Australia’s Silence on Iran Is a Boon to Russia and China
Whetting the appetite of an imperial power that is far more dangerous and far closer to home.
November 22, 2022
What Medieval Rabbis Learned from Muslim Mystics
Two Jews who drew on Sufism.
While the influence of Islamic philosophy, science, poetry, and linguistics on the Jewish thought of the Middle Ages is well known, less attention has been given to the influence of the less rationalist strains of Islamic thought. The best example of this is Abraham Maimonides—son of the famous rabbi and philosopher and his successor as the leader of Egyptian Jewry—who believed that both the ideas of and practices of the Muslim mystics known as Sufis could be adapted to fit Judaism. Another example, writes Rachel Goldberg, is the Spanish sage and rabbinic judge Baḥya ibn Paquda (ca. 1050-1120), whose work Duties of the Heart remains popular in yeshivas today.
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Login or SubscribeNovember 22, 2022
No, the U.S.-Israel Alliance Isn’t on the Brink of Disaster
Benjamin Netanyahu will likely get along better with Joe Biden than he did with Barack Obama.
Israel’s Prime Ministers and Their Books
David Ben-Gurion’s 18,000 books, and Menachem Begin’s many newspapers.
Steven Spielberg’s Jewish Fable and Its Moral Universe
For Spielberg and Tony Kushner, Jews can only defend themselves by playing on Gentile guilt.
What Medieval Rabbis Learned from Muslim Mystics
Two Jews who drew on Sufism.