Practical Mysticism: Sufi Journeys of Heart and Mind

Dr. Y. Jonah Kumek is currently the Religious Studies Coordinator at the State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo State. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in religious studies at SUNY Buffalo State, Niagara University, and Daemen College. His research interests include scriptural analysis, anthropology of religion and mysticism. Before becoming interested in religious studies, Dr. Kumek was doing his doctorate degree in physics at SUNY at Buffalo and published academic papers in the areas of quantum and medical physics. He then decided to engage with the world of social sciences through cultural anthropology. Later, he published a book about different cultures and beliefs of international teachers in America while he was a research associate in the anthropology department of the same university. Recently, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Divinity School and published a book on religious literacy through ethnography. Dr. Kumek, who remains interested in physics—he solves physics problems to relax—enjoys working with different languages: German, Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Turkish and Spanish, especially in his research of scriptural analysis. He also takes great pleasure in classical mystical poetry. He will be a visiting scholar in the Spring of 2018 at Harvard Divinity School.