[citation needed] During the growth of Neopaganism in the United States throughout the 1970s, a number of minor Canaanite or Israelite oriented groups emerged.
[1] A notable contemporary Levantine Neopagan group is known as "Am Ha Aretz" (עם הארץ, lit.
"People of the Land", a rabbinical term for uneducated and religiously unobservant Jews), "AmHA" for short, based in Israel.
[2] Elie Sheva, according to her own testimony an "elected leader of AmHA" reportedly founded an American branch of the group, known as the Primitive Hebrew Assembly.
[8] In 2006, rabbi Jill Hammer founded the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, which has a stated mission to "reclaim and innovate embodied, earth-based feminist Judaism", inspired by pre-Israelite Semitic religion priestesses such as Enheduanna, who was a devotee of the goddess Inanna.