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Neil
Gillman is the Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor
and Cahir of the Department of Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America. A native of Quebec City, Canada, he was ordained at
the Seminary in 1960 and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia
University in 1975. Gillman's dissertation Gabriel Marcel on Religious
Knowledge was published by the University Press of America in 1980. Dr.
Gillman's second book, Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the
Modern Jew won him the 1991 National Jewish Book Award in Jewish
Thought. His latest book, The Death of Death: Resurrection and
Immortality in Jewish Thought was published in 1997.
Abstract of paper given at
Judaism and Ecology conference:
Liturgical Transformations of the Creation
Narratives
The methodological thrust of this paper is the thesis that those portions of the Jewish liturgy, formulated during the talmudic period, can be studied as the pre-eminent source for the ongoing development of the central doctrines of Jewish belief after the Bible. In the course of this development, significant biblical doctrines are extended and frequently transformed. Examples will be taken from liturgical references to Creation in the wedding liturgy and in the Yotzer benediction in the Shaharit service.