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 Jewish author and religious scholar whose academic research beginning in the 1980s pioneered the study of religion, spirituality, and health
Scientist and religious scholar, Dr. Jeff Levin is an internationally known writer, a dynamic and authoritative speaker, and a widely respected researcher working at
the interface of religion, science, and public health. His most recent work involves investigation of Jewish moral and theological perspectives on themes such as loving God, spirituality and health, and aging.
An epidemiologist, by training, and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, Dr. Levin is a pioneer in the field known as the
epidemiology of religion—the scientific study of how characteristics and expressions of religious faith and practice serve to prevent morbidity and mortality and to promote health and
well-being. His research and writing for over two decades have been instrumental in broadening the perspectives of social scientists and public health professionals about the connections among body, mind, and spirit.
Through this work, Dr. Levin has sought to establish the foundations for a new paradigm in biomedical science—one he terms theosomatic medicine. According to this perspective,
“everything in existence—inside and outside of our bodies, from the smallest molecule to the actions of a loving God—is fair game for research on how and why people stay well, become ill,
and get better.” In his groundbreaking book, God, Faith, and Health, he presented the results of social, epidemiologic, and clinical research pointing the way to a truly integrative model of
health and healing for the 21st Century.
Most recently, Dr. Levin has begun work on a series of books exploring themes in moral theology and applied religious ethics. The first book, the forthcoming Divine Love:
Perspectives in the World's Religious Traditions, affirms a mutual and covenantal relationship with the divine as a solution to the current world crisis. The path of divine love as espoused by
normative religion is described as a beneficent alternative to more narrow and distorted visions of religion, such as fundamentalism, materialistic humanism, and superficial engagement of an
unmoored spirituality. Only a loving relationship with God within the context of the great faith and wisdom traditions of the world can fully inform and motivate the acts of love, unity, justice,
compassion, kindness, and mercy for all beings that are so desperately required to counter the toxins of divisiveness, separation, judgment, indifference, antagonism, oppression, and cruelty
fueled by distortions of religiousness and faith.
In the forthcoming Upon These Three Things, Dr. Levin summarizes what normative Judaism
has to say about what it means to love God, how we go about doing so, and how this affects our lives and our world. Drawing especially on canonical and rabbinic sources, he discusses
the importance of a life devoted to justice, mercy, and acts of loving kindness as the truest expression of traditional Jewish morality and the surest pathway to both personal and cultural
transformation. Accordingly, Jewish observance and social consciousness are not mutually exclusive but rather inseparable expressions of the Jewish covenant with God.
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