Participants

Prof. Jonathan Garb is an Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His fields of expertise include modern Kabbalah and comparative mysticism. His monograph The Chosen will Become Herds: Studies in Twentieth Century Kabbalah (2009) was published by Yale University Press. His most recent book, Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah, was published in 2011 by the University of Chicago Press. In 2012, he is a research fellow at the Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization, New York University.

Rabbi Nochum Grunwald is the editor in chief of Heichal Ha-Besht, a Hebrew language quarterly featuring a wide range of internal hasidic scholarship. He served on the teams that memorized, redacted and edited the teachings of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, and has authored articles addressing various aspects of hasidic history, custom and liturgy. He is best known for his unrivalled elucidations of the conceptual intricacies of hasidic thought, in general, and Habad hasidic thought specifically.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman heads Chabad.org's Ask The Rabbi team, and is a senior member of the Chabad.org editorial team. He is the author of a number of highly original renditions of Kabbalah and Chassidic teaching. A published expert, consultant and lecturer in the field of educational technology, he held posts at the University of British Columbia and Digipen School of Computer Gaming. He received rabbinical ordination at the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva in New York and completed post-graduate studies at the Rabbinical College of Canada.

Rabbi Yoel Kahn served as the principle redactor and editor of the teachings of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, for more than forty years. He is the author of the Encyclopedia of Habad Mystical Thought (Sefer ha-Erchim Habad). Today he serves as the Senior Mentor and Instructor in Hasidic Thought at the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, NY, and is renowned as the most authoritative internal scholar and exponent of Habad Mystical thought.

Prof. Naftali Loewenthal is Lecturer in Jewish Spirituality at University College London. He studied Hebrew Literature and Jewish History at University College London (1968-71), followed by a PhD on Hasidism (1981). His book, Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School, was published by University of Chicago Press in 1990 and remains one of the most enduringly influential works in the field. His main focus for the past few years has been on Hasidism and modernity, however he lectures on a wide variety of associated topics and has published many papers and articles. He is currently at work on his second book.

Prof. Lawrence Schiffman is the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Yeshiva University. He is a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism in Late Antiquity, the history of Jewish law, and Talmudic literature and one the most prestigious figures in the field of Jewish studies. He has also lectured widely on a variety of Habad related topics, including the Torah scholarship of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem. M. Schneerson. He was formerly the Chair of New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, where he served as Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. He is also a past president of the Association for Jewish Studies.

Rabbi Menachem Schmidt graduated from The Peddie School in 1972, the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University in 1976, and received rabbinic ordination in 1980 from Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch in Montreal. H established the Lubavitch House at the University of Pennsylvania in 1980 where he is still a hands-on executive director. Since then he has been at the forefront of campus outreach and today serves as president of the Chabad on Campus International Foundation, which oversees approximately 165 Chabad on Campus centers. In 2009 he was awarded an honorary fellowship by the Avi Chai Foundation in recognition of his pioneering work.

Prof. Don Seeman is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1997, and taught previously at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His research interests include the anthropology of experience and phenomenology of religion, modern Jewish thought and mysticism, medical anthropology, and the ethnography of contemporary Israel. In addition to numerous other publications, he recently co-edited a special issue of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History titled Jewish Mystical Poetics: The Jewish Mystical Text as Literature.

Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin is the director of Chabad.org, the flagship content website of the Chabad Lubavitch movement. Since the early 1990s he has overseen the expansion of the Chabad.org website and its numerous sub-sites into the largest, most diverse, innovative and interactive Jewish learning platform on the internet. He also serves as a spokesman for the international Chabad Lubavitch Movement.

Dr. Aryeh Solomon is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sydney Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies. He is also College Rabbi of Moriah College in Sydney, a modern Orthodox Jewish day school. He is the author of a study of Chabad educational theory titled,The Educational Teachings of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson published in 2001.

Prof. Elliot Wolfson is the Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. 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, eastern mystical traditions, and the phenomenology of religion. He is a prolific author and editor of scholarly books and articles, many of which of won prestigious awards. In 2009 he broke new ground with the publication of Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson, by Colombia University Press.