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Patrick B. Koch

Emmy Noether Junior Research Group Leader (Musar), Hamburg University

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

November 2021–February 2022

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»Jewish Moralistic Writings (Musar) of the Early Modern Period: 1600–1800«

Project outline:

In my research project, which I am currently conducting as part of my Emmy Noether Group, I am investigating how kabbalistic concepts were reconfigured during the early modern period in Italy, the Ottoman Empire, and Central and Eastern Europe. I am particularly interested in the processes of transformation that can be traced, on the one hand, through the history of editions of texts, and, on the other hand, through the reception of these ideas. The aim is to understand how esoteric and thus oftentimes elitist knowledge served as a basis for the creation of new everyday practices, and how, as a result, topics and ideas that had previously seemed marginal took on a much more significant role over time. (Patrick B. Koch)

Research partner:

Patrick B. Koch cooperates with Christian Wiese, holder of the Martin Buber Chair in Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Goethe University and member of the Board of Directors of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften. His stay is sponsored by the Johanna Quandt Young Academy at Goethe.

Scholarly profile of Patrick B. Koch

Patrick Benjamin Koch received his PhD from the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has held postdoctoral positions at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Humboldt University of Berlin, the Center for Jewish History in New York, and the University of Hamburg. Since 2017, he has been leading an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group at the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion at the University of Hamburg. He is editor-in-chief of the series Studies in Musar (Leiden and Boston: Brill).

Website:
Please find more information about Patrick B. Koch here.

Main areas of research:

Jewish Moralistic Writings (musar); Kabbalah; Jewish Ethics; History of Hebrew Printing and Bibliography; Early Modern Jewish Intellectual History; Mysticism and Spirituality in the Abrahamic Traditions

Selected publications:

Human Self-Perfection: A Re-Assessment of Kabbalistic Musar-Literature of Sixteenth-Century Safed. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2015.
Mysticism, Pietism, Morality. Special Issue of European Journal of Jewish Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2020).
» ›Gathering the Dispersed of Israel‹. The Evolution of a Lurianic Prayer Addendum for Tiqqun Qeri«, in: Harvard Theological Review 114.2 (2021), p. 241–264.
»›Many Books on Issues of Divine Service‹. Defining Musar in Early Modernity«, in: Journal of Jewish Studies 71.1 (2020), p. 1–24.
»›Of Stinging Nettles and Stones‹. The Use of Hagiography in Early Modern Kabbalah and Pietism«, in: Jewish Quarterly Review 3109.4 (2019), p. 534–566.

Patrick B. Koch

Scholarly profile of Patrick B. Koch

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