Agata
Paluch

Free University
Ruth Meltzer Fellowship

Research Topic

Between Kabbalah, Magic, and Natural Science in Early Modern East-Central Europe 

Bio

Agata Paluch analyzes the interplay between Jewish and non-Jewish esoteric traditions in early modern East-Central Europe and is also interested in the history and literature of Jewish mysticism, the materiality of textual transmission, and the cognitive science of religion. For the past two years she has held a Gerda Henkel Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Free University, Berlin. She has also studied history and Jewish thought in Krakow, Warsaw, and Jerusalem and, in addition, has worked as a cataloguer of Hebrew manuscripts for the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project at the British Library.

Paluch received her PhD in Hebrew and Jewish studies from University College London in 2013.

Selected publications

  • Megalleh ‘Amuqot: The Enoch-Meṭaṭron Tradition in the Kabbalah of Nathan Neṭa Shapira of Kraków (Cherub Press, 2014) 
  • “The Ashkenazi Profile of Kabbalah” (Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, 2011)

Fellowship

2017–2018

Posing new questions about the theories, institutions, and paradigms shaping the study of nature, and about the cultural and religious consequences that emerge from such study.