, and often controversial. Chapters analyze the phenomenon of New Age Judaism from theoretical, theological and ethnographic perspectives. As a result, they offer a broad sampling of some of the most fascinating forms of Jewish religious expression and philosophy in North America today. Rothenberg explores the teachings of Jewish shamanism and Jewish yoga. Vallely explores the revitalization of Jewish ritual practices achieved through the embrace of Buddhism. Other chapters cover an ethnographically rich account of one synagogue's re-framing of wealth as a form of ""energy,"" a women's ritual within ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal; the 'inclusive' writings of New Age Jewish Renewal leader Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi, which claim not to be combinative at all, but rather a ""retrieval"" of ancient Jewish wisdom. Experimentation with yoga, drumming, meditation, eclectic musical forms, Buddhism, and egalitarian prayer - once the province of the most marginal of Jewish religious practices - are now being embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm within mainstream Jewish denominations, revealing the gradual ""normalization"" and incorporation of New Age Judaism's religious forms. New Age Judaism focuses much needed scholarly attention on these new forms and expressions of Judaism both within and outside of the synagogue setting.

Unique in the literature on Jewish camping, this book provides an in-depth study of a community-based, residential summer camp that serves Jewish children from primarily rural areas. Focused on Camp Ben Frankel (CBF), established in 1950 in southern Illinois, this book focuses on how a pluralist Jewish camp constructs meaningful experiences of Jewish "family" and Judaism for campers-and teaches them about Israel. Inspired by models of the earliest camps established for Jewish children in urban areas, CBF's founders worked to create a camp that would appeal to the rural, often isolated Jewish families in its catchment area. Although seemingly on the periphery of American Jewish life, CBF staff and campers are revealed to be deeply entwined with national developments in Jewish culture and practice and, indeed, contributors to shaping them. This research highlights the importance of campers' experiences of traditional elements of the Jewish "family" (an experience increasingly limited to time at camp), as well as the overarching importance of song. Over the years, Judaism becomes constructed as fun, welcoming, and easy for campers, while Israel is presented in ways that are meant to be appropriate for a community camp. In the camp's earliest decades, Israel was framed by "traditional" Zionist discourse; later, as community priorities shifted, the cause of Russian Jews was the focus. Most recently, as Israeli politics have been increasingly viewed as potentially divisive, the camp has adopted an "Israel-lite" approach, focusing on Israel as the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people and a place home to Jews who are similar to American Jews. In sum, this study sheds light on how a small, rural, community camp contributes in significant ways to our understanding of American Jews, their Judaism, and their Zionism.

This book, based on the author's ethnographic fieldwork in the Palestinian West Bank from 1995 to 1996, aims to provide an honest, authentic, and accurate accounting of the nitty-gritty, day-to-day challenges, rewards, failures, and successes of doing fieldwork in a conservative village setting. By focussing on the intimate, typically obscured aspects of the fieldwork experience this memoir is intended for students planning to do fieldwork in any locale.