Enacting religious submission: between doing religion and being done by religion
Religion February 10, 2026 Michal Pagis, Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli
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...