David S. Lobel Visiting Scholar Lecture: "Taming the Shamanic Impulse: The Emergence of the Hasidic Master" with Rabbi Arthur Green
David S. Lobel Visiting Scholar Lecture
Dr. Arthur Green was the founding dean and is currently rector of the Rabbinical School and Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College. He is Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University, where he occupied the distinguished Philip W. Lown Professorship of Jewish Thought. He is both a historian of Jewish religion and a theologian; his work seeks to form a bridge between these two distinct fields of endeavor.
Educated at Brandeis University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he received rabbinic ordination, Dr. Green studied with such important teachers as Alexander Altmann, Nahum N. Glatzer, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, of blessed memory. He has taught Jewish mysticism, Hasidism, and theology to several generations of students at the University of Pennsylvania, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (where he served as both Dean and President), Brandeis, and now at Hebrew College. He has taught and lectured widely throughout the Jewish community of North America as well as in Israel, where he visits frequently. He was the founder of Havurat Shalom in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1968 and remains a leading independent figure in the Jewish Renewal movement.
Dr. Green is author of over a dozen books. Among his scholarly works are Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and Keter: The Crown of God in Early Jewish Mysticism. Dr. Green is also well known for his translations and interpretations of Hasidic teachings, including the two-volume: Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from Around the Maggid’s Table (2013). Best known of his theological writings is Radical Judaism: Re-thinking God and Tradition, published by Yale University Press in 2010.