The work of Elliot R. Wolfson has profoundly influenced the fields of Jewish studies as well as philosophy and religion more broadly. His radically new approaches have created pioneering ways of analyzing texts and thinking about religion through the lens of gender, sexuality, and feminist theory. The contributors to New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, many of whom are internationally renowned scholars, hearken from diverse fields. Each has learned from and collaborated with Wolfson as student or colleague, and each has expanded the new scholarly directions initiated by Wolfson’s groundbreaking work. Wolfson’s scholarship gives us innovative ways to think about Judaism and a fresh understanding of religion. Not only a scholar, Wolfson is one of the most important Jewish thinkers of our day. Chapters are grouped according to the categories of religion, Jewish thought and philosophy, and a focused section on Kabbalah, Wolfson’s primary specialization. The volume concludes with a bibliography of Wolfson’s published work and a selection of his poetry.
Glenn Dynner is the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies and director of the Bennett Center at Fairfield University. He is coeditor of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies and a recent Guggenheim Fellow. He is author of “Men of Silk”: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society and Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland. His latest book is entitled The Light of Learning: Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust.
Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus; The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany; and Jüdischer Islam: Islam und jüdisch-deutsche Selbstbestimmung. Her forthcoming book, written with Sarah Imhoff, is Jewish Studies and the Woman Question. A Guggenheim Fellow, she also is the recipient of five honorary doctorates from institutions in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland, and she has held research grants from the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
Shaul Magid is a professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religion at Harvard, and Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He has rabbinical ordination from Jerusalem in 1984. Among other books, he is the author of From Metaphysics to Midrash; American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society; and Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism. He is the editor of the column Teiku for the Ayin Journal and writes regularly for +972 and Religion Dispatches. He is an elected member of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the American Society for the Study of Religion.
