Participant Info

First Name
Andrea
Last Name
Gondos
Country
United States
State
NY New York
Affiliation
University of Rochester
Website URL
Keywords
Jewish intellectual and cultural history, History of Kabbalah, Jewish magic, Jewish medicine and women's healthcare, Jewish book history
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Andrea Gondos is a scholar of Kabbalah in the early modern period. Her recently published book, “Kabbalah in Print: The Study and Popularization of Jewish Mysticism in Early Modernity” (New York: SUNY, 2020), examines the organization of kabbalistic knowledge and the use of new literary genres and pedagogic techniques in its popularization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She was recently a Trinity Fellow at Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies  at University of Oxford and has held post-doctoral fellowships at Freie Universtität in Berlin, at Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. 

At present, she is a visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester N.Y.

Recent Publications

BOOKS

1. The Life of the Soul: Jewish Perspectives on Reincarnation from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period. Andrea Gondos and Leore Sachs-Shmueli (eds.). Accepted for publication and under contract with State University of New York Press (SUNY), expected publication date September, 2024.

2. Kabbalah in Print: The Study and Popularization of Jewish Mysticism in Early Modernity. New York: SUNY (State University of New York Press), 2020.

BOOK CHAPTERS

“Biblical Narratives in a Kabbalistic Key: Sin, Heresy, and the Destruction of Divine Unity in Ma’arekhet ha-Elohut,” in “Philosophy in Scripture:” Jewish Philosophical                    Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Late Medieval Period, eds. Paul Fenton and Raphael Dascalu (Leiden: Brill, 2024), forthcoming.

“The Dead Who Yearn to Die: Spirit-Possession and Soul-Healing in the Accounts of Hillel Ba’al Shem of Eastern Europe and Yehudah Fetaya of Baghdad,” in The Life of               the Soul: Perspectives on Reincarnation from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 2024) forthcoming. 

“Seekers of Love: Ecstatic Rapture as Mystical Ideal in Jewish, Christian, and Sufi Mysticism,” in Common and Comparative Esotericisms: Western, Islamic, and Jewish, edited by Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piranio, pp. 21–42 (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021).

“New Kabbalistic Genres and Their Readers in Early Modern Europe.”In Connecting Histories: Jews and Their Others in the Early Modern Period,  edited by David Ruderman and Francesca Bregoli, 67–85 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).

“Transmitting Kabbalah in the Middle Ages: Orality versus Textuality in Nachmanides’s Commentary on the Torah.” In From Something to Nothing: Jewish Mysticism in Contemporary Jewish Studies, edited by Harry Fox and Daniel Maoz, and Tirzah Meacham, 69-98 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2019).

“Kabbala, Halakha, and the Age of Printing: Yissachar Baer’s Yesh Sakhar.” In From Antiquity to the Postmodern World: Contemporary Jewish Studies in  Canada, edited by Daniel Maoz and Andrea Gondos, 108-128 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011).

  • “Textual Bodies and Embodied Texts: Humanoid Diagrams and Ritual Performance in Eastern European Jewish Magic.” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 38 (2024). Invited contribution to special issue, ‘Gender and Body in East European Jewish History,’ edited by Elissa Bemporad, Joanna Degler, Francois Guesnet, and Antony Polonsky. Forthcoming·
  • “Stolen Children and Monstrous Changelings: Lilith as the Demon-Mother in Eastern European Magical Manuscripts“ By invitation to special issue of the journal, Jewish Thought, edited by Gideon Bohak and Yuval Harrari, dedicated to Prof. Shaul Shaked.· Forthcoming.
  • Skin-Deep: Cosmetic Preparations, Bodycare, and Practical Kabbalah in Early Modern Jewish Books of Secrets.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 113.4 (2023): 579–585.
  • “Performing Sefer Yezirah: The Circulation of the Work as a Magical Text.” Invited contribution to the journal, Teudah (Tel Aviv University), special issue edited as a Festschrift to Prof. Ronit Meroz to be published in 2024. Forthcoming.
  • “Recipes for Safe Passage: The Magical TravelChest of Itinerant Ba’alei Shem,” AJS Perspectives: The Travel Issue (Spring 2022): 56-58.
  • “‘To Know Everything:’ Encyclopedias and the Organization of Kabbalistic Knowledge.” European Journal of Jewish Studies 16 (2022): 1-27.
  • “Decoding the Language of the Zohar: Lexicons to Kabbalah in Early Modernity.” AJS Review 45, 1 (2021): 24–47.
  • “The New East: Cultural Agency in the Propagation of Zionism among the Jews of Transylvania in the Early Twentieth Century.” Contemporary Review of the Middle East 6,3 (2019): 1-15. Special Issue on “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Israel.”
  • “Let Him Kiss me with Kisses of His Mouth:’ The Concept of Love in Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis.” Identities (Zehuyot) – Journal of Jewish Culture and Identity 9 (2019): 75-87.  (Hebrew)
Media Coverage
Country Focus
Expertise by Geography
Eastern Europe, Middle East, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
Medieval, Early Modern
Expertise by Topic
Book History, Family, Gender, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, Libraries & Archives, Material Culture, Medicine, Sexuality, Women