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August 7, 2018

Maimonides the Mystic

No kabbalist, but someone who yearned for mystical union with the Divine.

In the conventional view, the great rabbi and philosopher Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) was the archetypal rationalist, whose theology stands in stark contrast to that of the mystics who preceded and followed him. Yet, argues David Fried, while Maimonides’ thinking cannot accommodate the existence of a mystical universe mediating between God and physical reality—a core doctrine of Kabbalah—it nevertheless has a deeply mystical strain in its focus on achieving union with the Divine, the ultimate goal of all mysticism. Fried draws on a passage near the end of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed outlining seven levels of human perfection to make his point:

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