Gillman, Neil

Neil is a leading philosopher and rabbi of Conservative Judaism. He is professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary and author of numerous books including Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew; The Way Into Encountering God in Judaism; The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought, and The Jewish Approach to God: A Brief Introduction for Christians. Neil teaches, controversially, that essential elements of Jewish theology should be thought of as "myths" (as the term is used in anthropology not common parlance). In Sacred Fragments, Gillman writes that the traditional Jewish view that the Torah was orally dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai, and passed down to us today in an unbroken chain of transmission, is erroneous. He distinguishes among “living myths,” “broken myths,” and “dead myths,” holding the hope that Judaism is a “broken myth” that doesn’t have to die.