The 29th Annual Gates of Chai Lectureship in Contemporary Judaism "Kabbalah: Then and Now," will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 22, 2026 in the Brown-Lupton University Union Ballroom. The event is free, but preregistration is required. Please CLICK HERE to register. 

Speakers:

Brian Ogren specializes in Jewish thought and is particularly interested in philosophy and kabbalah during the early modern period. Among his many publications are Kabbalah and the Founding of America (2024); Reel Kabbalah: Jewish Mysticism and Neo-Hasidism in Contemporary Cinema (2024); The Beginning of the World in Renaissance Jewish Thought: Ma’aseh Bereshit in Italian Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah, 1492-1535 (2016); Renaissance and Rebirth: Reincarnation in Early Modern Italian Kabbalah (2009). He is the editor of Kabbalah in America: Ancient Lore in the New World (2020) and Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism: That Which is Before and That Which is After (2015).

Elliot R. Wolfson is a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many publications including most recently The Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism and the Jewish Other (2018); Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis (2019); Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality (2021); The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes: Between Nihilism and Hope (2023); Nocturnal Seeing: Hopelessness of Hope and Philosophical Gnosis in Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod (2025); and Apophasis and Envisioning the Invisible: Unveiling Veils of Infinity (2026).

Register at https://fs11.formsite.com/sF1Om1/uqifaase3h/index