Nathan Wolski - School of Historical Studies Staff

Personal History

Nathan Wolski gained his PhD in Aboriginal Archaeology from the University of Melbourne in 2000. He then pursued studies at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Mandel School for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem. Upon graduating from the Jerusalem Fellows program Nathan took up a position as the head of education at Harvard Hillel in Cambridge. Upon returning to Australia in 2003 he co-founded Darsheini, an extra-mural community oriented educational program. Nathan's key research area is the Zohar, the classical work of the Spanish Kabbalah.

• Director of Education, Harvard Hillel, Harvard University 2002-3
• Jerusalem Fellow, Mandel Leadership Institute, Jerusalem (2000-1)

Current Research

• The art of Zoharic narrative
• Jewish mysticism and education
• Translation of A River Issues from Eden: On the Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar, Melila Hellner-Eshed.

I am currently working on a book on Zoharic narrative. The book involves original translations of discrete Zoharic units elucidated by a detailed commentary.

Major Publications

With Tom Loy, "On the invisibility of contact: residue analyses on Aboriginal glass artefacts from western Victoria", The Artefact (Archaeological and Anthropological Society of Victoria), 1999, vol. 22, pp. 65-73

With Russell, Lynette "Beyond the Final Frontier: Star Trek, the Borg and the Post colonial" Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 1, 2001

"All's not quiet on the western front - rethinking resistance and frontiers in Aboriginal historiography" in Colonial Frontiers: Indigenous-European encounters in settler societies, ed. Lynette Russell, (Manchester University Press, 2001)

With Michael Fagenblat "Revelation Here and Beyond: Buber and Levinas on the Bible," in Dialogue and Difference: Levinas and Buber, ed. Peter Atterton (Duquesne University Press, 2003).

With Merav Carmeli, "Those Who Know Have Wings: Celestial Journeys with the Masters of the Academy" in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts (in press).

Fagenblat, M., Landau, M., and Wolski, N., eds., New Under the Sun: Jewish Australians on Religion, Politics and Culture (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2006)

Areas of Research & Supervision

Biblical archaeology and history; Jewish mysticism; Jewish existentialist thinkers, including Buber and Levinas; Zohar; Spanish Kabbalah

Teaching

HSY2/3265 - The World of the Bible: Text and Context
JWC2/3040- Judaism and Modernity
JWC2/3280 - Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah
JWC2/3620 - Radical Rabbis
JWC4/5020 - Between Homeland and Holy Land: The Place of Israel in Jewish Thought From the Bible to the Present