James Kugel on cancer and religious belief

BIBLICAL SCHOLAR JAMES KUGEL has written a book on his experience with cancer and what he learned about human beliefs:

After cancer, biblical scholar James Kugel considers religious belief

By Sue Fishkoff · February 7, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. (JTA) -- When Jewish biblical scholar James Kugel was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of cancer in 2000, he didn’t find religion.

The world-renowned academic and author of numerous books, including the acclaimed “How to Read the Bible,” already was a practicing Orthodox Jew.

Instead, Kugel used his own very sudden confrontation with mortality to explore the roots of religious belief in general.

The result, “In the Valley of the Shadow,” published this month by Free Press, is an examination of what happened to Kugel after his diagnosis and how it helped him understand why people believe what they do.

Now cancer-free, Kugel retired in 2003 after 20 years as the Harry M. Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Hebrew Literature at Harvard University. He lives with his wife in Jerusalem, and he serves as chair of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan.

In his book, Kugel explains his theory of the “small self” versus the “big self.” The small self, a concept that has existed throughout most of human history, posits the individual as a finite piece of the network of the universe. By contrast, the big self, a concept common among Western people today, refers to those who view the world through the prism of their own all-encompassing presence.

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The article includes an interview with him about the book. I studied with Professor Kugel at Harvard University in the 1980s.