Boaz Huss

Boaz Huss was born in 1959 in Jerusalem

Boaz Huss was born in Jerusalem on June 10, 1959, and grew up in the Rehavia neighborhood. His mother, Hava, was a clinical psychologist, and his father, Avraham Huss, was a professor of earth sciences at the Hebrew University and a poet. He finished the Gymnasia Rehavia school in 1977.

He studied philosophy and Jewish thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a B.A. in 1986. His Ph.D., completed in 1993 under Moshe Idel, dealt with the Kabbalah of Rabbi Shimon Lavi. He then held a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University.

He taught at the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University before joining the Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University in 1996. He chaired the department from 2010 to 2012. He also held fellowships at Harvard University and at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem.

His research covers the Zohar and its reception, modern Kabbalah, Western esotericism and the New Age. He has written on the Kabbalah of Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag and on Kabbalistic motifs in the work of Madonna. He has also criticized the use of the term mysticism as the main category for studying Kabbalah and Hasidism.

He is married to Efrat Huss, a professor of social work at Ben-Gurion University.