Finding Meaning
An Existential Quest in Post-Modern Israel
Published on 17. September 2021
520 pages
978-0-19-091036-5 (ISBN)
Description
From its trendy urban centers to its ancient deserts, Israel's history is based on the rich heritage of traditions and contradictions. It is known as a start-up nation, with hospitable and warm interpersonal relationships, and a steady high-ranked happiness level. Yet, its deep political disparities and past traumas ripple beneath the surface of its culture, with unyielding existential threats looming from its neighbors and from within its borders. The turbulent Israeli setting?characterized by salient existential threats, issues of identity and dialectic world views?serve as a magnifying glass for unravelling a variety of significant ways through which the human fundamental motivation to find meaning in life is manifested.
Finding Meaning incorporates a conceptual framework for examining the post-modern, sociocultural Israeli scene that facilitates and triggers the search for meaning among its citizens. Combining theory, data, and illustrative case studies, this book unravels a variety of significant and fundamental manifestations of a quest for meaning under existentialist duress, carefully navigating the cultural context of post-modernist Israel. Written by experts in these areas, this book offers new insights into this quest by suggesting a new construct that weaves together the personal and cultural environment, highlights several key processes and dimensions that appear to characterize this search, and offers broad perspectives that contribute to the research at these intersections.
Finding Meaning is a pioneering book with an insightful, innovative, and hopeful lens for academic, scholarly, and some lay readers interested in meaning and contemporary Israeli society.
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Book
11/2021
Oxford University Press Inc
€126.20
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Persons
Ofra Mayseless is a former dean and current professor of developmental psychology at the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel; she is also the head of the Multi-University Center for the Study of Human Spirit. She published over 100 articles and chapters, edited two books, and authored one. She studies attachment, caring motivation, transition to adulthood, search for meaning and spiritual development.
Pninit Russo-Netzer is a senior lecturer and researcher. Her main research and practice interests focus on meaning in life, positive psychology, existential psychology, spirituality, positive change and growth. She is the head of the Education Department at Achva Academic College, the founder and head of the 'Compass' Institute for the Study and Application of Meaning in life, and the head of the Academic Training Program for Logotherapy (meaning-oriented psychotherapy) at Tel-Aviv University. She published scholarly journal articles and chapters on these topics, and co-edited the books Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology, and Clinical Perspectives of Meaning.
Content
Part One: Introduction
1. The Israeli Scene as a Case Study of Processes of Search for Meaning in Life in a Post-modern and Globalized World
Ofra Mayseless and Pninit Russo-Netzer
Part Two: A Quilt of Perspectives of the Israeli scene: Start-Up Nation, Multicultural and Trauma and Bereavement Struck
2. The Meaning of Life through Israeli Eyes: Happiness and Creativity in the Restless Startup Nation
Eyal Doron
3. Multitopia: Searching for Meaning in the Rothschild Encampment during the Summer 2011 Social Protest
Hagar Hazaz-Berger
4. Yearning for Meaning: Israeli Terror Casualties' Families Community and the National Bereavement Discourse
Udi Lebel and Tzlil Ben-Gal
Part Three: Developmental Processes and Challenges in the Israeli Search for Meaning
5. In Search of Meaning and Holy Redemption: The Case of the Hilltop Youth in the Occupied West Bank
Samuel (Muli) Peleg
6. The Meaning of Denial: Lessons from Immortality Dreams
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
7. Aging in the Shadow of Trauma: Meaning in Life as a Resource for Older Adults in Israel
Amit Shrira, Yuval Palgi and Dov Shmotkin
8. In Search for Meaning through Survivors' Memoirs: Intergenerational Healing Processes in Families of Holocaust Survivors in the Israeli Context
Adi Duchin and Hadas Wiseman
Part Four: Struggling for Identity
9. The Zionist Absurd: Israel's Politics of Fear, Freedom and
Bad Faith Uriel Abulof
10. Cultural Scripts, Personal Meaning, and Ethno-Class Identities among Jews in Israel
Avihu Shoshana
11. On Secular and Religious Politics of Belonging: What Does it Mean to Be an Arab-Palestinian Citizen in Israel?
Ayman K. Agbaria, Mohanad Mustafa and Sami Mahajnah
12. The Quest for Meaning and Fulfillment among Haredi Women in Israel
Menachem Keren-Kratz
13. Transcending Locality: From Embodied Meaning to Universal Identification in Vipassana Meditation Practice in Israel
Michal Pagis
Part Five: Between Religiosity and Secularism
14. Contemporary Spirituality in Israel: The Search for Meaning and the Privatization of Judaism following the Decline of the Secular Zionist Meta-Narrative
Tomer Persico
15. Judaism is the New Orient - How Experiencing the Far-East Helps Israelis Find Meaning in their Jewish Tradition
Marianna Ruah-Midbar Shapiro
16. Jewish Spiritualization as 'Meaning Injection': An Ethnography of a Rabbinic Seminar in the Israeli Military
Udi Lebel, Batia Ben-Hador and Uzi Ben-Shalom
17. Religious Sense-Making, Purpose-Making and Significance-Making among Jewish, Druze and Muslim Young Adults in Israel
Nurit Novis-Deutsch, Peter Nynäs and Sawsan Khier
Part Six: Conclusion
18. Meaning in Life at the Cross-Roads of Personal Processes and Cultural Crisis
Pninit Russo-Netzer and Ofra Mayseless
