Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli
Biographic Data
| ID | 903252 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shlomo |
| FAMILY NAME | Guzmen-Carmeli |
| SIGNATURE | GUZMEN-CARMELI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bar-Ilan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6410-929X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Forced agency: The price of being an engaged patient managing chronic illness
Contemporary healthcare discourse celebrates patient empowerment and democratized medical knowledge, yet lived experiences of chronic illness are more complex. Drawing on 35 interviews (with 32 Parkinson's disease patients and three caregivers) and ethnographic observations, both conducted in Israel, we illuminate how patients experience agency: often, more as burden than liberation. We introduce the term “forced agency” to capture how systemic i…
Living Text: The Multiple Lives of Tehillim in Contemporary Jewish Practice
This article examines how Tehillim (Psalms) emerges as a “living text” in contemporary Jewish practice in Israel, maintaining vitality through multiple concurrent modes of existence. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in diverse Jewish communities, we explore how this sacred text creates meaningful encounters while adapting to social contexts. The text’s remarkable adaptability manifests through three interrelated dimensions: its movement…
Enacting religious submission: Between doing religion and being done by religion
This paper sheds light on the interactive process in which religious practitioners work to achieve states that appear to contradict individual agency. Drawing on ethnographic studies of Buddhist meditation retreats and Torah study in a Haredi yeshiva, we track the delicate balance between ‘doing religion’ (active engagement) and ‘being done by religion" (experiencing religious forces as taking over). In Torah study, students move from vigorous te…
The Light within Me: Celebrating the self through Jewish holidays in Israeli state education
The Politics of Exception: Ex-Territoriality and the Meron Disaster
In the aftermath of the Meron disaster, where 45 people lost their lives during a Lag BaOmer celebration, it became evident that the tragedy stemmed from that most Israeli of solutions: the art of managing intractable problems through strategic nonmanagement. The site where the disaster occurred, at the entrance to the Toldos Aharon Hasidic group's ceremonial area, exemplifies how ultra-Orthodox communities navigate autonomy within Israel's compl…
Faithful atheists: The paradox of Jewish nonbelievers in Israel
This article examines narratives of coping strategies and worldviews adopted by Jewish Israeli atheists (JIA) during times of emotional turmoil. Through qualitative interviews with 30 participants, we demonstrate how they navigate between rational disbelief in God, Jewish identity, and their need for comfort. While valuing rational thinking, they find it insufficient for emotional solace. To cope, they create alternative ‘just-world’ cosmologies,…
A Permissible Sin: Perceptions of Smoking Among Haredi Men in Israel
This essay deals with perceptions of smoking among Haredi men in Israel. Though trends in smoking within the Haredi society have been quantitively examined, no qualitative research has ever focused on the motivations and mindsets stimulating individuals’ choices to take health risks despite religious precepts to the contrary. Israeli Haredi men sometimes start smoking in their early childhood and are unmotivated to quit, and such circumstances sh…
Not Being Counted: Women's Place and Religious Space in Jewish Orthodox Communities During the Covid-19 Crisis
This article draws on the anthropology of crisis to analyze ways in which communal-religious responses to crisis situations can reveal engrained social and cultural structures, and especially their gendered aspects. We focus on two alternative forms of Jewish communal prayer service that emerged in Orthodox communities in Israel during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: street and balcony minyans. Based on interviews and texts, we explore O…
Entrepreneurial treatment activism for undone science: Mannitol and Parkinson’s disease
This paper describes CliniCrowd, a patient-designed, entrepreneurial, crowd-sourced citizen-science approach to evaluating mannitol-essentially, an orphan drug-as a Parkinson's disease treatment. As such, CliniCrowd addresses 'undone science', and our paper contributes to the sociological literature thereon. Based on 38 qualitative interviews, fieldwork, and content analyses (2017-2020), we trace CliniCrowd's background and rationale. We: discuss…
Inventing culture: Structure and symmetry in Jewish life and ritual
This article describes how the culture of Jewish traditional literature inspires the shaping of laws, the emergence of new customs, and the changes that occur over time. We will begin by formulating what we will call “the rules of Jewish cultural grammar.” Through an analysis of several laws and customs such as kiddush and havdalah, breaking a plate at engagements and breaking a glass at weddings, washing hands with mayim rishonim before a meal a…
Texts as Places, Texts as Mirrors: Anthropology of Judaisms and Jewish Textuality
Eating the Bubbe: Culinary encounters between secular and haredi jews in Bnei Brak
Over the last few years on Thursday evenings, the main streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s largest haredi (ultra-Orthodox) cities, becomes a culinary meeting place. The Eastern European Jewish cuisine sustained by the haredi kitchen attracts non-haredi visitors to a society that tends to keep to itself. This article presents an ethnographic investigation of a new culinary scene that brings together local haredim and secular visitors. I draw upo…
The Structure of Change: A Structural Interpretation of the Biblical Story of Joseph
In recent years, theories of structuralism in anthropology are being re-examined. This article uses structural analysis to create an anthropological interpretation of the Joseph story in the Bible and to evaluate its modes of interpretation and how it influences the formation of Jewish religious practices. The structural interpretation shows how stories serve as models for the process of cultural creation. In the case of Joseph's story, the narra…
Textual healing: Tailor-made kabbalistic therapeutics in Jerusalem
This paper, based on fieldwork conducted in a Jerusalem yeshiva, describes how the yeshiva, a traditional institute of religious studies, also serves as an institution of healing and personal therapy in which sacred religious texts assume a central place. The article focuses on personal sessions between the rabbi who heads the yeshiva, and his audience of believers who turn to him for help in coping with personal hardships and tribulations. The p…
The holy contract: The social contract of the Toldos Aharon Hasidic group
The article, based on fieldwork conducted among an extremist Hasidic group, demonstrates how religious fundamentalism may be linked to modernism through the way in which modern ideas infiltrate fundamentalist culture. The authors examine the contract that is signed annually by members of the group, which reaffirms their acceptance of stringent regulations. The contract is signed by every individual by means of a performative act that consolidates…
Tikkun (Divine Repair) and Healing in a Kabbalistic Yeshiva: Using Sacred Texts as Healing Devices
Eating the Bubbe: Culinary encounters between secular and haredi jews in Bnei Brak
Over the last few years on Thursday evenings, the main streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s largest haredi (ultra-Orthodox) cities, becomes a culinary meeting place. The Eastern European Jewish cuisine sustained by the haredi kitchen attracts non-haredi visitors to a society that tends to keep to itself. This article presents an ethnographic investigation of a new culinary scene that brings together local haredim and secular visitors. I draw upo…
Textual healing: Tailor-made kabbalistic therapeutics in Jerusalem
This paper, based on fieldwork conducted in a Jerusalem yeshiva, describes how the yeshiva, a traditional institute of religious studies, also serves as an institution of healing and personal therapy in which sacred religious texts assume a central place. The article focuses on personal sessions between the rabbi who heads the yeshiva, and his audience of believers who turn to him for help in coping with personal hardships and tribulations. The p…
The Light within Me: Celebrating the self through Jewish holidays in Israeli state education
Faithful atheists: The paradox of Jewish nonbelievers in Israel
This article examines narratives of coping strategies and worldviews adopted by Jewish Israeli atheists (JIA) during times of emotional turmoil. Through qualitative interviews with 30 participants, we demonstrate how they navigate between rational disbelief in God, Jewish identity, and their need for comfort. While valuing rational thinking, they find it insufficient for emotional solace. To cope, they create alternative ‘just-world’ cosmologies,…
Not Being Counted: Women's Place and Religious Space in Jewish Orthodox Communities During the Covid-19 Crisis
This article draws on the anthropology of crisis to analyze ways in which communal-religious responses to crisis situations can reveal engrained social and cultural structures, and especially their gendered aspects. We focus on two alternative forms of Jewish communal prayer service that emerged in Orthodox communities in Israel during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: street and balcony minyans. Based on interviews and texts, we explore O…
The Structure of Change: A Structural Interpretation of the Biblical Story of Joseph
In recent years, theories of structuralism in anthropology are being re-examined. This article uses structural analysis to create an anthropological interpretation of the Joseph story in the Bible and to evaluate its modes of interpretation and how it influences the formation of Jewish religious practices. The structural interpretation shows how stories serve as models for the process of cultural creation. In the case of Joseph's story, the narra…
The holy contract: The social contract of the Toldos Aharon Hasidic group
The article, based on fieldwork conducted among an extremist Hasidic group, demonstrates how religious fundamentalism may be linked to modernism through the way in which modern ideas infiltrate fundamentalist culture. The authors examine the contract that is signed annually by members of the group, which reaffirms their acceptance of stringent regulations. The contract is signed by every individual by means of a performative act that consolidates…
Tikkun (Divine Repair) and Healing in a Kabbalistic Yeshiva: Using Sacred Texts as Healing Devices
The Structure of Change: A Structural Interpretation of the Biblical Story of Joseph
In recent years, theories of structuralism in anthropology are being re-examined. This article uses structural analysis to create an anthropological interpretation of the Joseph story in the Bible and to evaluate its modes of interpretation and how it influences the formation of Jewish religious practices. The structural interpretation shows how stories serve as models for the process of cultural creation. In the case of Joseph's story, the narra…
Textual healing: Tailor-made kabbalistic therapeutics in Jerusalem
This paper, based on fieldwork conducted in a Jerusalem yeshiva, describes how the yeshiva, a traditional institute of religious studies, also serves as an institution of healing and personal therapy in which sacred religious texts assume a central place. The article focuses on personal sessions between the rabbi who heads the yeshiva, and his audience of believers who turn to him for help in coping with personal hardships and tribulations. The p…
Texts as Places, Texts as Mirrors: Anthropology of Judaisms and Jewish Textuality
Eating the Bubbe: Culinary encounters between secular and haredi jews in Bnei Brak
Over the last few years on Thursday evenings, the main streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s largest haredi (ultra-Orthodox) cities, becomes a culinary meeting place. The Eastern European Jewish cuisine sustained by the haredi kitchen attracts non-haredi visitors to a society that tends to keep to itself. This article presents an ethnographic investigation of a new culinary scene that brings together local haredim and secular visitors. I draw upo…
Inventing culture: Structure and symmetry in Jewish life and ritual
This article describes how the culture of Jewish traditional literature inspires the shaping of laws, the emergence of new customs, and the changes that occur over time. We will begin by formulating what we will call “the rules of Jewish cultural grammar.” Through an analysis of several laws and customs such as kiddush and havdalah, breaking a plate at engagements and breaking a glass at weddings, washing hands with mayim rishonim before a meal a…
Entrepreneurial treatment activism for undone science: Mannitol and Parkinson’s disease
This paper describes CliniCrowd, a patient-designed, entrepreneurial, crowd-sourced citizen-science approach to evaluating mannitol-essentially, an orphan drug-as a Parkinson's disease treatment. As such, CliniCrowd addresses 'undone science', and our paper contributes to the sociological literature thereon. Based on 38 qualitative interviews, fieldwork, and content analyses (2017-2020), we trace CliniCrowd's background and rationale. We: discuss…
A Permissible Sin: Perceptions of Smoking Among Haredi Men in Israel
This essay deals with perceptions of smoking among Haredi men in Israel. Though trends in smoking within the Haredi society have been quantitively examined, no qualitative research has ever focused on the motivations and mindsets stimulating individuals’ choices to take health risks despite religious precepts to the contrary. Israeli Haredi men sometimes start smoking in their early childhood and are unmotivated to quit, and such circumstances sh…
Not Being Counted: Women's Place and Religious Space in Jewish Orthodox Communities During the Covid-19 Crisis
This article draws on the anthropology of crisis to analyze ways in which communal-religious responses to crisis situations can reveal engrained social and cultural structures, and especially their gendered aspects. We focus on two alternative forms of Jewish communal prayer service that emerged in Orthodox communities in Israel during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: street and balcony minyans. Based on interviews and texts, we explore O…
The Light within Me: Celebrating the self through Jewish holidays in Israeli state education
The Politics of Exception: Ex-Territoriality and the Meron Disaster
In the aftermath of the Meron disaster, where 45 people lost their lives during a Lag BaOmer celebration, it became evident that the tragedy stemmed from that most Israeli of solutions: the art of managing intractable problems through strategic nonmanagement. The site where the disaster occurred, at the entrance to the Toldos Aharon Hasidic group's ceremonial area, exemplifies how ultra-Orthodox communities navigate autonomy within Israel's compl…
Faithful atheists: The paradox of Jewish nonbelievers in Israel
This article examines narratives of coping strategies and worldviews adopted by Jewish Israeli atheists (JIA) during times of emotional turmoil. Through qualitative interviews with 30 participants, we demonstrate how they navigate between rational disbelief in God, Jewish identity, and their need for comfort. While valuing rational thinking, they find it insufficient for emotional solace. To cope, they create alternative ‘just-world’ cosmologies,…
Forced agency: The price of being an engaged patient managing chronic illness
Contemporary healthcare discourse celebrates patient empowerment and democratized medical knowledge, yet lived experiences of chronic illness are more complex. Drawing on 35 interviews (with 32 Parkinson's disease patients and three caregivers) and ethnographic observations, both conducted in Israel, we illuminate how patients experience agency: often, more as burden than liberation. We introduce the term “forced agency” to capture how systemic i…
Living Text: The Multiple Lives of Tehillim in Contemporary Jewish Practice
This article examines how Tehillim (Psalms) emerges as a “living text” in contemporary Jewish practice in Israel, maintaining vitality through multiple concurrent modes of existence. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in diverse Jewish communities, we explore how this sacred text creates meaningful encounters while adapting to social contexts. The text’s remarkable adaptability manifests through three interrelated dimensions: its movement…
Enacting religious submission: Between doing religion and being done by religion
This paper sheds light on the interactive process in which religious practitioners work to achieve states that appear to contradict individual agency. Drawing on ethnographic studies of Buddhist meditation retreats and Torah study in a Haredi yeshiva, we track the delicate balance between ‘doing religion’ (active engagement) and ‘being done by religion" (experiencing religious forces as taking over). In Torah study, students move from vigorous te…
Sociology (11 works) · Judaism (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (7 works) · Theology (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (5 works) · Art (5 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (5 works) · Ethnography (4 works)