The Mysteries of Mysticism

When a buddhist experiences nirvana, and a Jew communes with God (devekuth), do they share a common mystical experience that they merely interpret in different ways? Or are their experiences inherently different—shaped by distinct traditions, beliefs, and sociohistorical settings? Professor Steven T. Katz, a leading scholar on mysticism and the former director of Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, controversially argues for the latter. In rejecting the idea of a universal mystical experience, Katz and other scholars defy the view that has dominated the field for more than 100 years.

Writing as editor in the introduction to Comparative Mysticism: An Anthology of Original Sources (Oxford University Press, 2013), Katz—who is also the Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies—describes this recent approach to understanding mysticism. He gives readers a framework for analyzing the anthology’s texts, which he drew from Jewish, Christian, Sufi, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist, and Native American mystical traditions. Scholars who are experts on these individual traditions provide additional context through an introduction to each. By exploring these texts and traditions, readers may discover how beliefs about everything from the sacredness of language to the role of suffering to the nature of the divine can influence the ways mystics experience—and recount—their spiritual life.

—Julie Rattey

Uneven Deaths

You could live forever. Well, at least longer than nature might have intended. Genetic testing advances, stem cell research breakthroughs—seeming miracles herald the prospect of remarkable longevity. But maybe not for everyone, warns sociologist Ruha Benjamin in People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (Stanford University Press, 2013).

In the mid-2000s, Benjamin was invited by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to study its inner workings. In People’s Science, Benjamin, now an assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at Boston University—draws from that experience, scrutinizing the stem cell agency to make broader judgments on the state of American biomedical research and its treatment of test subjects.

One of the book’s repeated themes is that the rush for a stem cell–powered cure for one of the target diseases listed by the CIRM website might come at the expense of genetic therapies that work for all. Researchers often rely on human embryonic stem cells developed from surplus in vitro fertilization eggs, writes Benjamin—usually those of young, white women. Genetic therapies developed from such a narrow genetic pool, say some researchers, might only work for a relatively small proportion of the world’s diverse population. And, according to Benjamin, in a “society of haves and have-nots,” even if effective, the cost of these state-of-the-art genetic treatments might be out of reach for many.

People’s Science cautions that the “biomedical ingenuity that can bring people back from near death has a double edge.” One edge, writes Benjamin, deepens the “fault lines through which our current social order distributes suffering and premature death in radically uneven ways.” The cure for cancer might be near—but perhaps only if you’re white and can afford it.

—Andrew Thurston

The Secret, Sacred, and Sublime

The short stories in his new book, The Old Priest, “have to do with a larger conception of time and meaning,” says Anthony Wallace (GRS’99). Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in September as part of his 2013 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, The Old Priest presents an array of characters looking back at their lives, questioning their realities, and interpreting the painful and unsavory moments as well as some startlingly beautiful ones.

The title story presents the life and decline of a Jesuit priest, “brainy and fey,” in the voice of his former high school student. The narrator, now a rather disillusioned bachelor teacher and novelist, portrays his mentor as a witty, entertaining raconteur and intellect given to extravagant worldly tastes, but with a hidden side.

Wallace, who teaches American literature in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program, is a published poet and prize-winning short fiction writer.

—Jean Hennelly Keith