Rachel Elior is an Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

 in Jerusalem, Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

.

Academic career

Elior is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Mystical Thought at the Hebrew University, where she has taught since 1978. Currently she is the head of the Department of Jewish Thought

Jewish thought

Jewish Thought is a field of Jewish Studies that deals with the products of Jewish thought and culture throughout the ages, and their historical development...

. She earned her PhD Summa cum Laude in 1976. Her specialties are early Jewish Mysticism, the Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...

, Messianism

Messianism

Messianism is the belief in a messiah, a savior or redeemer. Many religions have a messiah concept, including the Jewish Messiah, the Christian Christ, the Muslim Mahdi and Isa , the Buddhist Maitreya, the Hindu Kalki and the Zoroastrian Saoshyant...

, Sabbatianism, Hasidism, Chabad

Chabad

Chabad or Chabad-Lubavitch is a major branch of Hasidic Judaism.Chabad may also refer to:*Chabad-Strashelye, a defunct branch of the Chabad school of Hasidic Judaism*Chabad-Kapust or Kapust, a defunct branch of the Chabad school of Hasidic Judaism...

, Frankism

Frankism

Frankism was an 18th-century to 19th-century Jewish religious movement centered around the leadership of the Jewish Messiah claimant Jacob Frank, who lived from 1726 to 1791. At its height, it claimed perhaps 50,000 followers, primarily Jews living in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe...

 and the role of women in Jewish culture. She has been a visiting professor at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, UCL

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

, Yeshiva University

Yeshiva University

Yeshiva University is a private university in New York City, with six campuses in New York and one in Israel. Founded in 1886, it is a research university ranked as 45th in the US among national universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2012...

, the University of Tokyo

University of Tokyo

, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...

, Doshisha University

Doshisha University

, or is a prestigious private university in Kyoto, Japan. The university has approximately 27,000 students on three campuses, in faculties of theology, letters, law, commerce, economics, policy, and engineering...

 in Kyoto, Case Western University in Cleveland and at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

.

Criticism and controversy

On her primary field of expertise, Hasidism, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Professor at Northwestern, states “Elior uses a rather outdated concept of the [hasidic] movement to cement her narrative. She leaves aside theories, ideas, insights, and data amassed by scholars who have long departed from the thinking patterns of Dinur or Scholem.” And that Elior “should revisit their conceptual framework, in which sources coexist in a nontemporal fashion and freely talk to one another, as ideas in the Platonic world of forms.”

Dead Sea Scrolls

Her theory of the origins of mysticism in the priestly class has been challenged by Prof. Yehuda Liebes of the Hebrew University, and her understanding of the ancient calendar was rejected by Sacha Stern. Eibert Tigchelaar

Eibert Tigchelaar

Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar is a leading authority and author on the subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Formerly he held the position of research associate at the Qumran Instituut , Rijksuniversiteit Groningen , was appointed to a professorship at Florida State University, before becoming research...

 noted that her examples have a "lack of historical specificity that are disturbing and frustrating." She has been defended by Joseph Dan

Joseph Dan

Joseph Dan is an Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism. He taught for over 40 years in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem...

. Princeton professor Peter Schaefer

Peter Schaefer (author)

Peter Schäfer is Professor of Religion and the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Judaic Studies at Princeton University....

 says she blurs distinctions between texts and periods, and is not sensitive to important nuances. He also notes that her views of angels at Qumran and the calendar are wrong. Prof Martha Himmelfarb finds Elior's work "simply untenable". Himmelfarb says that Elior creates tenuous links, historical connections without a basis, and sees things that just are "not there."

Elior claims that the Essenes

Essenes

The Essenes were a Jewish sect that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests...

, the supposed authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...

 never existed. She contends (as have Lawrence Schiffman

Lawrence Schiffman

Lawrence H. Schiffman was appointed as the Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Education at Yeshiva University and Professor of Jewish Studies in early 2011. He had been the Chair of New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and serves as the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman...

, Moshe Goshen-Gottstein

Moshe Goshen-Gottstein

Moshe Goshen-Gottstein was a German-born professor of Semitic linguistics and biblical philology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and director of the lexicographical institute and Biblical research institute of Bar-Ilan University.-Biography:Moshe Goshen-Gottstein was born in Berlin...

, Chaim Menachem Rabin

Chaim Menachem Rabin

Chaim Menachem Rabin was an Israeli professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages.Chaim Rabin was born in Giessen, Germany, 22 November 1915, the son of Israel and Martel Rabin. He studied first at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1933-1934. He then studied in England, at the School of Oriental...

, and others) that the Essenes were really the renegade sons of Zadok

Zadok

Zadok was a high priest of the Israelites in Jerusalem after it was conquered by David.Zadok may also refer to:*Rabbi Zadok, tanna of the 1st-century CE*Zadok the Priest, an 18th-century coronation anthem by Handel...

, a priestly caste banished from the Temple of Jerusalem by Greek

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

 rulers in 2nd century BC. She conjectures that the scrolls were taken with them when they were banished. "In Qumran

Qumran

Qumran is an archaeological site in the West Bank. It is located on a dry plateau about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli settlement and kibbutz of Kalia...

, the remnants of a huge library were found," Elior says, with some of the early Hebrew texts dating back to the 2nd century BC. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known version of the Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

 dated back to the 9th century AD. "The scrolls attest to a biblical priestly heritage," says Elior, who speculates that the scrolls were hidden in Qumran for safekeeping.

James Charlesworth, director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project and professor at Princeton Theological Seminary

Princeton Theological Seminary

Princeton Theological Seminary is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church located in the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey in the United States...

, said there is "significant evidence for the Essenes’ existence." and “It is impossible that Josephus created a group already mentioned by Philo, who had visited Jerusalem.”
Princeton religion professor Martha Himmelfarb said she doesn’t think Elior’s work is as “historically informed” as other research on the Scrolls, saying, “[Elior] does not tend to engage the historical nitty-gritty that other scholars’ work does.”

External links

• Prof. Elior's homepage at the Hebrew University
• Dead Sea Scrolls’ origins spark debatehttp://jhvonline.com/default.asp?smenu=147&sdetail=8421