Formerly a professor at the Academy for Jewish Religion (AJR), Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman, is founding director of Sinai and Synapses. This organization includes hundreds of articles on the brain and neuroscience working to bridge “the scientific and religious worlds” largely from a Jewish perspective.[1] AJR’s Cantor Michael Kasper also dives deeply into embodiment, especially regarding music and sacred dance in liturgy. His book Under One Tent: Circus, Judaism, and the Bible draws on neuroscience regarding the gut-brain connection and epigenetics relating to trauma.[2] Brite’s Rabbi Mecklenberger wrote Our Religious Brains reflecting on his Jewish faith, though at times also reflecting on Christianity or other faiths. He believes “neuroscience is too important to be left to the neuroscientists.”[3]
Other neuroscience resources or references amongst the Association of Theological Schools that relate to Judaism include:
– Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a world renown neurologist, holocaust survivor, and advocate of logotherapy. His library is now housed at Graduate Theological Union.
– Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s The Great Partnership is a book that was endorsed by Harvard Divinity’s Daniel Goodman.
– A book with some reference amongst ATS is Andrew Newberg’s The Rabbi’s Brain, which delves deeply into neuroscience. This book has received some negative critique that the title neglects the diversity within Judaism by implying a more universal perspective.
[1] “Our Staff,” Sinai and Synapses, https://sinaiandsynapses.org/our-staff/.
[2] Kasper, Under One Tent, 108, 244.
[3] Mecklenberger, Our Religious Brains, Location 120