Elliot R. Wolfson


Elliot R. Wolfson Wolfson earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in philosophy at Queens College of the City University of New York, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University, where he trained under the supervision of Alexander Altmann.
Wolfson is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was previously the Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.
His main area of scholarly research is the history of Jewish mysticism but he has brought to bear on that field training in philosophy, literary criticism, feminist theory, postmodern hermeneutics, Eastern mystical traditions, and the phenomenology of religion.
He has also published two volumes of poetry and has had a gallery show of his paintings. Wolfson has served as the editor of the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy since its inception in 1992. He has also served on various editorial boards for book series and journals.
Wolfson's son, Elijah Wolfson, was formerly a senior editor at Newsweek. and is now a Deputy Editor at Quartz.

Honors and awards

Wolfson's publications have won prestigious awards such as the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Category of Historical Studies in 1995, the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence in Constructive and Reflective Studies in 2012.
Wolfson won two National Jewish Book Awards in the Scholarship category, in 1995 for Through a Speculum That Shines and in 2005 for Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination.
Additionally, Wolfson has been the recipient of several academic honors and awards:
Wolfson is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Jewish Research, and the American Society for the Study of Religion.