Paper short abstract:

Online pilgrimage related to Jewish saints in Israel allows a unique interplay between tangible, imaginary, and mediated experiences. Cyber venerators compartmentalize their activities into various life contexts and enjoy a personally tailored combination of Internet based and locational practices.

Paper long abstract:

New media developments in Israel have enabled relocating religious activities to the Internet. This paper explores pilgrimage to gravesites of Jewish Saints (Tsaddik) in its locational and cyber forms. Tsaddik gravesite pilgrimage is a space centered activity. People travel far in order to be physically present in the vicinity of the Tsaddik's spirit. The gravesite is an axis-mundi, which facilitates direct communication between the human and the supernatural. Most Tsaddik veneration websites offer to mediate between web-surfers and human messengers, who can pray, play recorded requests, or light candles at the gravesite for an Internet user that they never met in person. Another technological mediation happens in many contemporary Tsaddik grave rituals when pilgrims hold cellular phones above the crowds' heads to transmit images and sounds of prayer to friends and relatives who stayed at home. The connection between two completely different kinds of spaces, the traditional structure of the grave, and the virtual flat representation on the screen allows a unique interplay between tangible, imaginary, and mediated experiences. Online venerators of the Tsaddik are also able to compartmentalize their activities in accordance with the various contexts of their lives. They are not asked for full dedication and commitment while conducting cyber pilgrimage, and they can keep this practice as a personal secret. The translocation of hope-producing rituals from gravesites to the Internet produces new complexities in practice and ideology as it provides new spaces for religious activity and broadens the cultural spectrum of spirituality in Israel.