Dr. Shaul Magid

Description Shaul Magid received his rabbinical ordination in Jerusalem in 1984 after which he became a candidate Fellow at the Shalom Hartman institute of Advanced Studies (1984-1986) and a graduate student in Medieval and Modem Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University, completing his MA in 1989. He spent two years at the newly formed Seminary of Judaic Studies in Jerusalem and taught at the Center for Conservative Judaism from 1987-89. Dr. Magid received his Ph.D. in Jewish thought at Brandeis in 1994 and served as a visiting professor at UMASS-Amherst, Clark University and Boston University. He served as the part-time rabbi of the Tremont Street Shul in Cambridge in 1992-3 and was the rabbinical advisor for the egalitarian minyan at Harvard/Radcliffe Hillel in 1993-4. He held the Anna Smith Fine Chair in Jewish Thought at Rice University from 1994-1996 and joined the faculty at J.T.S. in the summer of 1996. He presently serves as the rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue in Ocean Beach, Fire Island, New York. Dr. Magid has published in the areas of Kabbala, Hasidism and Modem Jewish Thought. He is presently completing a book on Polish Hasidism in the late 19th century and editing a collection of essays on R. Nahman of Bratzlav. He has lectured widely on the impact of mysticism and the medieval pietistic tradition on contemporary Judaism and the importance of the mystical tradition for the non-mystic.