Discovering God in the Natural World: Insights from Kabbalah and Hasidism

***REGISTRATION TO THIS EVENT HAS CLOSED. WALK-UPS WELCOME**

Divine sparks beneath the surface of the mundane. Nature as a window onto the divine mystery. Wilderness as the audible song of revelation. Like their counterparts in other spiritual traditions, Jewish mystics have articulated the wonder and holy power of Nature’s Temple, the manner in which the earthly is experienced as an indwelling of God. In this session, we will explore several classic expressions of this phenomenon, studying the words of medieval kabbalists alongside the teachings of Rebbe Nahman of BraZlav and non-Jewish masters such as Ralph Waldo Emerson.

ABOUT THIS SPEAKER: Dr. Eitan P. Fishbane is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where he teaches students in all five graduate and undergraduate schools. Fishbane earned his Ph.D. and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis University, and he served on the faculties of Carleton College and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion before coming to JTS in 2006. He currently serves on the Faculty Executive Committee and the Rabbinical School Council at JTS, and as Division Chair for Jewish Mysticism at the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). Among his published works are The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar (Oxford University Press, 2018) and As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist (Stanford University Press, 2009). Fishbane was a 2011 recipient of the Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

This event is co-sponsored by

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