Naftali Loewenthal (Hebrew: נפתלי לוונטל) (b. 1944) is a Jewish academic from England, and a member of the Chabad Hasidic community.^[1][2] Loewenthal's main area of study is Hasidism and Jewish Mysticism, he serves as a professor in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London, and the director of the Chabad Research Unit, a division of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the United Kingdom.^[3] Loewenthal is noted as the author of Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School (1990), an important work on the scholarship of Hasdisim;^[4] he has also authored Hasidism Beyond Modernity: Essays in Habad Thought and History (2019) as well as many scholarly articles and publications on the Chabad mysticism.^[5]

One key area of Loewenthal's research has been the topic of the history of Chabad Hasidic women.^[6]

Selected publications

Books

• Loewenthal, N. (1990). Communicating the infinite: The emergence of the Habad school. University of Chicago Press.
• Loewenthal, N. (2020). Hasidism beyond modernity: Essays in Habad thought and history. The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

Other publications

• Loewenthal, N. (1987). The Apotheosis of Action in Early Habad. Da’at, 18, 104-130.
• Loewenthal, N. (1994). Hasidism, Mysticism and Reality. Jewish Quarterly, 41(1), 52-53.
• Loewenthal, N. (1998). Contemporary Habad and the paradox of redemption, in Ivry, A. L., et al. (eds) Perspectives on Jewish thought and mysticism. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers (pp. 381–402).
• Loewenthal, N. (1999). Women and the dialectic of spirituality in Hasidism. In Immanuel Etkes, David Assaf, Israel Bartal, Elchanan Reiner (Eds.) Within Hasidic Circles: Studies in Hasidism in Memory of Mordecai Wilensky (pp. 7–65). Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute.
• Loewenthal, N. (2000). 'Daughter/wife of Hasid' or 'Hasidic woman'? Jewish Studies, 40, 21-28.
• Loewenthal, N. (2005). Spirituality experience for Hasidic youths and girls in pre-Holocaust Europe-a confluence of tradition and modernity. In Adam Mintz, Lawrence Schiffman (Eds.) Jewish Spirituality and Divine Law (pp. 407–454). KTAV Publishing House.
• Loewenthal, N. (2013). From ladies auxiliary to shluhot network: Women's activism in twentieth-century Habad. In Israel Bartal et al. (Eds.) A Touch of Grace: Studies in Ashkenazi Culture, Women's History, and the Languages of the Jews (pp. 69–93). Zalman Shazar Center.
• Loewenthal N. (2013). "Midrash in Habad Hasidism" in Fishbane M. and J. Weinberg (Eds) Midrash Unbound: Transformations and Innovations, Liverpool University Press (pp. 429–455).