Sponsored by the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life; the Departments of Jewish Studies and Italian; and the Program in Comparative Literature
Dr. Daniel Ross Goodman, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, St. John’s University; Allen and Joan Bildner Visiting Scholar, Spring 2026
Within the field of Italian literature, the term “supernal cities” immediately conjures Italo Calvino’s beloved twentieth-century novel Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities), in which the author constructs a cosmos filled with imagined metropolises of an almost infinite variety. Although Calvino popularized the idea of celestial cities, he was not the first Italian writer to conceive of them. Nearly 250 years earlier, Paduan pietist and kabbalist Moses Chaim Luzzatto published a curious volume in Hebrew, Mishkenei Elyon (Supernal Structures), a treatise on the Holy Temple that he believed to have existed in the heavens.
In this seminar, Dr. Goodman will uncover the roots of these captivating works of fantastical literature, examine the ways in which the authors transformed theological and literary precedents, and show how their conceptions of imaginary cities offer a model for the perennial real-world challenge of resolving territorial disputes peacefully.
Learn more about Dr. Goodman HERE.
Lunch will be served.
RSVP by Tuesday, March 31, to