Phone:

812-856-3867

Campus:

IU Bloomington

Anna Sierka earned her PhD at the University of Munich with a doctoral dissertation that focused on the adaptation of divine chariot (merkavah) imagery known from the medieval Ashkenazi esoteric sources in Lurianic Kabbalah, chiefly in Naphtali Bacharach’s Emeq ha-Melekh. She has been a Golda Meir Postdoctoral Fellow and subsequently, a Minerva Fellow in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Harry Starr Fellow in Judaica at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University, a Koret Fellow at Tel Aviv University, and a Fordham-NYPL Research Fellow in Jewish Studies. She also was a recipient of the Ephraim E. Urbach Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Jewish Studies awarded by The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Her articles have appeared in leading journals including: Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, The Journal of Religion, and The Harvard Theological Review. Her research explores significant shifts in esoteric and kabbalistic doctrines, their philosophical inspirations, relations to medicine, astronomy and folk culture. She investigates the role of Neoplatonism and Sufism in the formation of Kabbalah, and surveys similarities to Jewish mystical concepts found in classical philosophical texts, such as Spinoza’s thought, German Idealism, and Hegelianism. The lion’s share of her inquiries is conducted against the backdrop of manuscript sources. She is currently researching sensory perceptions and the imagination in esoteric and kabbalistic texts. Her scholarly pursuits also include the study of meontology in philosophical and mystical writings.

Education

• PhD, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies), 2015-2018
• Master's, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 2012-2014
• Bachelor's, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 2009-2012

Research Interests

• Kabbalah (including Christian Kabbalah)
• Philosophy (chiefly research in metaphysics, phenomenology of perception, aesthetics, meontology)
• Magic (especially Jewish magic)
• Comparative mysticism
• Psychoanalysis
• Manuscripts and incunabula
• Comparative literature  

Fall 2025 Courses

 JSTU-J 203 - Magical Thinking in Modern Israel

Publication Highlights