Research
Rabbi Professor Arthur Green has recently retired as Rector of the Rabbinical School that he founded in 2014 at Hebrew College in Boston. He is a longtime student of the Jewish mystical tradition, both as an intellectual historian and as a theologian. He is Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University, where he occupied the distinguished Philip W. Lown Professorship of Jewish Thought.
As a scholar, Dr. Green has been particularly interested in bringing together historical, phenomenological, and psychological perspectives in trying to approach the sources of Jewish mysticism. He has written biographical volumes on two key Hasidic masters, Tormented Master on R. Nahman of Braslav and Defender of the Faithful on R. Levi Yitshak of Berdychiv. Both are attempts to gain insight into the inner life of the author through the prism of his collected teachings.
Although interested in the entire history of Jewish mystical thought, with a special love for the Zohar and other 13th century works, he has focused mostly on the earliest generations of Eastern European Hasidism as it developed in the late 18th century. He has several articles on the figure of the tsaddik or “righteous one” as it emerged in that era.
He also has a special interest in the Song of Songs and its place in the Jewish religious imagination.
As a theologian, Green is a key figure in the Neo-Hasidic revival of our day. His most recent theological self-articulation is to be found in his Judaism for the World (Yale University Press), winner of the National Jewish Book Award for works in Jewish thought.
For his views on the current historical situation in which Jews and Judaism find themselves, see his Can Judaism Be Saved: Its Future after Gaza.