Joel Hecker, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Jewish mysticism and the college's only scholar of kabbalah. In this capacity, he has seen himself evolve over the years.
Perhaps as a natural progression of his own study, or against the backdrop of pop kabbalah, he is more attendant to the true theological gravity of the texts. "My approach is less fun and more serious as I arm my students against the easy trivialization of these texts," he explains.
Hecker credits this change in part to time spent on a three-semester sabbatical, which allowed him to recharge and re-energize his work. For one of the semesters, Hecker held the Erika Strauss Teaching Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
He says that his time away allowed him an internal settling of ideas, "a nuanced way of thinking about the accessibility of God—that God does not come cheap." While in residence at the center, he worked on a scholarly edition of Sefer Raziel ha-Mal'akh, The Book of Raziel the Angel, an annotated translation of texts with a historical introduction.
As chair of the Department of Modern Jewish Civilization, Hecker savors the freedom he finds at RRC. Indeed, as an Orthodox Jewish professor at the College, he finds that working without the constraints of dogma is extraordinary. "The opportunity to ask any and all questions in an unfettered yet deeply engaged Jewish learning environment offers great satisfaction," he says.
How does Hecker negotiate this back-and-forth with masorah, the chains of tradition? He is invigorated by the viewpoints students bring to the classroom, and by the fact that he is teaching Jewish leaders who will then teach others in synagogues or in community settings.
"The students are engaged—mature, idealistic and often wrestling with profound material, Hecker says. "Everything brought to the table is Torah."
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