Dr. Eitan P. Fishbane is Professor of Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary, where he teaches students in all five graduate and undergraduate schools. A former division chair for Jewish Mysticism at the Association for Jewish Studies, Fishbane is Chair of the Oxford Interfaith Forum on Mysticism and Book Review Editor on Jewish Mysticism at The Marginalia Review of Books. His publications include 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), among other books. His most recent book is Embers of Pilgrimage: Poems (Panui Poetry Series, 2021), hailed by Prof. Martha Nussbaum as "vibrant with emotion," and that "we all need to hear this powerful poetic call.” Poet and scholar Prof. John Burt described Embers of Pilgrimage as characterized by "exquisite sensitivity." Fishbane is a recipient of the Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies (2011). In addition to various essays, among his works-in-progress are monographs entitled The Sabbath in Hasidic Thought; Self & Identity in Sixteenth Century Kabbalah; and The Zohar as Mystical Poetry. Fishbane earned his Ph.D. and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis University.
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NOW OFFERING PERSONALIZED UNIVERSITY-LEVEL STUDY SESSIONS VIA ZOOM FOR INDIVIDUALS AND SMALL GROUPS. Delve into the mysteries of the Zohar, R. Nahman of Bratzlav, mystical prayer, contemplative practice, and much, much more!
From beginner to advanced levels. Combines College and Graduate School-quality learning with opportunities for personal spiritual reflection and development as desired.
Please be in touch directly to learn more: eifishbane@jtsa.edu.
❧
NOW OFFERING PERSONALIZED UNIVERSITY-LEVEL STUDY SESSIONS VIA ZOOM FOR INDIVIDUALS AND SMALL GROUPS. Delve into the mysteries of the Zohar, R. Nahman of Bratzlav, mystical prayer, contemplative practice, and much, much more!
From beginner to advanced levels. Combines College and Graduate School-quality learning with opportunities for personal spiritual reflection and development as desired.
Please be in touch directly to learn more: eifishbane@jtsa.edu.
Introducing... embers of pilgrimage: poems
panui poetry series, 2021
"The poems in...Embers of Pilgrimage reflect a religious sensibility...very deep but also very accessible. They are completely original; nobody else in the world could have written them, but everybody will recognize in them something true...With exquisite sensitivity they capture...those things you can't see when you look directly at them but can see obliquely (the way you can only see certain stars in your peripheral vision). Like Whitman and like the author of the Song of Songs, Fishbane incorporates erotic themes in his religious poems, but with a distinctive pang of grief and longing..." — John Burt, Chair, Department of English, Brandeis University, and author of Victory; Work Without Hope; and Lincoln’s Tragic Pragmatism
"These lyrical poems tenderly erase the boundaries between the scholarly and the intimate, the textual and the visceral, conflating mysticism with the immediacy of a human life scarred by loss, lifted by kindness and memory."
— Yehoshua November, Author of God’s Optimism (a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize)
"Through whispered covenants of dissonance and longing, all luminal, liminal, hymnal and exquisitely exilic, Eitan Fishbane’s Embers of Pilgrimage, nomadically and pneumatically erupts as a radiant ferocity of mysteries, convergences...where letters blaze through languescapes of concealed corridors and time-cradled eternities..."
— Adeena Karasick, Professor of Humanities and Media Studies, Pratt Institute; Author of Salomé: Woman of Valor
— Yehoshua November, Author of God’s Optimism (a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize)
"Through whispered covenants of dissonance and longing, all luminal, liminal, hymnal and exquisitely exilic, Eitan Fishbane’s Embers of Pilgrimage, nomadically and pneumatically erupts as a radiant ferocity of mysteries, convergences...where letters blaze through languescapes of concealed corridors and time-cradled eternities..."
— Adeena Karasick, Professor of Humanities and Media Studies, Pratt Institute; Author of Salomé: Woman of Valor
The Art of Mystical Narrative:
A Poetics of the Zohar
Oxford University Press, 2018
“For specialized scholars, Eitan Fishbane’s The Art of Mystical Narrative is clearly a deep and original work that will reorient thinking about the Zohar. For non-specialists, it offers something just as important: a fascinating, sophisticated, and persuasive account of how ethical meanings are conveyed in narrative. A triumph to be celebrated.”
Martha C. Nussbaum
Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics
The University of Chicago
"In this groundbreaking and brilliant study, Fishbane explores the poetic artistry of the Zohar, enabling us to appreciate the masterpiece of Kabbalah in radically new ways. He highlights the theatrical/performative dimension of zoharic narrative and its magical realism. Significantly, he locates the Zohar in the context of medieval Spanish literature, both Jewish and Christian. Fishbane's erudite and fascinating book demonstrates how the Zohar is simultaneously a bold mystical interpretation of the Torah and an experiment in medieval fiction."
Daniel Matt
Author of the multi-volume annotated translation The Zohar: Pritzker Edition,
and The Essential Kabbalah
Martha C. Nussbaum
Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics
The University of Chicago
"In this groundbreaking and brilliant study, Fishbane explores the poetic artistry of the Zohar, enabling us to appreciate the masterpiece of Kabbalah in radically new ways. He highlights the theatrical/performative dimension of zoharic narrative and its magical realism. Significantly, he locates the Zohar in the context of medieval Spanish literature, both Jewish and Christian. Fishbane's erudite and fascinating book demonstrates how the Zohar is simultaneously a bold mystical interpretation of the Torah and an experiment in medieval fiction."
Daniel Matt
Author of the multi-volume annotated translation The Zohar: Pritzker Edition,
and The Essential Kabbalah
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"A work of dazzling literary scholarship. This penetrating analysis of a Judaic classic employs the full range of tools and insights available to the contemporary reader. The Zohar is a profound and mysterious work that has long attracted scholars who seek to swim in its depths. In Fishbane, it has found one who happens to write in English and knows the whole Western literary canon. That in itself is a miracle worthy of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai. If you have the Zohar in your heart, you must have Fishbane on your shelf." -- Arthur Green, Rector and Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion,
Hebrew College
"In his exquisite and wonderful book, Eitan Fishbane illuminates the ways in which the literary aspects of the Zohar are intimately woven to the core of the Zohar's mystical and interpretive insights. From Fishbane's masterful presentation we learn that the poetic and dramatic dimensions of the Zohar do not serve merely as a narrative frame to its content, but rather they embody, enact and perform the calling of the master of the mystical circle and his disciples. Fishbane's careful and brilliant readings add another dimension of depth and wonder to our encounter with the Zohar and his work is a major contribution to the ongoing exploration of one of the greatest literary and religious achievements of the Jewish tradition." -- Moshe Halbertal, Gruss Professor of Law at New York University, and John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
"Fishbane's study of the interplay between fictional discourse and mystical exegesis combines the Kabbalah scholar's mastery of Jewish intellectual history with the literary critic's sensitivity to language and form. Through engagement with modern frameworks of criticism-characterization, dramatic speech, degrees of fictionality, structural framing-Fishbane draws the reader deep into the literary world of the Zohar's Iberian Jewish author(s) and readers and its unique vision of reality. The book is pioneering in that it truly appreciates the Zohar for what it was—a work." -- Jonathan Decter, Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies, Brandeis University
Hebrew College
"In his exquisite and wonderful book, Eitan Fishbane illuminates the ways in which the literary aspects of the Zohar are intimately woven to the core of the Zohar's mystical and interpretive insights. From Fishbane's masterful presentation we learn that the poetic and dramatic dimensions of the Zohar do not serve merely as a narrative frame to its content, but rather they embody, enact and perform the calling of the master of the mystical circle and his disciples. Fishbane's careful and brilliant readings add another dimension of depth and wonder to our encounter with the Zohar and his work is a major contribution to the ongoing exploration of one of the greatest literary and religious achievements of the Jewish tradition." -- Moshe Halbertal, Gruss Professor of Law at New York University, and John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
"Fishbane's study of the interplay between fictional discourse and mystical exegesis combines the Kabbalah scholar's mastery of Jewish intellectual history with the literary critic's sensitivity to language and form. Through engagement with modern frameworks of criticism-characterization, dramatic speech, degrees of fictionality, structural framing-Fishbane draws the reader deep into the literary world of the Zohar's Iberian Jewish author(s) and readers and its unique vision of reality. The book is pioneering in that it truly appreciates the Zohar for what it was—a work." -- Jonathan Decter, Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies, Brandeis University
video clips from schocken institute event
jerusalem, 1/2/19
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