Dr Eitan Fishbane investigates the mystical undercurrents surrounding the story of Moses smashing the two tablets. In conversation with Simon Eder.
Dr Eitan Fishbane is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where he teaches students in all five graduate and undergraduate schools. Fishbane earned his Ph.D. and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis University, and he served on the faculties of Carleton College and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion before coming to JTS in 2006.
Dr. Fishbane has devoted his research and writing primarily to the development of Kabbalah in medieval Spain. At present his scholarship is devoted to three main topics: The Zohar as mystical poetry; The Sabbath and sacred time in hasidic mysticism; and ideas of the self and identity in the Kabbalah.
Among his published works are The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar (Oxford University Press, 2018) and As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist (Stanford University Press, 2009). Dr Fishbane was a 2011 recipient of the Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. His latest book is Embers of Pilgrimage: Poems (Panui).
Simon Eder is Editorial Director of Jewish Quest. He writes regularly for the site and has written for the Judaism column of the Jewish Chronicle. He is a founder of the Jewish Community in Dubai and due to feature in a documentary later this year about its founding. He studied Theology at The University of Cambridge.
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