Deborah
Masel, born in 1957, was an author and teacher with a special interest
in Jewish mysticism. She lived in Melbourne where she lectured
regularly for Jewish and interfaith groups and organisations, and
wrote on aspects of Jewish mystical tradition for various
publications. She was a regular contributor to the Faith column in
The Sunday Age and was a book reviewer for
The Age.
She is the author (under her previous name, Deborah Miller) of
The Company of Words and
The Maisonettes and she edited
Sacred Fire: Torah from the Years of Fury 1939-1942,
the English version of a mystical hassidic text discovered in the
rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto after the War. In her last years she
conducted regular classes on the weekly Torah portions and their
numerous interpretations, ancient, medieval and modern.
In the Cleft of the Rock; Writings on the Five Books of Moses is her penultimate work. The effusive meditations in
In the Cleft of the Rock are distilled versions of her learning. She died of cancer on 22 July 2011 at the age of 54.
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