He came on board to help finish a translation of Jewish mysteries 20 years in the making, and this week, the first of two works by Joel Hecker, a Bala Cynwyd resident and associate professor at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, will be unveiled to the world.

“I have little doubt this will be one of the highlights of my scholarly career, and probably the most lasting,” Hecker said in a Philadelphia Inquirer report by Kristin Holmes.

Hecker’s task was to translate medieval manuscripts from Aramaic to English for “a new English translation of the Zohar, a compendium of commentaries and essays that is the foundation of the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah.”

Hecker’s is the 11th of the 12-volume, $2 million project entitled The Zohar: Pritzker Edition that is being published by Stanford University Press.

“The whole project is extremely important because it’s the first full rendering in competent English that incorporates the highest standards of scholarship in the field,” said Jewish mysticism expert Elliot R. Wolfson.

“It opens up a whole new universe of what Judaism might be about,” Hecker said.

Read more about the translation project and its local ties in the Philadelphia Inquirer here.