Semitic neopaganism
religions based on or attempting to reconstruct the old religious traditions of the Semitic peoples
Semitic neopaganism is a group of religions based on or attempting to reconstruct the ancient Semitic religions, mostly practiced among Jews in the United States.
Jewish neopaganism
The notion of historical Israelite or Jewish polytheism was popularized in the United States during the 1960s by Raphael Patai in The Hebrew Goddess, focusing on the cult of female goddesses such as the cult of Asherah in Solomon's Temple.
During the growth of Neopaganism in the United States throughout the 1970s, a number of minor Canaanite or Israelite-oriented groups emerged. Most contained syncretistic elements from Western esotericism.
Forms of Neopagan witchcraft religions inspired by the Semitic milieu, such as Jewitchery, may also be enclosed within the Semitic neopagan movement. These groups are particularly influenced by Jewish feminism, focusing on the goddess cults of the Israelites.
A notable contemporary Levantine Neopagan group is known as "Am Ha Aretz" (עם הארץ, lit. "People of the Land", a rabbinical term for uneducated and religiously unobservant Jews), "AmHA" for short, based in Israel. This group grew out of Ohavei Falcha, "Lovers of the Soil", a movement founded in the late 19th century.
Elie Sheva, according to her own testimony, an "elected leader of AmHA," reportedly founded an American branch of the group, known as the Primitive Hebrew Assembly.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Semitic neopaganism” is religions based on or attempting to reconstruct the old religious traditions of the Semitic peoples. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Semitic, neopaganism and religions, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Semitic neopaganism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.