Michael Fishbane
Office: Swift Hall 205
Email: mfishban@uchicago.edu
Nathan Cummings Professor, Professor of Jewish Studies in the Divinity School, and the College; Lecturer, Law School, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Ph.D: Brandeis University
Background:
I studied at Brandeis University and received my Ph.D at Brandeis University, spending my junior year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It was a transformative year in my undergraduate education because I studied with all the great scholars of Jewish Studies in Israel: Profs. Pines, Rotenstreich, Scholem, and Seligmann. I began to realize that Jewish scholarship was a very serious and attractive field to me. I originally had been very much interested in History of Philosophy. While this has remained central, I very early on integrated it into Jewish Studies as a whole. I gradually began to focus on Biblical Studies in the widest sense, and received my Ph.D at Brandeis in Biblical studies. Towards that end, I was trained in both ancient Near East languages and cultures and Biblical Studies in its own cultural-historical context. I also maintained an interest in the ongoing history of Jewish interpretations and cultures - that is, the Bible both in terms of its ancient Near East origins and its ongoing history.
I taught these subjects at Brandeis from the time I was still a graduate student until I left in 1990 to come to Chicago. My main focus was the Hebrew Bible and its interpretation in the context of the ancient Near East. Most of my publications at that time where also in that area, although I did work on many other things. It was during this period that I wrote my Biblical Interpretation of Ancient Israel, which dealt with the origins of later interpretation within the Hebrew Bible. When I finished that topic, I received the Guggenheim Fellowship and began to study Rabbinic literature intensively and to refocus my work on Midrash and its literary and theological forms and features. This absorbed me for a number of years. But I had been at Brandeis for many years and was well acquainted with its disciplinary interest. Thus, when I had the opportunity to go to the University of Chicago I was very excited, particularly because of its intense and diverse interdisciplinary studies, and by the chance to interact with different programs.
Feelings on Interdisciplinary Study:
One of the exciting things about coming here was that there was no precedent in Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. I was intensely involved for many years in helping to shape the undergraduate, M.A., and Ph.D programs. I felt that there has to be a highly professional core faculty along with a variety of individuals trained in other disciplines but who have strong overlapping interests in one or another area of Jewish research- whether that involved culture, history, or literature. I felt that such persons would provide a much larger net of interdisciplinary possibilities. On the one hand that would mean that a person trained in Jewish studies would be trained in at least two areas and two disciplines: Jewish Studies and the methodology of Jewish Studies, but also in the cognate areas of history of culture that they where dealing with. The ideal initially, and it remains my ideal, is that this would have a reciprocal effect on the university; that is, all these other smaller areas would be enriched by the content of Jewish studies (which is multidisciplinary in its own right). I hoped that all these topics would infuse other aspects of the university, and that this infusion would benefit Jewish Studies in different ways. That was something I worked on very much for the first 10 years of my tenure here. During that period of time, my academic focus was particularly on Midrash and the History of Jewish interpretation in late Antiquity, but also other aspects of History of Hermeneutics in Medieval and Modern Times as well as ongoing topics of Jewish Thought and Culture.
In the period since I've come here, I've had the opportunity to teach students who have more than one area of interest. This has been very stimulating. I've seen our students create new spaces between the disciplines. That is the new interdisciplinary enterprise. I have been very honored with wonderful students who have created new areas of thinking by figuring out how they want to work with these interests and these spaces between disciplines. The other very important concern that I have is that people in the classical areas know that there is a subsequent history to their field that is complex and different; and that those who are studying the modern period realize that the modern period is not just a product of Western Europe but a part of an ongoing history of Judaism and that it has its own prehistory. In my view, this would be an ideal for the faculty as well, whether they are teaching in the ancient, medieval, or modern periods. Thus the interchange goes back and forth and the students who would come to study would also move forward and backward.
I continue to maintain that ideal, and my work at the present time reflects this - both in terms of my studies in Midrash, History of Rabbinic Interpretations, and Liturgical Poetry. As part as my ongoing studies in the History of Bible Interpretation, I am now writing a large work on all Jewish commentaries on the Song of Songs over the last 2500 years. It involves multidisciplinary aspects. In this and other contexts I am continuing my interest in Jewish Thought and Jewish Theology.
What advice would you give students starting off in Biblical or Rabbinic Studies:
I would advise them to become competent in the language and the sources of their field. The core thing is to develop a confidence in text and their forms of expression; to develop a relationship with teachers who are also mentors; and to learn to use the larger literature as silent teachers. The third thing, which I consider to be as important, is gradually to find one's own voice - and not to have the voice of their teachers alone. Certainly one has to be socialized into the field and to absorb past methods (there is a huge literature to learn). The most creative people should spend a lot of time studying the sources and find their own path.
What courses will you be teaching:
In the Spring (2007) I am doing a course on Contemporary Methods in the Study of Midrash. It's a survey of critical literature over the past 10 years in different languages. It follows up the seminar I did in Classical Rabbinic sources during the Winter. I am also doing an Introduction to 13th Century Jewish Mysticism: (Zohar). I taught this a number of years ago, but haven't taught it for awhile. In the Fall I think I will continue my work in Midrash and the History of Jewish Thought. The rest depends on the incoming students. I choose my courses once I know who is here and what is needed.
What are you working on:
I am working on a book on Midrash and the Making of Rabbinic Epic; and as I mentioned, I am completing a Commentary on the Song of Songs. In distinction from these historical studies, my new book is a presentation of my own theology. It will appear shortly by the University of Chicago Press, and present a new and modern Jewish theology; but I should say that parts draw from older interests, and moves in the direction of a hermeneutical theology.
Publications:
Among his many books are:
- Text and Texture
- Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel
- Garments of Torah
- The Kiss of God
- The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology
- Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking was published in 2003 (Oxford University Press).
- Haftarot: A Commentary; it deals with the vast prophetic lectionary in Judaism.