The Course: Revelation and Interpretation
This fall, Wolfson is teaching a small, discussion-based seminar that takes you straight into the primary texts he's spent his career reading:
JWST 6.01 / MES 17.24 / REL 19.41 (6B): Revelation and Interpretation in Rabbinic, Philosophical, and Mystical Literature Taught by Elliot Wolfson · Fall 2026 (TMV, W)
The course moves chronologically through nearly two thousand years of Jewish textual tradition, week by week.
Why It's Worth Your Time
Wolfson is best known for his work on Kabbalah, the mystical tradition within Judaism, but what makes his scholarship distinctive is how he reads it. Rather than treating Kabbalistic texts as historical artifacts to catalog, he puts them in conversation with modern philosophy, literary theory, and gender theory, drawing out ideas about time, imagination, embodiment, and how mystics try to describe an experience that language can't quite hold. He's also widely regarded as one of the leading interpreters of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, and his work on dreams, apophatic (negative) theology, and the "unsaying" of God has shaped how the field talks about mysticism across religions, not just Judaism.
This isn't a survey course you'll take notes in and forget. It's built around close reading, small-group discussion, and direct engagement with primary sources, many in translation from Hebrew and Aramaic, under the guidance of someone who has spent a lifetime thinking about exactly these texts. If you're interested in religion, philosophy, literary theory, or just want to read alongside a scholar whose work keeps showing up in footnotes across multiple disciplines, this is about as close as it gets.
Register for JWST 6.01 / MES 17.24 / REL 19.41 this Fall!