This lecture will explore the ways in which a circle of key Hasidic mystics dramatically reinterpreted the theophany on Mt. Sinai. Special attention will be devoted to their teachings on what may be understood as the content of Revelation (if not the entire Torah), and how these figures described devotional practices (such as study and prayer) as a means of reliving and continuing the process of Revelation. In closing, we will then turn briefly to the echoes of these ideas in the works of twentieth-century Jewish philosophers and theologians.

Ariel Evan Mayse is a Research Fellow at the Frankel Institute for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He holds a PhD in Jewish Studies from Harvard University and rabbinic ordination from Beit Midrash Har’el. He recently moved to Ann Arbor from Jerusalem, where he has been teaching and studying for the past four years. In addition to authoring several scholarly and popular articles on Kabbalah and Chassidut, Rabbi Mayse is co-editor of the two-volume collection Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings From Around the Maggid’s Table (Jewish Lights, 2013) and editor of From the Depth of the Well: An Anthology of Jewish Mysticism (Paulist Press, 2014). His current research deals with the role of​ language in ​Chassidic theology, expressions of Jewish mysticism in the twentieth century, the formation of early Chassidic literature, and the relationship between spirituality and law.

Sponsored by: Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies