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Religion, Culture & Society

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Hartley Lachter associate professor of religion studies at Lehigh University

Hartley Lachter

Berman Professor of Jewish Studies

Associate Professor

lachter@lehigh.edu
Education:

Ph.D. New York University, Medieval Jewish Mysticism, 2004

M.A. McGill University, Jewish Studies, 1997

B.A. McGill University, Jewish Studies and Philosophy, 1996

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Research Areas

Additional Interests

  • Jewish Mysticism
  • Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages
  • Jewish Historical Memory

Biography

Hartley Lachter, Associate Professor of Religion Studies, holds the Philip and Muriel Berman Chair in Jewish Studies. His scholarship focuses on medieval Kabbalah, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between Jewish historical experiences and the development of kabbalistic discourses. His work explores how medieval Jewish-Christian debates, as well as disruptive moments of violence and forced conversion, shape Jewish mystical literature and serve as a form of cultural resistance for some pre-modern Jews. He is the author of, Kabbalistic Revolution: Reimagining Judaism in Medieval Spain, published by Rutgers University Press, and Kabbalah and Catastrophe: Historical Memory in Premodern Jewish Mysticism, forthcoming with Stanford University Press in October, 2024. Hartley Lachter’s teaching interests include Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, the history of antisemitism, introduction to Judaism, Jewish bioethics, Jewish messianism, and explorations of contemporary religious extremism and violence. In both his work and his teaching, Dr. Lachter invites his readers and students to consider how religious identities are negotiated through the production of public discourses that shape,and are shaped by, the interactions across identity boundaries. 

Monographs

Kabbalah and Catastrophe: Jewish Historical Memory and Premodern Jewish Mysticism. Stanford University Press, October 2024.

Kabbalistic Revolution: Reimagining Judaism in Medieval Spain. Rutgers University Press, 2014.

Edited Volume

To Fix Torah in Their Hearts: Essays on Biblical Interpretation and Jewish Studies in Honor of B. Barry Levy, edited by Jacqueline Du Toit, Jason Kalman, Hartley Lachter, and Vanessa Sasson. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College and University of Exeter Press: 2018.

Articles, Book Chapters, and Reviews

-“Lives and Afterlives: Reincarnation and the Medieval Jewish Present,” in Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism: From the Middle Ages to the Modern Period. Edited by Leore Sachs-Shmueli and Andrea Gondos. SUNY Press, forthcoming, 2024.

-“Universal Singularities: Elliot R. Wolfson on Jewish Ethnocentrism,” in, New Paths: A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Elliot Wolfson. Purdue University Press, forthcoming, 2024.

-“Silkworms of Exile: Jewish History and Collective Memory in the Kabbalistic Works of Meir ibn Gabbai,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 40:3 (2022): 1-37.

-“Mysticism: Medieval Judaism,” co-authored with Ephraim Kanarfogel, Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, vol. 20. De Gruyter, March, 2022.

-“An Anonymous Commentary on the Ten Sefirot: Text and Translation,” in To Fix Torah in Their Hearts: Essays on Biblical Interpretation and Jewish Studies in honor of B. Barry Levy, edited by Jacqueline Du Toit, Jason Kalman, Hartley Lachter, and Vanessa Sasson, (Hebrew Union College and University of Exeter Press: 2018), 331-372.

-“Introduction,” co-authored with in Jacqueline Du Toit, Jason Kalman, and Vanessa Sasson, in To Fix Torah in Their Hearts: Essays on Biblical Interpretation and Jewish Studies in honor of B. Barry Levy, edited by Jacqueline Du Toit, Jason Kalman, Hartley Lachter, and Vanessa Sasson, (Hebrew Union College and University of Exeter Press: 2018), 1-8.

-“The Politics of Mysticism: Some Jewish Examples,” English Language Notes, 56:1 (2018), 219-222.

-“Israel as a Holy People in Medieval Kabbalah,” in Holiness in Jewish Thought, edited by Alan Mittleman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 137-158.

-“Jewish Bodies in Divine Form: Jewish Difference and Historical Consciousness in Medieval Kabbalah,” Journal of Jewish Identities, 11:1 (2018): 123-142.

-“People Of The Book / Books Of The People: Illuminating The Canon,” and “Other Worlds: Fantastic Horizons and Unseen Universes,” co-authored with Marc Michael Epstein, in Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Manuscript Illumination. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 

-“Charity and Kabbalah in Medieval Spain: Possible Evidence from Isaac ibn Sahula’s Meshal ha-Kadmoni,” Iberia Judaica VI (2014): 119-126.

-Entry for “Gematria,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, 9, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2014 (with Elke Morlok). 

-“Textuality in Medieval Kabbalah,” review of Morlok, Elke, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla's Hermeneutics. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. January, 2013.

-Entry on “Gershom Scholem” in The Reader’s Guide to Judaism, edited by Michael Terry. New York and London: Routledge Press, 2013, 447-548. (Reprint of 2000 edition by Fitzroy Dearborn publishers)

-“Medieval Jewish Mysticism,” in The Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism, edited by Alan T. Levenson, 2012, 244-256.

-“Jews as Masters of Secrets in Late 13th Century Castilian Kabbalah,” in The Jew in Medieval Iberia, edited by Jonathan Ray. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011, 282-305.

-“Esoteric Discourse and the Study of the West: Reorienting the Margins and the Center,” review of Kocku von Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.  H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews.  August, 2011.

-“The Politics of Secrets: 13th Century Kabbalah in Context,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 101:4 (Fall 2011): 502-510.

-“Reading Mysteries: Origins of the Field,” in Jewish Mysticism: New Insights and Scholarship, edited by Fred Greenspahn. New York: New York University Press, 2011, 1-29.

-“Kabbalists and Messiahs in 18th Century Italy,” review of Tishby, Isaiah, Messianic Mysticism: Moses Hayim Luzzatto and the Padua School. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. June, 2010.

-“Spreading Secrets: Kabbalah and Esotericism in Isaac ibn Sahula's Meshal ha-kadmoni,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 100:1 (Winter 2010): 111-138.

-“Kabbalah, Philosophy and the Jewish-Christian Debate: Reconsidering the Early Works of Joseph Gikatilla.” The Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 16:1 (2008): 1-58.

 

Teaching

REL/GS 011 "World Religions"

REL/JST 070 "Antisemitism Past and Present"

REL/JST 073 "Jewish Traditions"

REL/JST 081 "Jewish Mysticism"

REL 080 "Religion and Violence"

REL/JST/PHL/HMS 151 "Judaism, Medicine, and Bioethics"

REL/JST/PHL 129 "Jewish Philosophy"