My teaching focuses primarily on Kabbala, Hasidism, Judaism and gender, Israel/Palestine, and American Jewish thought and culture. Areas of interest and research include sixteenth century Kabbala, Hasidism, American Judaism, and contemporary conceptions of Jewish religiosity. I am the editor of God's Voice from the Void: Old and New Essays on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (SUNY Press, 2001), co-editor of Beginning Again: Toward a Hermeneutic of Jewish Texts (Seven Bridges Press, 2002) and author of Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica and Radzin Hasidism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). My latest book From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbala (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008) was awarded the 2008 American Academy of Religion Award for best book in religion in the textual studies category. I am co-chair of the steering committee for the Study of Judaism for the “American Academy of Religion” and director of the Jewish Mysticism section for the “Association of Jewish Studies.” I am also the series editor for “Post-Rabbinic Judaisms” for Academic Studies Press. My forthcoming book, Jews and Jewishness in Post Ethnic America: Ethnicity, Renewal, and The Post-Judaism Era, which will be published by Indiana University Press. I am presently completing another book entitled Hasidism Incarnate: Divine Embodiment and Redemption in Hasidic Literature. I am also a regular contributor to Tikkun Magazine, Zeek Magazine, Religion Dispatches, and Occasional Religion.
"The Politics of (un) Conversion: The ’Mixed Multitude’ (erev rav) as Conversos in Rabbi Hayyim Vital’s Etz Ha-Da’at Tov, Jewish Quarterly Review (2005)
"Rainbow Hasidism in America-The Maturation of Jewish Renewal-A Review Essay," The Reconstructionist (Spring, 2004): 34-60
"Is Egalitarianism Heresy: Re-Thinking Gender on the Margins of Judaism" Nashim 8 (Fall, 2004); "Judaism and Reconciliation" Concilium: Reconciliation in a World of Conflicts, 2003-5 (forthcoming)
"Lurianic Kabbala and Original Sin," [Hebrew] Hafatzat Ha-Kabbalah (The Influence of Kabbala), Moseh Idel ed. Jerusalem, 2005
"Ethics Disentangled from the Law: Hasidism and Dispositional Ethics," A Companion to Religious Ethics, Charley Hallisey, William Schweiker eds., (Blackwell Press: England, 2004)
