Therapeutic Literacies: Text, Body, and Emotion in the Jewish Spiritual Renewal

חסידות טקסים יהדות כתרבות ניו-אייג' צמיחה אישית קבלה רוחניות

This anthropological study investigates the role of Jewish texts within the Jewish Spiritual Renewal (JSR) movement in Israel. While JSR is often characterized by a focus on embodied experience and emotion (sometimes seen as anti-intellectual), Werczberger argues that texts remain central. Through qualitative fieldwork, the article demonstrates how practitioners use texts (mainly from Kabbalah, Hasidism, and Musar) not for academic study or religious obligation, but for therapeutic purposes. The texts are "performed" and embodied to facilitate personal growth, emotional healing, and self-transformation. The author coins the term "Therapeutic Literacies" to describe this specific mode of reading, where the value of a sacred text is measured by its psychological utility and its ability to trigger a spiritual experience.