Abigail "Abby" Wells, a doctoral candidate, is awarded a postdoctoral scholarship to study in Israel.
Abigail "Abby" Wells is a woman, influenced by Christian and Buddhist principals in her youth, who ultimately converted to Judaism.
At age 37, she is a distinctive person with a distinctive intellect, who is quick to identify universal themes that relate to all of humanity.
Look no further for evidence of that fact than Wells recently being awarded a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholarship to conduct religious research at the University of Haifa in Haifa, Israel.
She is Alvernia University's first postdoctoral Fulbright scholar, with plans to travel to Israel in August to begin 20 months of study in the Israeli university's sociology department.
Wells is one of more than 800 U.S. citizens who will either teach, conduct research or provide expertise abroad for the 2018-19 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.
Fulbright awardees are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement as well as service and leadership in their respective fields.
Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright academic program has had 59 alumni awarded the Nobel Prize, 82 who received Pulitzer Prizes and 37 who served as as a head of state or government.
"It is truly an honor to represent Alvernia University as a Fulbright scholar," Wells said, arriving recently on the Alvernia campus from her home in Boulder, Colo., to publicly defend her doctoral dissertation, entitled "Reading Leadership Life Writing: A Critical Historical Interpretation of Black Jewish Life in the the Americas."
"I believe this award is a testament to the outcomes and growing importance of Alvernia's interdisciplinary leadership community," she said.
Spiritual leadership
Wells' dissertation focuses on spiritual leadership and proposes a new paradigm for thinking and writing about leadership research.
Wells has a bachelor's degree in psychology from North Carolina State University and master's degrees from Barry University, Miami, in social work and in holistic spirituality from Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia. Her doctorate from Alvernia is in leadership.
Wells said the roots of her academic interests touch on concepts of universal spirituality and more specifically on African and African-American Jewish history with interests that converge around late 19th century sources of Ethiopian Jewry.
Her Fulbright research will center on the Ethiopian absorption since the modern period in Jewish studies. Time in Israel will provide her with access to primary source materials.
Raised in the Charlotte area of North Carolina, Wells, one of four siblings, is the second-oldest daughter of an elementary-teacher mother and a father who served in the U.S. Marines and later ran a construction company.
"I was introduced to Judaism at the age of 5 when my mother would come home with worksheets about Hanukkah and menorahs and dreidels," Wells said.
She said her mother identified with the Christian faith generally, and her father, who served in Vietnam, seemed to embody a Buddhist sensibility, drawn to meditation and evoking a contemplative approach to life.
"Those were my influences, but I found that the Jewish tradition fit my experience of God," she said. "Judaism is a lot about asking questions and addressing the spiritual dimensions of God and the divine."
Judaism fits approach to life
Judaism fit into Wells' approach to life, she said, noting that at one point she considered enrolling in a rabbinical school.
In fact, in 2015, she founded an unaffiliated synagogue in Ann Arbor, Mich., that boasted some 30 to 50 families, many of them reflecting a diversity of ethnic groups and races and hailing from other interfaith religious and nonreligious traditions. She also currently has a residence in Ann Arbor.
Her own lifetime spiritual experiences have led her to the belief that there has been a shift in global consciousness that has led to the rediscovery that people are all spiritually interconnected.
"As a part of human evolution, I believe people are coming back to finding God in all aspects of life and in every tradition," she said. "In some sense, we are seeing traditions merging, coming together. The question is, what happened that caused us to forget this unity, to forget that we are all connected?"
Zeroing in on the historical marginalization of those in certain religious traditions is a part of Wells' academic research mission.
"I will be looking critically at the impact of race, gender and other areas of Jewish history as it relates to people's lives," she said. "My work in the subfield of Ethiopian Jews shows that Jews are much more diverse than many people think," at least those with a purely or strongly Western and Eastern European perspective.
"The erasure of black and brown Jewish people is problematic for the history of the Jewish people. I see my work as offering a timely correction within the Jewish community."
Contact Bruce R. Posten: life@readingeagle.com.About Fulbright Scholarships
What: The Fulbright program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build lasting connections between the people of the United States and people of other countries.
Funding: It is funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program, which operates in 160 countries.
By the numbers: Since its establishment in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program has given more than 380,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.
For more information: Visit eca.state.gov/fulbright or contact the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Press Office by telephone 202-632-6452 or email ECA-Press@state.gov.