Congregação Israelita da Nova Aliança: vivendo a Teshuvah.

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the religious experience that has been called Teshuvah ("return" to the Jewish roots). It tried to understand especially how this process led to a community that initially had predominantly Christian perspective to migrate to a predominantly Jewish perspective. Experience investigation began in Curitiba, in 2004, within a religious institution with similar beliefs and doctrines to Christian, the Church of God of 7th Day. Consequently such an experience, this group began to approach the Jewish symbolic system and to identify themselves increasingly with Judaism, which led to the change of its name to Israeli Congregation of the New Covenant ( CINA ). From the religious concepts like system of symbols, of Clifford Geertz; and identity, as a flexible, unfinished and procedural construction, Stuart Hall, this study sought to understand the implications of Teshuvah, such as the process of community identity redefining the experiences and their impact on the daily lives of those members who witness have assumed the broad commitments required in this experiment. Triggering the concept of legitimacy, as an ideological support for the social constructions, Peter Berger, this study also aimed to investigate the mechanisms that have been activated to legitimize the new identity, Jewish allegedly built by members of the CINA from Teshuvah. In this ongoing process the technological means are cleverly used by this religious expression, both in the assimilation project of the Jewish tradition and in the dissemination and expansion of Teshuvah. We use the increasing number of artifacts to bring the message of Teshuvah through websites, radio, TV, blogs on the world wide web, which are accessed by Internet users from around the world. In addition to the observations of worship, the evaluation of members of testimonials, the methodology of this work was the critical reading of oral speeches and writings that have been disclosed in media spaces mentioned. These contents were essential sources for the study, since register and contribute to the task of elucidating the experience of Teshuvah and provide important information regarding the doctrine, history and identity of religious expression. It was found as a result of Teshuvah process that the Israeli Congregation of the New Covenant distanced himself from the Christian religious expressions, as they identify themselves as Jews strive to fulfill the Torah and seek to live the Jewish tradition. However, no matter how close they are of Jewish tradition, the New Covenant Jews do not admit renounce belief in Jesus as the Messiah. It is this belief in Jesus as savior of the Jewish people, the condition that most distinguishes and separates the CINA traditional Jewish groups. Thus, the process of Teshuvah ends by situating the New Covenant Jews on a cultural frontier between Judaism and Christianity, in a place of otherness, and ends up attracting hostile reactions on both sides of the border, their religion and their lifestyle.