An ethnography of nationalist orthodox Jewish Israelis adopting Buddhist-derived meditation to encounter God and promote redemption

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Settling the Mind, Settling the Land examines a striking puzzle at the heart of contemporary Israel: the adoption of Buddhist-derived meditation by nationalist, orthodox Jews. The practitioners—representing increasingly influential and politically contentious groups—are deeply committed to Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and traditionally wary of non-Jewish spirituality. Yet many have become devoted to vipassanā and mindfulness techniques from Burmese Buddhism, which emphasize detachment, nonviolence, and self-dissolution. They do so not to convert to Buddhism but to encounter God within their eternal souls.

Unlike global or left-wing Israeli meditators who simply secularize Buddhist practices, orthodox adopters, according to Mautner, frame meditation as recovering a lost element of Jewish spirituality and prophetic wisdom that God concealed from Jews during “exile.” He shows how they see it as key to redeeming the world—including Palestinians—through virtuous Jewish life and sovereignty in the Holy Land. With the physical settlement of the land seen as already advanced, they turn inward to “settle the mind.”

Taking readers inside meditation retreats, training programs, and orthodox practitioners’ daily lives, Settling the Mind, Settling the Land reveals the ways in which they balance disciplined introspection with the emotional expressivity they regard as central to Jewish and Israeli religiosity and how they navigate tensions between proper Jewish observance and engagement with potentially “idolatrous” practices. Through his analysis of these negotiations, Mautner demonstrates how efforts to form moral selves are shaped by competing cultural values and offers a new framework for understanding how such conflicts are managed in everyday life. Crucially, Settling the Mind, Settling the Land challenges the common assumption that introspection necessarily yields progressive politics, revealing instead that deep self-reflection can reinforce strongly particularistic commitments to nationhood and state power.