Elliot Wolfson

Elliot R. Wolfson, a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Chair Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His main area of scholarly research is the history of Jewish mysticism but he has brought to bear on that field training in philosophy, literary criticism, feminist theory, postmodern hermeneutics, and the phenomenology of religion. He is the author of many essays and books including Though a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (1994), which won the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Category of Historical Studies, 1995 and the National Jewish Book Award for Excellence in Scholarship, 1995; Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Hermeneutics, Myth, and Symbolism (1995); Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (1995); Abraham Abulafia—Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (2000); Language, Eros, and Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and the Poetic Imagination (2005), which won the National Jewish Book Award for Excellence in Scholarship, 2006; Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (2006); Venturing Beyond—Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (2006); Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (2009); A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (2011), which won the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Category of Constructive and Reflective Studies, 2012; Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (2014); and Elliot R. Wolfson: Poetic Thinking (2015). Wolfson has also published two collections of poetry: Pathwings: Poetic-Philosophic Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Time and Language (2004), and Footdreams and Treetales: 92 Poems (2007).