Melila Hellner-Eshed

Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism, born 1956. Associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior research fellow at the Hartman Institute. One of the leading living interpreters of the *Zohar* — the foundational text of Kabbalah — and of the Lurianic tradition. She is also the rare scholar who teaches from inside the practice as well as from outside it: a generation of contemporary Jewish seekers, including many non-Orthodox and post-denominational ones, have learned the *Zohar* through her courses. She insists that the *Zohar* is not a code to crack but a poem to enter, an erotic, narrative, ecstatic invitation to read scripture as if every letter were singing. Core teaching: mysticism is not a flight from the world. It is a deeper falling in love with it. The *Zohar* teaches the seeker not what to think but how to look — until ordinary Torah, ordinary marriage, ordinary daily prayer reveal themselves as encounters with the divine. Key works: *A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar* (her landmark academic study); essays and lecture series on the *Zohar* and on contemporary Jewish spirituality.