Faculty and Staff - Psychology

Rachel Werczberger is an anthropologist of religion studying contemporary Jewish life. Her research interests include Jewish renewal and revival, New Age culture, contemporary spiritualities and New Religious Movements and lived religion. Werczberger was a visiting fellow at The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at UPenn (2025-2026 and 2015-16) and at the Oxford center for Hebrew and Jewish studies (2022). She is the co-founder and director of Meyda Information Center on New Religious Movements in Israel (https://meida-center.org.il/ ). Together with Dr. Dana Kaplan from the Open University in Israel, she is the 2019 winner of The International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) best article award for the paper: "New Age, New Economy, New Middle-Class: Jewish New Age in Israel." Her book Jews in the age of Authenticity: Jewish Spirituality Renewal in Israel was published in 2016 by Peter Lang publishing. Her edited volume (with Daniel Monterescu) Jewish Revivals inside out: The remaking of Jewishness in a transnational age was published by Wayne University Press in 2022. Among her current research projects are the study of lived Judaism in Israel and the study of 'Israeli Judaism' movement as a form of soft religious nationalism.