Joel Hecker is a leading academic scholar of The Zohar and Jewish mysticism. He is Associate Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshiva University. He is the author of Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah (2005), and does research on ritual and mystical experience in The Zohar and its contemporary literature.
"""As with previous volumes in this series, the translation is lucid and accurate....The comprehensive commentary masterfully guides the reader through the thickets, and illumines the underlying sources and ideas. Joel Hecker's translation and commentary continues the highest standards of scholarship that are a hallmark of this series. It is an indispensable resource for the study of the Zohar which achieves the golden mean of accessiblity to the non-specialist, but also as an invaluable resource for the specialist.""—Morris M. Faierstein, Reading Religion"