In highlights from a live event presented by the GTU’s Madrasa-Midrasha program, two scholars delve into the power, mystery, and intimacy of mystical reading in Islamic and Jewish traditions. Dr. Fateme Montazeri’s talk, “Mystical interpretations of the Qur’anic accounts of Moses,” discusses how the figure of Moses in the Quran is a powerful metaphor for Sufi mystics’ encounters with the divine. Dr. Sam Shonkoff’s talk, “Reading as Revelatory in Jewish Mysticism,” investigates how a Kabbalistic reading of the Torah transforms the text from straightforward words into a gateway to divine understanding. Together, they ask: what does this mean about God, revelation, and the practice of reading holy texts?

GTU and the Madrasa-Midrasha program thank the Walter and Elise Haas Fund for their generous support of this program.

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Fateme Montazeri earned her Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2022. She investigated in her dissertation the reception of Hafiz, the fourteenth century Persian poet. Before that, she studied at the Graduate Theological Union as well as the University of Tehran. Her research focuses on pre-modern Persianate literature, Islamic mystical poetry, Islamic arts of the book, and cultural history of the Muslim world.

","image":"https://pathwright.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.filestackcontent.com%2Fapi%2Ffile%2FGaaU0A5RHWUnmSksoYJ9%3Fsignature%3D888b9ea3eb997a4d59215bfbe2983c636df3c7da0ff8c6f85811ff74c8982e34%26policy%3DeyJjYWxsIjogWyJyZWFkIiwgInN0YXQiLCAiY29udmVydCJdLCAiZXhwaXJ5IjogNDYyMDM3NzAzMX0%253D?fit=crop&h=115&ixlib=python-1.1.0&w=115&s=856e8deaef787781a88d17e511eb3e68","resources_count":null,"salutation":"","title":"Faculty Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley","slug":"fateme-montazeri","order":0,"avatar":"https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/GaaU0A5RHWUnmSksoYJ9"},{"id":5356,"display_name":"Dr. Sam Shonkoff","first_name":"Sam","last_name":"Shonkoff","bio":"

Sam Shonkoff (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is the Taube Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the GTU, where he teaches on Jewish religious thought, modern Jewish cultures, and methods in the study of religion. His research focuses primarily on German-Jewish thought and Hasidism, as well as appropriations of Hasidic spirituality in relatively secular spheres. Shonkoff’s current book project investigates themes of embodiment in Martin Buber’s representations of Hasidism vis-à-vis the original sources. He is co-editor with Ariel Evan Mayse of Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community and Life in the Modern World (Brandeis University Press, 2020) and the editor of Martin Buber: His Intellectual and Scholarly Legacy (Brill, 2018). He is also affiliated with the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

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