Judaism

Halakha, theology, practice, and the inner life of Jewish observance.

Atheistic Explanation of Jewish Survival

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Allahu Akbar. But also:

“A strong atheistic explanation has to work without invoking chosenness, providence, metaphysics, or teleology, while still accounting for the extraordinary empirical fact-pattern: a tiny, dispersed, repeatedly targeted ethnocultural group not only survives but regenerates political autonomy, cultural creativity, and demographic continuity over multiple millennia.

The best explanation in secular scholarship combines four interacting forces:

1. Covenantal Ethno-Textual Identity (Self-Reinforcing Structure)

From a secular standpoint, the “covenant” is not metaphysical but a uniquely durable cultural technology.

Key features:

– A portable constitution: Torah + halakha function like a constitution that does not depend on land or state structure.
– A text-centered identity: Identity is encoded in textual mastery, not political territory.
– A distributed, ritualized pedagogy: Every household is a micro-school; literacy is a norm.

Why this matters:
Most ancient peoples tied identity to local cults, temples, territorial kingship. Once displaced, they disappeared. Judaism reengineered identity into portable, duplicable, home-scaled institutions.

This is a sociological survival innovation, not a miracle.

2. Decentralized Communal Networks (Horizontal Resilience)

Jewish communities operated as non-state micro-polities: qehilloth, batté din, charitable systems, standardized rituals, and normative law.

Characteristics:

– Leaderless-by-design robustness: No single authority’s destruction could collapse the system.
– Rapid institutional reconstruction in diaspora: A minyan + a scroll = immediate restoration of structure.
– Highly networked long-distance trade and correspondence: This strengthened international solidarity and resource pooling.

Think of it as a resilient “fractal” system: every fragment regenerates the whole.

No divine design needed—just a uniquely adaptive communal architecture producing long-term continuity.

3. Strong Boundary Maintenance Paired with Permeability

From an atheist perspective, Jewish survival requires maintaining identity yet also allowing controlled integration.

Judaism manages this through:

– Clear endogamy norms → slows assimilation.
– Clear ritual boundaries → makes identity legible and persistent.
– Naturalization allowed but regulated → refreshes the population without dissolving coherence.
– High retention under persecution → increases internal solidarity.

Most groups collapse because either:

– identity becomes too loose (assimilates), or
– identity becomes too rigid (cannot replenish members).

Judaism found a rare equilibrium: cohesive but permeable.

4. Cultural Hyper-Adaptability Under Extreme Pressure

Historically measurable traits:

– Literacy rates far above surrounding populations.
– Economic niche flexibility (trade, finance, crafts, scholarship, administration).
– Mastery of local languages + maintenance of Hebrew/Judeo-languages.
– Continuous reinterpretation of law and tradition.
– Intellectual productivity disproportionate to population size.

None of these require divine intervention. They reflect long-term cultural selection pressures: groups that adapted survived; those that didn’t vanished.

Judaism is one of the rare cultures that evolved adaptive plasticity as a core identity trait.

The Emergence of the Jewish State

A secular analysis sees the Jewish state as emerging from:

– Zionist political ideology (a modern nationalism).
– European nationalism and decolonization patterns.
– Hebrew revival as a cultural modernist project.
– Global geopolitical shifts post-WWII.
– Exceptional diasporic resource networks supporting state-building.

The state of Israel, from this view, is not a miracle but the convergence of:

– a people that maintained identity & literacy for millennia
– modern nationalism and colonial retreat
– mass-mobilizing trauma
– global political opportunity windows
– extraordinary diaspora capital (intellectual, financial, relational)

The simplest atheistic explanation at the highest level:

Judaism as a cultural system was repeatedly tested by extreme pressures; the only communities that survived were those with traits that made survival possible. Those traits—literacy, law, communal solidarity, adaptability—compounded over time.

In other words, Judaism is a culturally selected system optimized for long-term endurance.

This does not reduce Jews to biology—it describes memetic, institutional, and cultural selection, not genetic superiority or mystical destiny.

A strong atheistic explanation combines:

1. Portable textual identity and law
2. Decentralized, regenerative communal structures
3. Cohesive-but-permeable boundaries
4. High cultural adaptability to hostile environments
5. Modern political opportunity windows
6. Cultural selection over millennia

None of these require supernatural claims. Yet together, they explain why Judaism—unlike most ancient civilizations—remains alive, coherent, creative, and politically reconstituted.”

Barukh Hashem, who has planted eternal life in our midst and gave us the Torah as a gift of love. Those who embraced and lived the Torah and its culture as a way of life, survived – if not them (genocide, after all), then their descendants. Those who didn’t, remain only as chapters and footnotes in history books.

עם ישראל חי

One River Many Streams

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What ties together all Hasidim across time and space?

Look to the root, not the branches

There is one river with many streams

You can research the thing in the academy if you want, but set your scope to maximum scale

Otherwise you’ll spend your life in the tide pool not even knowing of the ocean

Rambam Was a Hasid

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Rambam, Maimonides, Abu Imran, or the Ra”m ba”r Maza”l, as he was variously known, was not just a legal scholar and judge, not just a doctor and a philosopher, but a contemplative mystic on the path of prophecy, not just practicing conceptual-emotional quietude through meditative prayer but actively living a life of self-abnegation, service, and the disciplined cultivation of virtue.

In short, it would be safe to say that Rambam was a Hasid.

It is hard to define what exactly Hasidism is.

The simple, popular definition is “piety.”

But piety tends to carry a rather narrow, religious meaning, that fails to capture or convey either the breadth or depth of Hasidism or things identifiable as Hasidic.

What can we say about Hasidism?

It is related to human development, to the balancing of psycho-somatic forces and the realization of human psycho-spiritual potential. It is related to the revelatory construction of the divine image in the human being and its attunement to the divine pathos in the world. It is related to the integration of heaven and earth, the perfection of the individual human and the entirety of creation as micro- and macrocosms of each other, the orbital harmony of souls dancing and singing praises of the Creator who loves all. It is related to love and to the transformation of a scared, savage animal into a compassionate being in love with humanity, the creation, and the Creator.

Within and beyond the stabilizing framework of the text and law, Hasidism exists as an active reading of the signs of divine love in the daily and mortal stories of our lives. The material of Hasidism can take any form but is often comprised of songs and stories and shocking intellectual-emotional prods to reconsider, reinvigorate, and reconstruct the world we live in. Its flavor, melody, and intoxicating scent come from the unique conditions in which Hasidism arises anew in every generation and in every community, adapting to the specific psycho-spiritual (but also socio-political!) needs of every time, place, and people. Hasidism reaches every person on their level and slowly lures them into different ways of feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting.

Every Hasid follows the same path to truly knowing their Creator – yet each Hasid travels the path differently, according to their own condition and the condition of their community.

Rambam, having absorbed the cultural and spiritual heritage of Andalus, was well-equipped not just to develop his own private practice as a Hasid but to guide the Jewish community of Egypt in his day (and much of the Jewish world) in the ways of Hasidism.

It is well-known but perhaps often overlooked that Rambam named the first three books of his magnum opus, the books of Knowledge, Love, and Times. The significance of setting these themes as the starting point for Maimonidean halakhic study and practice is profound: the entire system of law is cast as a path towards the Hasidic goals of True Knowledge and Love of God, structured by and filtered through the shifting conditions of the time cycles we inhabit in this earthly existence. It is of further note that in recording as settled law in the Book of Love the prayer practices of the ancient rabbis – including the full washing of face, hands of feet in preparation for prayer, meditating before prayer, kneeling and prostrating during prayer, among other things – Rambam was directing all those who sought his guidance to pray in a way that was decidedly Hasidic.

In his Guide (Signpost) for the Perplexed (Facing Diverging Paths), Rambam functions as a guide for the Hasid facing the limitations not just of his worldview but his mode of thinking, and seeking True Knowledge of his Creator. Addressing himself to the rational reader standing on the cusp of the transrational, Rambam drew on the terminology, ideas, writings, and contemplative practices of not just rabbinic Hasidim but Hasidim of the nations (known generally as Sufis), such as Ibn al-Arabi and Ibn Sina (who also transmitted many of the Neoaristotelian ideas and concepts Rambam saw as aligned with the rabbinic tradition), in slowly deconstructing the reader’s way of thinking about God, religion, language, truth, and power, and leading the attentive reader, by means of signs and hints and prods, to a new of thinking and practicing religion authentically, virtuously, and meditatively, setting them on the path to prophecy.

Once again, in this most well-known of Rambam’s works, his approach and guidance can be seen as decidedly Hasidic.

Unfortunately, as academics have methodological trouble studying and writing about phenomena that lack precise labels and definitions, little has been written about Rambam, Hasidism, and Sufism. Much more has been written about Rambam’s son, R Abraham Maimuni, and his (supposedly innovative) ideas and practices that are more easily identifiable as (and explicitly labeled) “Hasidic/Sufi.”

Starting with Rambam’s own son, generations of Maimonidean Hasidim studied, practiced, and taught the legal path of Rambam alongside what they likewise represented as his Hasidic path – expressing and elaborating on that path in an idiom shared with Sufis – without experiencing any form of conflict within their practice. It is highly unlikely that this intergenerational Hasidism originates in a rupture with Rambam’s teachings and practice – but rather, especially in light of the above, was a continuation of his work.

My hope is that this exceedingly short description of Hasidism and some Hasidic aspects of Rambam’s work will provide both greater understanding of the psycho-spiritual mode and aims of Maimonideanism as well as the roots, context, and ideas behind the Maimuni family’s Hasidism.

May our service and our love only be enhanced by our ever-deepening awareness of our service and our love.

Go to Yourself

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Go to yourself
From what you were
Told you are
From your father’s
Hopes and dreams
From the limits
Of those around you
To the land that
I will show you
Within your soul
Beyond the horizon
Of your waking world
To the sacred soil
Of your questing heart
Searching for me
Before I called

Go for yourself
Go for your freedom, your beloved, your truth
Cross over the abyss
Between what is and what will be
Cross over the river
Flowing from Hermon
To the land of the rain
Justice sown
Salvation bloomed
Go for your blessing
Of the children of the earth

Get yourself
Abraham
To the land
I promise
You will become
Who you truly are

Why Aren’t We Doing This

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From his Islamic context, R Abraham b haRambam drew the obvious conclusion – if our traditional laws describe ideas and prescribe practices, and it’s accepted in the prevailing milieu to discuss those ideas and do those practices, then why aren’t we?

Food for thought from the modern Middle East.

Rambam Before His Son

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As someone approaching the subject from the Maimonidean angle, it amazes me how people attribute innovations to Rambam’s son that are actually earlier described in Rambam’s works, and much of which is first mentioned in the classical rabbinic literature.

Many things that they attribute to Islamic Sufi influence are clearly revivals of the documented earlier Jewish practice, for those who are familiar with the MT laws of prayer and the Guide’s chapters on prayer and contemplative meditation.

Which is not to say that there were no Islamic Sufi influences on Rambam or his son. The Sufi literature that Rambam read in Andalus is well-documented, as are its influences on his thought. Similarly, his son was no stranger to quoting the Quran alongside the Tenakh, along with the relevant insights of well- and lesser-known Islamic Sufis. But these influences supplement and adorn a Jewish core of theory and praxis inherited from the rabbis of the Talmud and the Geonim, and, as Rambam and his son would have it, ultimately from the nebiim.

Kollelim as National Service

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I respect Haredim.

I think that their counter-cultural ethos is inspirational and the construction of a lifestyle revolving around the study and observance of Torah is admirable.

I, too, value the study of Torah and in fact I think that it can be a valid form of national service, on par with army service, in its own way.

The past century has painfully reminded us, again and again, that we need soldiers, pilots, and commanders.

In this stage of history, in this world of violence, that is undeniable.

But we also need – have always needed – dedicated researchers, thinkers, and writers, imbued with the values and commitments of the Torah, to study and contemplate and illuminate the pressing questions of state and communal policy, from the unique perspective of the Torah’s texts and traditions.

We need units of kollelim studying the major sugiyoth of our time and presenting informative literature and lectures to advise and guide our leaders through the crises of this era and of this year.

We need the best and brightest Talmudic minds expending every effort to plumb the depths of Torah for solutions to our society’s problems.

Now it’s true that this form of national service isn’t right for everybody – there will have to be standards for enrollment and maintenance, tests and evaluations, and supervision by qualified, competent heads of kollelim and yeshiboth.

Those who would rather hang out at the pizza shop, or protest army service in the streets, or climb construction cranes, instead of dedicating their lives to Torah study for the sake of teaching it to our nation at the most critical times, need not apply.

But the religious reform I envision for this country can and should recognize the unique contributions the Haredi sector can make to our national defense and welfare, on our own terms as the nation of Israel.

Beyond Jewish Studies

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I’ll go one step further and argue that the origins and historical trajectories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can not be adequately understood from within the framework of Jewish Studies and require the updated framework of Israelite Studies for proper analysis, explanation, and theory.

Israelite Studies

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Elephantine. Idumea. Himyar. Kaifeng.

Samaritans. Bené Anusím. Bene Israel. Beta Israel. Bene Menashe. Igbo. Qaraites. Amazighs. Palestinians.

Ashkenaz. Sepharad. Teiman. Paras.

Jewish Studies is an outdated discipline.

It’s time to get serious about Israelite Studies.

Igbo Israelites

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The Igbo culture always surprises me.

Today I learned that those Igbos that still pray according to the ways of Omenana, convene an additional service steeped in tradition (after they recite together the tephilloth that they have learned from Jewish sources) with the invocation: “Whom do Igbos serve?” “Yah!”

I don’t think we’re talking about a lost tribe of Israel that wandered en masse across Africa – but an Israelite nucleus that fled (northern?) Israel, migrated through Elephantine westward all the way to the Niger River Basin, where they naturalized/integrated with members of local communities and were supplemented by Jewish Berbers via Mali and Israelite/Jewish merchants from central and east Africa.

According to this theory, the nucleus diverged from Israel and the core community coalesced along the Niger River before the textual revolution of Ezra haSopher and his court in the (later!) Persian period.

Notably, unlike their Nigerian neighbors, the Igbo kept kashruth, family purity, inheritance laws, economic laws, the laws of to’eba and tuma, and male circumcision on the eighth day, just like Israelites.

Most importantly, the Igbos are unique in West Africa in preserving a form of “republicanism” that exhibits the same horizontality in socio-political organization that R José Faur z”l argued is central to Israelite society.

And according to this theory, and unlike their erstwhile Jewish cousins, the Igbos lost Hebrew, the text of the Tora, the Shabbath, the attachment to Israel, and their own history (beyond the popular tradition – “We are Israelites!”).

There remains so much research to be done in Israelite Studies, especially in Africa – anthropological studies, material culture cataloging, archival documentation, genetic sampling and classification.

We need to devote resources to developing a coherent and rigorous picture of Israelite history beyond the Jewish people, in Israel, the Middle East, Africa, and the rest of Asia.