Elijah the Prophet: The Jewish Superhero who Never Died

REGISTRATION CLOSED, WALK UPS WELCOME: ABOUT THIS LECTURE: Elijah the prophet appears in the Bible as a fierce champion of God, slaughtering the false prophets of Baal and inspiring the Israelites to reaffirm their belief in YHVH. At the end of his time on earth, according to the Bible, he ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot, escaping death. In later Jewish tradition, he reappears on earth again and again, helping those in need and undergoing his own transformation—from a religious zealot to an immortal compassionate hero, who will one day announce the arrival of the Messiah.

ABOUT THIS SPEAKER: Daniel Matt is a teacher of Jewish spirituality and one of the world’s leading authorities on Kabbalah and the Zohar. He has been featured in Time and Newsweek, and has appeared on National Public Radio and the History Channel. He has published over a dozen books, including The Essential Kabbalah (translated into eight languages), Zohar: Annotated and Explained, and God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality (revised edition, 2016).

Several years ago Daniel completed an 18-year project of translating and annotating the Zohar. In 2016, Stanford University Press published his ninth volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, concluding the Zohar’s main commentary on the Torah. For this work, Daniel has been honored with a National Jewish Book Award and a Koret Jewish Book Award. The Koret award hailed his translation as “a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought.”

Daniel received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and for twenty years served as professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has also taught at Stanford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Daniel lives in Berkeley with his wife Hana. Currently he is writing a biography of Elijah the Prophet for the Yale Jewish Lives series. He also teaches Zohar online. For information about this ongoing Zohar course, see the website of Stanford University Press: https://www.sup.org/zohar/course

LM