Hasidism: New Perspectives on an Old Movement

Sunday, February 26, 2023 

PST: 10:00 AM
EST: 1:00 PM
UK: 6:00 PM
CET: 7:00 PM
Israel: 8:00 PM

David Biale is Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis. He was educated at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, the Hebrew University and UCLA. He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which are Hasidism: A New History and Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah. He is also the editor of four other books, including Cultures of the Jews: A New History. His books have won the National Jewish Book Award three times. Most recently, he won the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement.

Chen Mandel-Edrei is a postdoctoral fellow at the Open University of Israel, where she is also a lecturer in the department of Literature, Language, and the Arts and in the Department of History, Philosophy, and Judaic Studies. Mandel-Edrei earned her B.A. and M.A. in Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her Ph.D. in Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland. She is currently working on her monograph about Hasidic literature as modern popular culture, tentatively titled: Hagiography in the Age of Mass Media: Hasidic Writing and the Making of Jewish Modernity.

Marcin Wodziński is the head of the Taube Department of Jewish Studies  at the University of Wrocław, Poland and holds the position of professor of Jewish history and literature. His research focuses on the history and culture of East European Jews, especially the Haskalah and Hasidism. Among his publications are Haskalah and Hasidism in the Kingdom of Poland (2005); Hasidism and Politics (2013): Hasidism:  Key Questions (2018) and Historical Atlas of Hasidism (2018).  Professor Wodziński is also the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Jewish Studies and a member of the Taube Center Board.