HISTORY AND VISION
History and Vision
The Institute of Jewish Spirituality and Society(IJSS) breaks down the barriers between spheres of knowledge and practice, enabling long-term collaboration among scholars, social researchers, and human services practitioners. The teachings and practices of the world’s great spiritual traditions are now being discussed in academic forums as a source of insights and solutions both ancient and new for our most pressing social concerns. Through boundary crossing dialogue and collaboration we can empower individuals and communities to share, explore and innovate, maximizing positive impact.
Emerging from a series of conversations between academics, rabbis, and community leaders, the IJSS was initially founded in 2012 and formally launched in 2017. Over the past decade we have hosted countless meetings, classes, conferences, fellowships and public events. These have brought together a growing network of scholars, educators, communal leaders and students from a spectrum of prestigious institutions and a plurality of points of view. Our interests converge at the nexus of sociology, psychology, education, comparative religion, and mysticism, with specific emphasis on the living spiritual traditions of Judaism. Our work bridges different spheres of knowledge and practice, bringing compelling scholarship to public audiences, and to accelerate personal, social, and cultural progress.
The IJSS seeks to build an information superhighway, one that allows us to bring the ideas of Jewish spirituality and mysticism to a much broader audience of individuals and communities involved in academic life. By fostering dialogue, we demonstrate that the teachings of Jewish mysticism have something very important to offer disciplines that might otherwise seem far removed from the world of spirituality: economics, law, sociology, political science, philosophy, education, mental health, among the many others.
We believe that transformative scholarship and education leads to social transformation. To these ends we continue to expand our network, as well as our programs, building a coalition of people and institutions. By placing the human sciences in mutually enriching discourse with the study of spiritual traditions—by exploring history and text, theory and practice, sociology and psychology, Kabbalah, Hasidism and beyond—we aim to produce a panoramic understanding of what modern spirituality can mean for real social transformation. All our programs are driven by the belief that transformative scholarship leads to transformative progress for individuals and for society. In our time of increasing polarization, this work is more important than ever!
