Postdoctoral Candidate, Yad Vashem, Israel
Dr. Daniel Reiser specializes in Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism and Hasidic philosophy. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Jewish Mysticism from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2012 and currently teaches Hasidic philosophy there. Dr. Reiser uses the methods of philology and paleography in his research dealing with Hasidic manuscripts, and he has published several articles concerning the role of Yiddish in the study of Hasidic sermons. Together with Ithiel Be’eri, he translated Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, Kotsk: In Gerangl far Emesdikayt (Maggid Books, Jerusalem, forthcoming in 2014), from Yiddish to Hebrew. Dr. Reiser’s book, To Fly Like Angels: Imagery Techniques in Hasidic Mysticism in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, is forthcoming in Cherub Press: Sources and Studies in the Literature of Jewish Mysticism, Los Angeles. Currently, Dr. Reiser is working on publishing a critical and annotated edition of Rabbi Klonimus Kalmish Shapira’s sermons during the Holocaust, known as the Esh Kodesh. A philological examination of the original handwritten manuscripts shows that the printed version has been extensively edited. A paleographical examination of these manuscripts has yielded many important insights for the study of Hasidic Holocaust theology.