Ariel Evan Mayse is professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He holds a PhD in Jewish Studies from Harvard, and rabbinic ordination from Beit Midrash Har'El. His current research examines the role of language in Hasidism, the renaissance of Jewish mysticism in the 19th and 20th centuries, the relationship between spirituality and law in Jewish legal writings, and the resources of Jewish thought and theology for constructing contemporary environmental ethics.