Thought

Rational mystic, post-Maimonidean, student of sages

Thought

מחשבהفكر

I want to live as full, honest, and authentic a covenantal life as I can, and to understand how it all ties together.

Rational Mystic

Reason is the basis. Nothing I believe can conflict with it. The mysticism itself isn’t rational, though. It is transrational: reason is the conduit to a more intuitive, subtle, interpretive, and poetic way of knowing that goes a little past where reason can safely tread. I think that territory is real, and probably one of the most truthful places there is.

So: no superstition and no magical thinking, and plenty of awe at the Creator of all things big and small. I am very interested in science, very interested in poetry, and in reading the world as one coherent thing. Heschel’s God in Search of Man reads to me like modern Jewish sufism in the language of philosophy, and it dovetails with Rambam in unexpected places.

Post-Maimonidean

For years Rambam’s path was the basis of my practice and my Jewish identity. I follow it in halakha without becoming a partisan of the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or any other denomination, while keeping respect and love for the people in those communities.

Being a Maimonidean doesn’t mean accepting everything he says uncritically. It’s about embracing a method and a path, not a set of claims. Sometimes, after reviewing the sources Rambam based himself on, I come to the realization that I disagree with him. That’s fine. Rambam himself said to go with whomever presents the more reasonable argument.From Perks of Being a Maimonidean

These days I am a little bit post-Maimonidean. I’m not limited to his halakhic positions, or even necessarily to his paradigm, and I expect to have more to say about where that leads in the coming year. The question I’m working on is what of the halakhic system can be restored and developed for a civilization that faces forward.

In practice, my prayer has become more contemplative. Rambam never treated the liturgy as the end point of prayer; he pointed toward contemplation of God, and that speaks to me more than the words do. Shabbath is a celebration: friends, reading, rest, and delight, a little of the world to come inside this one.

Zen, the Stoics, and yoga

People ask where they fit into my Judaism. I’m not sure the question runs in that direction. They are all part of who I am. Stoicism, Zen, and yoga are each a way of learning to master the mind, to let go of whatever stands between us and truth, reality, life, and God, and to learn that we are not quite the selves we think we are.

They make me healthier, more humane, more compassionate, and more rational. My yoga practice is modest and does me a lot of good, and the Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita stay in my pocket for spare moments.

Student of Sages

Of sages and of wisdom wherever I can find it, Jewish or not. What I’m trying to learn is how to be a wise and good person. Rambam and his family. Heschel. Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.

And José Faur, whom I found through his essay Anti-Maimonidean Demons. It changed how I saw the way Orthodox history and ideology are told, and where Jewish authority actually lives. Faur argued that every other society was built on hierarchy and Israel alone was organized along horizontal lines, because every human being is created in the image of God and because the covenant at Sinai put the Law above every king. I wrote about it in The Horizontal Society.

Alphabetic Jew

Faur calls it Alphabetic Judaism: a covenant written down and published to a whole people, so that authority lives in a text anyone can read. Judaism is a community of textual interpretation and production, and the world itself is a text to be interpreted. That makes us the world’s oldest book club. I’m a member.

The constellation on the home page is that alphabet in its Phoenician form, the twenty-two letters Hebrew and Arabic both grew from.

Where I write about it