Lawrence Fine, Irene Kaplan Leiwant Professor of Jewish Studies at Mount Holyoke College, is author of
Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship, and other books.
Eitan Fishbane, PhD, a frequent scholar-in-residence and guest speaker at congregations across North America, is assistant professor of Jewish thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary; author of As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist (Stanford UniversityPress); and co-editor of Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections (Jewish Lights).
Eitan Fishbane is available to speak on the following topics:
- Shabbat
- Prayer
- Spirituality
- God and Theology
- Mysticism
- Ethics
- Torah
Rabbi Or N. Rose is an associate dean at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. He is the coeditor of God in All Moments: Mystical and Practical Spiritual Wisdom from Hasidic Masters and Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice; Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections and Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid's Table, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (all Jewish Lights).
Yehonatan Chipman, an Orthodox rabbi, lives in Jerusalem, where he works as aprofessional translator of academic Jewish texts. He is currently writing his firstbook on Jewish religious thought.
Reb Mimi Feigelson is an Israeli Orthodox rabbi. She is the mashpiah ruchanit(spiritual mentor) and lecturer in Rabbinic literature and Hasidic thought at theZiegler School of Rabbinic Studies of American Jewish Universityin Los Angeles.She is the former associate director of Yakar in Jerusalem and is an internationalteacher of Hasidism and spirituality.
Lawrence Fine, Irene Kaplan Leiwant Professor of Jewish Studies at Mount Holyoke College, is author of Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship, and other books.
Eitan Fishbane, PhD, a frequent scholar-in-residence and guest speaker at congregations across North America, is assistant professor of Jewish thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary; author of As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist (Stanford UniversityPress); and co-editor of Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections (Jewish Lights).
Eitan Fishbane is available to speak on the following topics:
- Shabbat
- Prayer
- Spirituality
- God and Theology
- Mysticism
- Ethics
- Torah
Michael Fishbane is the Nathan Cummings Professor of Jewish Studies at theUniversityof Chicago. He is the author of numerous works on biblical and Jewishthought, including Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking. His most recentbook is Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology.
Rabbi Nancy Flam is cofounder of the National Center for Jewish Healing and former director of the Jewish Community Healing Program of Ruach Ami: Bay Area Jewish Healing Center. She cofounded the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, was its founding director, and now serves as codirector of programs. She edited the Jewish Lights series of pastoral-care pamphlets, LifeLights, and writes and teaches widely on Judaism, healing, prayer, spirituality, and social justice.
Rabbi Everett Gendler was ordained at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. After serving congregations in Mexico City; Rio de Janeiro; and Princeton, New Jersey, he was rabbi for many years at Temple Emanuel in Lowell, Massachusetts, while also serving as Jewish chaplain and instructor in philosophy and religious studies at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He has written widely on Judaism and the environment, nonviolence, social justice, and liturgicalinnovation.
Joel Hecker is associate professor of Jewish mysticism at the ReconstructionistRabbinical College. He is the author of Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eatingand Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah and is currently preparing a translationof the Zohar on Song of Songs, Ruth, and Lamentations for volume eleven of TheZohar: Pritzker Edition.
Rabbi Shai Held is cofounder, rosh ha-yeshiva, and chair in Jewish thought atMechon Hadar in New York City. He is completing a doctoral dissertation on thereligious thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel at Harvard University. He contributedto Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections and Jewish Theology in Our Time: A New Generation Explores the Foundations andFuture of Jewish Belief (both Jewish Lights).
Melila Hellner-Eshed is a professor of Jewish mysticism in the Department ofJewish Studies at Hebrew Universityin Jerusalem, as well as a senior research fellowat the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. She is a member of the facultyof the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and is active in Sulha, an Israeli-Palestinianreconciliation project. She is the author of A River Flows from Eden: TheLanguage of Mystical Experience in the Zohar.
Barry W. Holtz is dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of JewishEducation at The Jewish Theological Seminary, where he is also the Theodore andFlorence Baumritter Professor of Jewish Education. His books include, amongothers, Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts and Your Word IsFire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer (Jewish Lights), the latter coauthoredwith Arthur Green.
Jeremy Kalmanofsky is rabbi of congregation Ansche Chesed in New York City.He was ordained at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His articleshave appeared in a variety of Jewish journals, as well as in Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections and Jewish Theology inOur Time: A New Generation Explores the Foundations and Future of JewishBelief (both Jewish Lights). He serves on the editorial board of Conservative Judaism,and is a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of theConservative movement.
Judith A. Kates teaches Hebrew Bible and Jewish interpretive traditions at theRabbinical School of Hebrew College and in many programs of adult learning.She is the coeditor (with Gail Twersky Reimer) of Reading Ruth: ContemporaryWomen Reclaim a Sacred Story and Beginning Anew: A Woman's Companion tothe High Holy Days.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is one of the most widely read authors by people of all faiths on Jewish spiritual life. He is the best-selling author of such books as Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary; God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know: Finding Self, Spirituality and Ultimate Meaning; Honey from the Rock: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism; The Book of Letters: A Mystical Hebrew Alphabet; The Book of Miracles: A Young Person's Guide to Jewish Spiritual Awareness; The Book of Words: Talking Spiritual Life, Living Spiritual Talk; Eyes Remade for Wonder: A Lawrence Kushner Reader; I'm God, You're Not: Observations on Organized Religion and other Disguises of the Ego; Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians; The River of Light: Jewish Mystical Awareness; The Way Into Jewish Mystical Tradition; and co-author of Because Nothing Looks Like God; How Does God Make Things Happen?; Where Is God?; What Does God Look Like?; and In God's Hands. He is the Emanu-El Scholar at San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El and an adjunct professor of Jewish mysticism and spirituality at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is available to speak on the following topics:
• Jewish Mystical Imagination
• Rymanover's Silent Aleph: What Really Happened on Sinai
• Zohar on Romance and Revelation
• What Makes Kabbalah Kabbalah
• Sacred Stories of the Ordinary: When God Makes a Surprise Appearance in Everyday Life
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Rabbi Ebn Leader is director of the Bet Midrash and an instructor in Talmud,Jewish law, and Jewish mysticism at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College.He is the coeditor of God in All Moments: Mystical and Practical Wisdom fromHasidic Masters, and has contributed to Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections (both Jewish Lights). Prior to coming to Hebrew College, he servedfor several years as an educator at Jewish secondary schools in Jerusalem andBoston.
Shaul Magid, PhD, is the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Professor of Modern Judaism and professor of religious studies at Indiana UniversityBloomington. He is the author of Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica/Radzin Hasidism and From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbala, which won theAmerican Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Textual Studies category.
Ron Margolin is associate professor of religious studies and modern Jewishthought at Tel Aviv Universityand a senior researcher at the Shalom HartmanInstitute in Jerusalem. He is author of The Human Temple: ReligiousInteriorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism; and The InnerReligion: Phenomenology of Inner Religious Life and Its Manifestation in JewishSources (both in Hebrew).
Daniel C. Matt is a leading authority on the Zohar and Kabbalah. He is the author of the best-selling The Essential Kabbalah (HarperSanFrancisco, translated into seven languages); Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment (Paulist Press); God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony Between Science and Spirituality; and Zohar: Annotated and Explained (Jewish Lights). He is also the author of the annotated translation The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (Stanford UniversityPress). He has so far completed six volumes of this immense project, which has been hailed as "a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought." Formerly professor of Jewish spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Daniel C. Matt now resides in Berkeley.Daniel C. Matt is available to speak on the following topics:
- Shekhinah: The Feminine Half of God
- Raising the Sparks: Finding God in the Material World
- The Mystical Meaning of Torah
- The Zohar: Masterpiece of Kabbalah
- God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality
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Prof. Haviva Pedaya teaches Judaism and culture in the Department of JewishHistory at Ben-Gurion Universityof the Negev. She is the author of Vision andSpeech: Models of Prophecy in Jewish Mysticism (Hebrew), Within the Eye of theCat (Hebrew), and other works. Prof. Pedaya is also an award-winning Hebrewpoet and musical director of the Yonah Ensemble, a project devoted to the revitalizationof the liturgical and mystical music of the Near East.
Rabbi Nehemia Polen is professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew College. He is theauthor of The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, theRebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto and The Rebbe's Daughter, recipient of a NationalJewish Book Award. He is also a contributor to the award-winning My People'sPrayer Book: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries (Jewish Lights).
Carol Rose is a writer, educator, and counselor. She holds an MA in theology aswell as degrees in religious studies and cross-cultural education. Her publicationsinclude Behind the Blue Gate and Spider Women: A Tapestry of Creativity andHealing, coedited with Joan Turner.
Rabbi Neal Rose is a family therapist and professor of theology at the Universityof Winnipeg and has studied and lived in the Bratslav community in Jerusalem.He has written about Martin Buber's presentation of Hasidism.
Rabbi Or N. Rose is an associate dean at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. He is the coauthor of God in All Moments: Mystical and Practical Spiritual Wisdom from Hasidic Masters and coeditor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice; Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections and Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid's Table, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (all Jewish Lights).
Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, the inspiration of the Jewish Renewal movement, is widely recognized as one of the most important Jewish spiritual teachers of our time. Professor emeritus at Temple University, he has contributed to Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections, and is the author of Jewish with Feeling: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Practice, Davening: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Prayer, winner of the National Jewish Book Award; First Steps to a New Jewish Spirit: Reb Zalman's Guide to Recapturing the Intimacy & Ecstasy in Your Relationship with God, (all Jewish Lights); From Age-ing to Sage-ing; and Wrapped in a Holy Flame, among other books.
Rabbi Jonathan P. Slater, DMin, was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and has a doctor of ministry degree from the Pacific School of Religion. He is the author of Mindful Jewish Living: Compassionate Practice and codirector of programs at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, as well as an instructor in meditation at the JCC in Manhattan and other venues. He contributed to Who by Fire, Who by Water—Un'taneh Tokef, We Have Sinned: Sin and Confession in Judaism—Ashamnu and Al Chet and All These Vows—Kol Nidre (both Jewish Lights).
Rabbi Gordon Tucker, PhD, is senior rabbi at Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York, and adjunct assistant professor of Jewish philosophy at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he formerly served as dean of its rabbinical school. He is the editor and translator of Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Collegeand has served as an educator, activist, liturgist, and congregational rabbi. She hashelped introduce meditation into the Jewish world as a form that can enliven andilluminate Jewish practice. She is a founder and outreach director of the Institutefor Jewish Spirituality and the author of Surprisingly Happy: An AtypicalReligious Memoir.
Chava Weissler is the Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization inthe Department of Religion Studies at Lehigh University. She is the author ofVoices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Womenand is completing a book on the Jewish Renewal movement in North America.