Alumni

The "Olim Veyordim" research group explored the historical gamut of association between the human and superhuman planes, taking its name from the "ascending and descending" angels recounted in Jacob's dream (Genesis 28). Embodied herein is the complex connection between the realm of spirit and the physical world in the symbolic metaphor of a ladder set between heaven and earth. Such instances of divine intermingling with the mundane present something of a paradox by being essentially irrational and unverifiable and yet prove effective in asserting real authority.

Well aware of the budding intricacy of their research, the group members have chosen to focus their research on six recurring themes within the vastness of their general topic:

• The Garden of Eden, the theater of man's earliest past that has retained its metaphysical significance into the present as the realm of life after death and a locus of mystical aspiration.
• The notion of the dream as a passage between worlds and a means of achieving heavenly knowledge and establishing divinely inspired authority. The dream phenomenon is extremely well documented in Biblical and Rabbinic sources and is prominent in Kabbalistic and Hassidic lore.
• Historical figures and personalities who claim to have transcended to heaven and brought a message back with them.
• Transcendental beings and essences such as angels, heavenly voices, demons, ghosts and their ilk, such as appear to the living as a source of knowledge.
• The more common forms employed by those seeking a heavenly connection, such as prayer, prophecy and learning Torah; and their arcane dark forms, like black magic, necromancy and the like.
• The gender of heavenly transcendence – how men and women differ at the crossroads of the divine and the mundane.