Who really was Elisha ben Avuyah, and why was he a mistake of rabbinic interpretation? How did he become a blank canvas for the Rabbis’ heretical anxieties?

 Rabbi Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein is the founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute, a nonprofit, international, UNESCO-sponsored interfaith organization. A noted scholar of Jewish studies, he has held academic posts at Tel Aviv University and has served as director of the Center for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Beit Morasha College, Jerusalem. Rabbi Dr. Goshen-Gottstein is the author or editor of many books including The Jewish Encounter with Hinduism, Jewish Theology and World Religions, and most recently, Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice. His book, The Sinner and the Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha ben Abuya and Eleazar ben Arach was published in 2000 by Stanford University Press.