Shaul Magid
Shaul Magid is a rabbi, Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, and Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. From 2004 to 2018, he was a professor of religious studies and the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Chair of Jewish Studies in Modern Judaism at Indiana University as well as a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. From 1996 to 2004, he was a professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; he chaired the Department of Jewish Philosophy from 2000 to 2004.
Education
Magid received his B.A. from Goddard College. He received his semicha in Jerusalem in 1984 from Rabbis Chaim Brovender, Yaacov Warhaftig, and Zalman Nechemia Goldberg. He became a candidate Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a graduate student in Medieval and Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew University, where he completed his MA in 1989. He obtained his Ph.D. in Jewish thought from Brandeis University in 1994.Career
Magid served as a visiting professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Clark University, and Boston University. He was the Anna Smith Fine Chair in Jewish Thought at Rice University from 1994 to 1996 and then joined the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America before leaving for Indiana University. In 2023-24, Magid was a Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the Harvard Divinity School.Major research grants include a 2015-16 research fellowship at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and 2017-18 National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship at the Center for Jewish History for a book project on "American Jewish Survivalism: Meir Kahane and the Politics of Pride." He is an elected member of the American Academy of Jewish Research.
Magid has served as the rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue since 1997. He is a former contributing editor at Tablet Magazine and was the editor of Jewish Thought and Culture for Tikkun magazine.
From Metaphysics to Midrash received the 2008 American Academy of Religion Award for best book in religion in the textual studies category. Magid is the editor of God's Voice from the Void: Old and New Essays on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and co-editor of Beginning Again: Toward a Hermeneutic of Jewish Texts.
In his book The Necessity of Exile , Magid proposes rethinking the role of Zionism in Jewish identity, re-centering Judaism over nationalism and calling for a return to religion to keep Jews together. Referring to Eugene Borowitz he reiterated: “Anybody who cares seriously about being a Jew, is in Exile and would be in Exile even if that person were in Jerusalem.”
In May 2024, Magid co-convened the academic conference "Jews and Black Theory: Conceptualizing Otherness in the Twenty-First Century". He gave opening remarks and chaired a session titled "Blackness, Whiteness, and Double Consciousness."
Personal life
Magid grew up as a non-observant Jew in New York. At age 20, he became interested in learning more about Judaism. He became involved with the Haredi movement and studied Modern Orthodoxy, but after several years he "abandoned Orthodoxy more generally yet remained fascinated by, and deeply invested in, the complex nexus of Judaism and the American counter-culture". He is often quoted on such issues in the popular press; for instance, he recently discussed Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead in relation to Judaism, speaking from the perspective of "an ordained rabbi and a professor of Jewish and religious studies at Indiana University who was also present for the Dead’s legendary performance on the grounds of Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey on Sept. 3, 1977."Magid is married to Annette Yoshiko Reed, a Japanese-American convert to Judaism who teaches at Harvard Divinity School.
Magid's creative partner is Jewish musician Basya Schechter, with whom he released a 2024 album of Appalachian and Jewish music. Musica Judaica wrote in a review that Schechter and Magid set Kabbalat Shabbat texts to Appalachian old-time music, resulting in "a timeless, transcendent musical experience".