Nathan Wolski - School of Historical Studies Staff
Position
Lecturer, Australian Centre for the Study of Jewish CivilisationCo-Director, Darsheini: Community Learning
Phone
61-3-9902 9939Address
School of Historical StudiesAustralian Centre for Jewish Civilisation
Building 11
Monash University Victoria 3800
Australia
Location
Building H, 8th Floor, Caulfield Campus
Personal History
Nathan Wolski gained his PhD in Aboriginal Archaeology from the University of Melbourne in 2000. He then pursued studies at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Mandel School for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem. Upon graduating from the Jerusalem Fellows program Nathan took up a position as the head of education at Harvard Hillel in Cambridge. Upon returning to Australia in 2003 he co-founded Darsheini, an extra-mural community oriented educational program. Nathan's key research area is the Zohar, the classical work of the Spanish Kabbalah.
Previous Positions- Director of Education, Harvard Hillel, Harvard University 2002-3
- Jerusalem Fellow, Mandel Leadership Institute, Jerusalem (2000-1)
Current Research
Kabbalah; The Zohar; Kabbalistic texts in Yiddish and The mystical poetry of Aaron Zeitlin.Major Publications
BooksNathan Wolski, A Journey into the Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance, SUNY Press, forthcoming.
Edited collections
Michael Fagenblat, Melanie Landau and Nathan Wolski (eds), New Under the Sun: Jewish Australians on Religion, Politics and Culture, Black Ink, 2006.
Translations
Melila Hellner Eshed, A River Flows From Eden: On the Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar, (trans. Nathan Wolski) Stanford University Press, 2009.
Referred Journal Articles
Nathan Wolski, 'The Secret of Yiddish': Zoharic Composition in the Poetry of Aaron Zeitlin, Kabbalah, Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, 20 (2009): 147-180.
Nathan Wolski, 'Mystical poets: Narrative, time and exegesis in the Zohar', Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, 28 (2008): 101-128.
Nathan Wolski, 'Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were walking on the way: El Caballero Andante and the Book of Radiance (Sefer ha-Zohar)', Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 27/3 (2009): 1-24.
Nathan Wolski, and Merav Carmeli, 'Those Who Know Have Wings: Celestial Journeys with the Masters of the Academy', Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 16 (2007): 83-114.
Areas of Research & Supervision
Biblical archaeology and history; Jewish mysticism; Jewish existentialist thinkers, including Buber and Levinas; Zohar; Spanish Kabbalah
Teaching
HSY1200 - Histories of God
HSY2/3265 - The World of the Bible: Text and Context
HSY4260/HYM4/5260 - Medieval dialogues
JWC2/3280 - Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah
JWC4/5030 - Jewish history, Jewish memory