Joel Hecker, Ph.D., is Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and is among today’s most prominent scholars of kabbalah. He is the author of Volumes 11–12 of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, the first complete annotated translation of the Zohar, the central and canonical text of Jewish mysticism.

Dr. Hecker has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; Visiting Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem; Visiting Instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshiva University; and lectured at a range of universities, adult-education institutions, as well as synagogues of all four major denominations.

He holds a B.A. in English literature from the University of Toronto, rabbinic ordination and Master’s Degree in Jewish Philosophy from Yeshiva University, and a doctorate in Judaic Studies, specializing in Jewish Mysticism, from New York University.