Rachel Elior (born 28 December 1949) is an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Jerusalem, Israel. Her principal subjects of research has been Hasidism and the history of early Jewish mysticism. [1]
Rachel Elior (born 28 December 1949) is an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Jerusalem, Israel. Her principal subjects of research has been Hasidism and the history of early Jewish mysticism. [1]
Elior is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Mystical Thought at the Hebrew University, where she has taught since 1978. Currently she is the head of the Department of Jewish Thought. She earned her PhD Summa cum laude in 1976. Her specialties are early Jewish Mysticism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hekhalot literature, Messianism, Sabbatianism, Hasidism, Chabad, [2] Frankism and the role of women in Jewish culture.
She has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, UCL, Yeshiva University, the University of Tokyo, Doshisha University in Kyoto, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, in the University of Chicago and at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.
She is a member of the board of the international council of the New Israel Fund.
In 2006, Elior received the Gershom Scholem Prize for Research in Kabbalah from the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. [3]
 | This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies.(May 2021) |
Rachel Elior's research into Hasidism and the Dead Sea Scrolls has elicited a range of scholarly responses, marking her work as a significant point of contention and endorsement within academic circles.
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, a Professor at Northwestern, critiques Elior's approach to Hasidism, stating, "Elior uses a rather outdated concept of the [hasidic] movement to cement her narrative. She leaves aside theories, ideas, insights, and data amassed by scholars who have long departed from the thinking patterns of Dinur or Scholem." And that Elior, among others, "should revisit [the early writers of hasidic stories'] conceptual framework, in which sources coexist in a nontemporal fashion and freely talk to one another, as ideas in the Platonic world of forms." [4]
Her notion of the origins of mysticism in the priestly class has been challenged by professor Yehuda Liebes of the Hebrew University, [5] [ unreliable source? ] and her understanding of the ancient calendar was rejected by Sacha Stern. [6] Eibert Tigchelaar noted that her examples have a "lack of historical specificity that are disturbing and frustrating." [7] Nonetheless, Joseph Dan defends Elior, [8] while Princeton professor Peter Schaefer criticizes her for blurring distinctions between texts and periods, and is not sensitive to important nuances, noting that her views of angels at Qumran and the calendar are wrong. [9] Professor Martha Himmelfarb finds Elior's work "simply untenable", [10] stating that Elior creates tenuous links and historical connections without a basis. [11]
Elior has posited that the Essenes, traditionally considered the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls never existed, suggesting instead (as have Lawrence Schiffman, Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, Chaim Menachem Rabin, and others) that they were really the renegade sons of Zadok, a priestly caste banished from the Temple of Jerusalem by Greek rulers in 2nd century BC. She conjectures that the scrolls were taken with them when they were banished. "In Qumran, the remnants of a huge library were found," Elior says, with some of the early Hebrew texts dating back to the 2nd century BC. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known version of the Old Testament dated back to the 9th century AD. "The scrolls attest to a biblical priestly heritage," says Elior, who speculates that the scrolls were hidden in Qumran for safekeeping. [12] In contrast, James Charlesworth, director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project and professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, states there is "significant evidence for the Essenes’ existence" and "It is impossible that Josephus created a group already mentioned by Philo, who had visited Jerusalem," arguing against Elior's conclusion. Princeton religion professor Martha Himmelfarb said she doesn’t think Elior’s work is as "historically informed" as other research on the Scrolls, saying, "[Elior] does not tend to engage the historical nitty-gritty that other scholars’ work does." [13]
The Essenes or Essenians were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period. They were discovered over a period of 10 years, between 1946 and 1956, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, along with extra-biblical and deuterocanonical manuscripts from late Second Temple Judaism. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum located in Jerusalem. The Israeli government's custody of the Dead Sea Scrolls is disputed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on territorial, legal, and humanitarian grounds—they were mostly discovered following the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and were acquired by Israel after Jordan lost the 1967 Arab–Israeli War—whilst Israel's claims are primarily based on historical and religious grounds, given their significance in Jewish history and in the heritage of Judaism.
Metatron, or Matatron, is an angel in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Metatron is mentioned three times in the Talmud, in a few brief passages in the Aggadah, the Targum, and in mystical Kabbalistic texts within Rabbinic literature. The figure forms one of the traces for the presence of dualist proclivities in the otherwise monotheistic visions of both the Tanakh and later Christian doctrine. In Rabbinic literature, he is sometimes portrayed as serving as the celestial scribe. The name Metatron is not mentioned in the Torah or the Bible, and how the name originated is a matter of debate. In Islamic tradition, he is also known as Mīṭaṭrūn, the angel of the veil.
Merkabah or Merkavahmysticism is a school of early Jewish mysticism, c. 100 BCE – 1000 CE, centered on visions such as those found in Ezekiel 1 or in the hekhalot literature, concerning stories of ascents to the heavenly palaces and the Throne of God.
Gershom Scholem was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In the branch of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah, Daʻat or Da'ath is the location where all ten sefirot in the Tree of Life are united as one.
Lawrence Harvey Schiffman is a professor at New York University ; he was formerly Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Education at Yeshiva University and Professor of Jewish Studies. He had previously been Chair of New York University's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and served as the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (NYU). He is currently the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and Director of the Global Institute for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies. He is a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism in Late Antiquity, the history of Jewish law, and Talmudic literature.
Peter Schäfer is a prolific German scholar of ancient religious studies, who has made contributions to the field of ancient Judaism and early Christianity through monographs, co-edited volumes, numerous articles, and his trademark synoptic editions. He was a Professor of Religion and the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Judaic Studies at Princeton University from 1998 to 2013.
The Hekhalot literature from the Hebrew word for "Palaces", relating to visions of ascents into heavenly palaces. The genre overlaps with Merkabah or "Chariot" literature, concerning Ezekiel's chariot, so the two are sometimes referred to together as "Books of the Palaces and the Chariot". The Hekhalot literature is a genre of Jewish esoteric and revelatory texts produced some time between late antiquity – some believe from Talmudic times or earlier – to the Early Middle Ages.
Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret Of Qumran is a book by Norman Golb which intensifies the debate over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls, furthering the opinion that the scrolls were not the work of the Essenes, as other scholars claim, but written in Jerusalem and moved to Qumran in anticipation of the Roman siege in 70 AD.
Hartmut Stegemann was a German theologian with an interest in the New Testament and who specialized in Dead Sea Scrolls research. He was responsible for developing standard methods for reconstructing scrolls.
Ayin is an important concept in Kabbalah and Hasidic philosophy. It is contrasted with the term Yesh. According to kabbalistic teachings, before the universe was created there was only Ayin, the first manifest Sephirah, and second sephirah Chochmah (Wisdom), "comes into being out of Ayin." In this context, the sephirah Keter, the Divine will, is the intermediary between the Divine Infinity and Chochmah. Because Keter is a supreme revelation of the Ohr Ein Sof, transcending the manifest sephirot, it is sometimes excluded from them.
Jonathan Garb is an Israeli scholar of Kabbalah. He is holder of the Gershom Scholem chair in Kabbalah in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
A Baal Shem was a historical Jewish practitioner of Practical Kabbalah and supposed miracle worker. Employing various methods, Baalei Shem are claimed to heal, enact miracles, perform exorcisms, treat various health issues, curb epidemics, protect people from disaster due to fire, robbery or the evil eye, foresee the future, decipher dreams, and bless those who sought his powers.
Moshe Idel is a Romanian-born Israeli historian and philosopher of Jewish mysticism. He is Emeritus Max Cooper Professor in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a Senior Researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute.
Yehuda Liebes is an Israeli academic and scholar. He is the Gershom Scholem Professor Emeritus of Kabbalah at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Considered a leading scholar of Kabbalah, his research interests also include Jewish myth, Sabbateanism, and the links between Judaism and ancient Greek religion, Christianity, and Islam. He is the recipient of the 1997 Bialik Prize, the 1999 Gershom Scholem Prize for Kabbalah Research, the 2006 EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture, and the 2017 Israel Prize in Jewish thought.
Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer was a Jewish scholar of Jewish mysticism. Schatz Uffenheimer was a student of Gershom Scholem.
Ada Rapoport-Albert was an Israeli-British scholar whose scholarship focused on Jewish mysticism, Sabbateanism, and gender in Hasidic Judaism. Rapoport-Albert also served as the president of the Jewish Historical Society of England.
The history of Jewish mysticism encompasses various forms of esoteric and spiritual practices aimed at understanding the divine and the hidden aspects of existence. This mystical tradition has evolved significantly over millennia, influencing and being influenced by different historical, cultural, and religious contexts. Among the most prominent forms of Jewish mysticism is Kabbalah, which emerged in the 12th century and has since become a central component of Jewish mystical thought. Other notable early forms include prophetic and apocalyptic mysticism, which are evident in biblical and post-biblical texts.
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