Arthur Green

Arthur Green is an educator and a scholar of Jewish mysticism and hasidism who has played an influential role in bringing the language of spirituality into mainstream American Jewish life. He is a founder and current rector of Boston Hebrew College 's rabbinical school and is a former dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College . He is widely credited with being a founder of Neo-Hasidism and has also been a major influence in the Jewish Renewal and Chavurah movements. Arthur (Art) Green grew up in Newark , New Jersey in a nonobservant Jewish home. He describes his father as a "militant atheist," but his mother, from a traditional family, felt obligated to give her son a Jewish education. Raised in the Conservative movement , Green attended Camp Ramah . In 1959, he studied at Brandeis University , where he went through a crisis of faith and sought new approaches to Judaism. Green's professors at Brandeis included Nahum Glatzer and Alexander Altmann . After earning his Ph.D., Green became Philip W. Lown professor (now emeritus) of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. In 1967, he was ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America . Green has published many works on Jewish mysticism and hasidism. Invited to deliver a series of lectures at Yale University , Green was described as "one of the preeminent authorities on Jewish spirituality, mysticism and Hasidism." In 1968, Green was one of the founders of Havurat Shalom . In 1987-1993, he served as Dean and President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. In 2003, he became the first Dean for the non-denominational rabbinical program at the Hebrew College. He also serves as the Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Theology and Mysticism at Hebrew College. Green is a founder of Neo-Hasidism , the significant revival of interest in Hasidic Judaism on the part of non-Orthodox Jews in different decades due to the writings of non-Orthodox teachers of Hasidic Judaism. Green has done this through his scholarly and spiritual writing and teaching, his involvement in Havurat Shalom, and his participation as a faculty member in the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, among other activities.¹