While never very large in number, new religious movements in Israel are becoming more accepted by the general public due to these movements’ acceptance of Zionist ideology and involvement in the country’s settlement ethos and military, as well as their emphasis on education and success. Writing in the journal Politics and Religion (online in February), Guy Ben-Porat and Boaz Huss note that the persistence of new religious movements (NRMs) in Israel is curious since they initially faced considerable opposition, being branded as dangerous and foreign “cults” by the Jewish state and the Orthodox Jewish monopoly. The researchers conducted interviews with NRM activists and members, particularly from the Anthroposophy movement and the Emin Society, two veteran NRMs in Israel, and analyzed the media attention such groups have attracted. Both Emin and Anthroposophy are esoteric and occult movements that have been particularly successful in Israel. When Emin was criticized and investigated by anti-cultists and the government for being a cult and foreign (it had originally come from England in the 1970s), the group was quick to point out its contributions to Israeli society, such as its establishment of a settlement in an era of “demographic engineering” by Zionists.
Waldorf school students in Israel.
The Anthroposophists were not subject to investigations, though their group was also labeled a cult, and they have found more success than Emin in Israel today. They were also part of the settlement project and, more importantly, provided education for the upper-middle class within the Waldorf school system, now spread across Israel with more than 30 schools and 100 kindergartens. Waldorf alumni have been found to be very active in the Israeli military, community service, and academic studies. Thus, the Anthroposophy movement’s neoliberal values and concepts of “good citizenship” were an important factor in its acceptance and success. Ben-Porat and Huss conclude that the subsiding of opposition to these and other NRMs in recent years is due to the way these groups have legitimized themselves through “Judaization” in their involvement in the settlement projects, as well as adapted to Israeli society as it underwent liberalization and individualization.
(Politics and Religion, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religion)
