Abstract
While the practice by Jews of Eastern meditation was sharply criticized in the Jewish world in the sixties, today, Buddhist-inspired new forms of “Jewish meditation” are being taught in most mainstream Jewish institutions in America and the Western world. What has led to such a turnaround? Using Barth’s concept of “agents of change,” the case studies of six American Jews teaching meditation shows how individual strategies can end up impacting the topography of a religious field, how the margins can impact the “center” of a religious group. As it reshapes Judaism’s symbolic boundaries, both external and internal, the phenomenon of the Buddhist Jews invites us to rethink religion as a process constantly in the making, continuously shaped by individual choices and cultural interactions.
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