Spirituality in the Writings of Etty Hillesum ─ Proceedings of the Etty Hillesum Conference at Ghent University, November 2008

Drawing on Etty Hillesum’s writings, this book offers a comprehensive account of international scholarship on the life, works and vision of the Dutch Jewish writer Etty Hillesum, whose life was shaped by the totalitarian Nazi-regime, and who lived a courageous spirituality in the darkest period of the twentieth century.

Klaas A. D. Smelik (1950) was born in the Netherlands and studied Theology, Semitic Languages, and Ancient History in Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Leiden. He taught Old Testament and Hebrew in Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Brussels, and Jewish History at the K.U. Leuven. Since 2005, he has taught Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Ghent University and is director of the Etty Hillesum Research Centre (EHOC) there. He edited the Dutch and English unabridged editions of Etty Hillesum’s writings and, together with Ria van den Brandt, the Etty Hillesum Studies. He has (as writer or editor) published around 30 books and 200 articles on the Hebrew Bible, ancient Hebrew inscriptions, ancient history, Jewish studies, anti-Semitism, and Etty Hillesum. This year, he hopes to finish his book on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.Ria van den Brandt (1960) is a philosopher , specialized in spiritual traditions, twentieth-century life stories, poetry, and textual reception history. She is associate senior researcher at the Faculty of Religious Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, and affiliated researcher at the Westerbork Memorial Centre in the Netherlands. Van den Brandt is editor with Klaas A.D. Smelik of the Etty Hillesum Studies. She has written many articles on Etty Hillesum and other subjects, and published (as editor or writer) around fifteen books. Her book Denken met Etty Hillesum was published in 2006. Van den Brandt’s actual field of research concerns Jewish witnesses of the Second World War, particularly witnesses of Theresienstadt.Meins G. S. Coetsier (1977) was born in the Netherlands and obtained his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy (National University of Ireland) in Dublin. In 2008, he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy at Ghent University for his work on Eric Voegelin. Coetsier is affiliated with the Research Foundation in Flanders (FWO) and is staff member at the Etty Hillesum Research Centre (EHOC). He is author of Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008). He is currently focusing on Hillesum’s writings in the light of Eric Voegelin, Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.