Body and Soul in Yemima Avital’s Teachings and in Her Students’ Testimonies, Philosophies and Practices

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between body and soul as perceived by Yemima Avital (1929–1999), an Israeli woman mystic who founded the ‘cognitive thinking’ method. Since the 1990s, a steadily growing number of Jewish Israelis, in separate groups of men or women, study her teachings as they are applied in their lives. Their goal is to ‘mend’ their thinking and behavior so that they attain what she calls ‘precision,’ and, as a result, better connect with themselves and with others. An individual’s health, according to Avital’s teachings, is a reflection of his or her spiritual balance or lack thereof. This idea, which she took from Hassidic thought, was further developed by Avital and her contemporary Israeli followers. In this chapter, I demonstrate the continuity of this idea and its proliferation into Israeli therapeutic and medical circles.

Ph.D. and senior lecturer in Jewish Thought, Spiritual Care Supervisor, founder and director of Marpeh: An Israeli clinical pastoral education academic program at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem. I thank the NY Federation for their generous support of the Marpeh Spiritual Care Program, in the framework of which this chapter was written.