Max Cooper, professor in Jewish Thought Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and senior researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, Moshe Idel is one of the world’s most eminent scholars of Jewish mysticism.

Box lunch provided. RSVP required at sbrooks@z.rochester.edu. The lecture is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Department of Religion and Classics and the Center for Jewish Studies.

Cooper received the Israel Prize for Jewish Thought in 1999, the EMET Prize, given by the Prime Minister of Israel, in 2002, the Gershom Scholem Prize for research in Kabbalah in 1995, the National Jewish Book Award in 1989 and 2007, and the Rothschild Prize for Jewish Studies in 2012. He has been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2006. Among his many publications are Old Worlds, New Mirror: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought (Univ. of Pennsylvania, 2010), Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510: A Survey (Yale, 2010), Kabbalah and Eros (Yale, 2005), Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (Yale, 2002), Messianic Mystics (Yale, 1998), Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (SUNY, 1995), Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Tradition of the Artificial Anthropoid (SUNY, 1990), Kabbalah: New Perspectives (Yale, 1988).