Sephardic

Andalusian, North African, Mizrahi, and Mediterranean Jewish tradition.

Perks of Being a Maimonidean

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Come To The Dark Side, Luke

While I’m still recovering from the flu and am stuck on the couch with all this extra time to examine my life lol, I thought it would be somewhat instructive for most of you if I listed some of the perks that I see in moving beyond #Ashkenazi/#Sephardic Judaisms and choosing the #Maimonidean path in halakha.

The goal is to live a life that is:
✅ Halakhic (rooted in Gemara and Geonim)
✅ Rational (no superstition or magical thinking)
✅ Practical (meant to be accommodating)
✅ Meaningful (a coherent framework for perfecting ourselves and our society)
…as guided by Rambam’s and his family’s writings and responsa.

Without becoming a partisan of the:
❌ Orthodox
❌ Conservative
❌ Reform
❌ Or any other denomination
…while maintaining respect and love for the members of those communities ❤️

That’s the basic idea.

What follows are some of the small (and big!) ways my life as a halakhically-observant Jew might differ from what you’re used to, particularly if you come from an Orthodox background.

If you have any questions about any of them, feel free to ask (although fair warning, I generally don’t debate people).

If you also chose the Maimonidean path and can think of some perks that I missed (hello, flu-brain!) – list em in the comments.

The Perks of Being a Maimonidean

Meta Perks
– Only the national court can obligate all Jewish people
– Minhag is never binding unless you’re in a public setting with a group of people that exclusively follow it
– If there is any doubt about how to apply a rabbinic law – we go lenient
– Rabbinic decrees are limited to only what they originally decreed, not everything analogous
– There is no such thing as daas Torah – consulting a rabbi is the same as consulting any legal advisor

Shabbath
– Electricity on Shabbath is permitted
– Nolad is not an operative category on Shabbath at all
– Muqtse is only an issue if the object has no use but melakha
– Open and closing modern devices is normal use – you can open an umbrella on Shabbath

Yom Tob
– Only one day of yom tob for everyone celebrating in Israel
– Cooking on yom tob is straightforward

Pesah
– No fast for bekhor on ‘ereb Pesah (phew)
– Pesah cleaning is normal – simply removing leavened food, cleaning crumbs, and removing stains
– Qitniyoth are fine! Gebrokts is fine!
– Selling hamets is not required if you get rid of it, but is easy to do if you can’t
– The Haggada can be made shorter or longer depending on preference

Kashruth
– Six hours between meat and cheese is either approximate (simple read) or replaceable with mouth cleaning (taking Rambam’s approach to the sources)
– No waiting between cheese and meat
– Bishul akum requires actual bishul and actual akum, and only applies to fancy food
– Fish and meat together is fine
– Bittul be-shishim doesn’t escalate
– No separate dishes if vessels are non-absorbent

Nidda
– No extra waiting time beyond the Talmudic clean days
– Ketamim, bediqoth, and harhaqoth are all the Talmudic baseline, no extra stringencies
– Immersion requirements are more flexible (any moving body of rain/water) and less demanding (just remove whatever you don’t want that prevents the water from reaching your skin)

Marriage, Divorce, and Membership
– You don’t need a rabbi to get married
– The aguna crisis is solved via annulment
– Giyyur is simple and can be done by three Jewish adults in an hour, for the right person

Tephilla and Berakhoth
– Prayers are much shorter and more embodied
– Women have the same obligation in tephilla as men (no exemption or diminution of obligation due to being time-bound)
– But women are exempt from qeriath shema
– No tebilath Ezra required (but a shower would count anyway)
– Torah reading is fulfilled even from a defective scroll

Mourning
– Mourning minhagim are simple and non-obligatory, responsive to the mourner’s needs
– But also music during the Omer!
– Meat during the Nine Days!

Monetary
– Tips count as tsedaqa

What else can you add to the list???

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Now don’t get it twisted: being a Maimonidean, following Rambam, doesn’t mean accepting everything he says uncritically.

It’s about learning from and relying on his and his family’s halakhic and philosophical works as real guides for developing a Torah life – and ultimately 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.

The point is not to profess loyalty to another man’s ideas but to serve Hashem with an ever-growing awareness of truth and Torah.

May we all merit such awareness.

May we all be inspired to do teshuba.

May Hashem keep us safe and guard us from all who would do us harm.

May there be peace like Above.

Doña Gracia, Mother of Israel

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Went down the rabbit hole today researching alllllll the links in the chain from the expulsion from Spain in 1492 to the establishment of the state of #Israel in 1948.

I won’t go into all the details in this post – this needs to be a book – but here’s the upshot:

This is not a case of someone starting a project that failed and was picked up three centuries later and brought to fruition… This is someone starting something that continued and grew and eventually attained one of its concrete goals.

Doña Gracia Nasi, born into a culture wrestling with the political implications of being a disenfranchised minority and the national alternatives to perpetual exile and instability, literally started modern #Zionism (defined as the organized movement to reestablish Jewish autonomous society in Israel), developed the Galilean communities into a thriving independent society, and built the political, economic, and social networks that coalesced into what became later known as the Old Yishuv.

The communities that she built spread to Jerusalem and Hebron, absorbed waves of Sepharadi and Maghrebi immigrants, and eventually (re)established the northern coastal cities as Jewish centers. It was the Sepharadi and Maghrebi leaders of these communities who helped the incoming Europeans establish what became known as the New Yishuv.

Theodor Herzl definitely contributed to modern Zionism. He established many effective organizations that exist to this day and translated the Zionist project into the European political language of nation-statism in vogue in his day. But Herzl inherited an intellectual apparatus that originates with Sepharadi rabbis wrestling with the expulsion from Spain and he built on a foundation laid and lived by Sepharadi and Maghrebi immigrants and their descendants. Herzl’s efforts were just one phase in the long story of modern Zionism, and he ultimately did not succeed in creating a state.

It took two world wars, the fall of the Ottoman and British empires, and a genocide, before conditions emerged and international support could be garnered for the creation of a fully autonomous Jewish state in Israel.

Which leads us to an intriguing What If:

If Herzl had never been born, but all the international events of the first half of the twentieth century transpired, would we still have a state?

Maybe. The Old Yishuv was a robust, autonomous society, and in the 20th century it could have conceivably transitioned into a state.

But if Doña Gracia had never been born, could Herzl have done what he did? Could a state have later emerged?

I think the answer is, most likely not.

The truth is, modern Zionism starts with Doña Gracia Nasi:

The mother of the state of Israel.

1492 and Modernity

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Hot Take 🔥🔥🔥 The event that catalyzed the dawn of modernity in general, and of modern Zionism in particular, was the expulsion of the Jewish people from Spain in 1492.

The Arizal as Zionist

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Really enjoying this preliminary research situating the Arizal within the emergence of modern #Zionism and reading Lurianic kabbala as a Zionist project.

Immigration, political organization, autarky, ecology – just a few of the relevant elements promoted in the Arizal’s teachings and activities.

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.

Yemen Blues Shabazi

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Finallllllly listening to
Shabazi – A Tribute to the Poet
On our way to Ma’ale Adummim
Beautiful, bold, brassy, funky, traditional all in one sound
*Chef’s Kiss*
Yemen Blues – Ravid Kahalani

Who Invented the Jews

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Who invented the Jews? Who invented the Palestinians?

“Sand explained during a newspaper interview his reasons for writing the book: “I wrote the book for a double purpose. First, as an Israeli, to democratise the state; to make it a real republic. Second, I wrote the book against Jewish essentialism.”

Sand explained in the same interview that what he means by ‘Jewish essentialism’ is, in the words of the interviewer, “the tendency in modern Judaism to make shared ethnicity the basis for faith.” “That is dangerous and it nourishes antisemitism. I am trying to normalise the Jewish presence in history and contemporary life,” Sand said.”

On the one hand, Dr Sand’s work has been criticized on all kinds of academic grounds.

On the other hand, as a Neomaimonidean Talmudist and a religious Zionist, I share his concern that “ethnicity” not become the basis for Jewish or Israeli identity.

I am proud to be a member of a nation that defines itself by its laws and its institutions, and not by blood, language, or phenotype.

I am proud to be a member of a nation whose culture is not derived from, and whose society is not organized around, myths of power and supremacy, but whose culture derives from and whose society is organized around the careful, collective reading and discussion of books that are accessible to, and the heritage of, all.

I am proud to be a member of a nation with both native and naturalized paths to citizenship, and both citizen and non-citizen paths to membership and inclusion, and an ethos of mutual support and solidarity regardless of social standing, and therefore does not require the administration of purity tests or the construction of walls to keep out the impure.

I am proud to be a member of a nation that has taught, and learned from, and mixed with, and been enhanced by every other people on this planet, of all “ethnicities” and “races,” to one degree or another. A nation that has preserved, transmitted, created, and shared so many different and diverse ideas about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, ideas originating in the historical circumstances of members of our nation around the world and across history.

My religious Zionism reflects my understanding of Israelite nationalism, of Jewish peoplehood.

Of the unique covenant which is the political foundation of our society both in the land and in exile.

Of the psycho-spiritual collective organism that was created through that covenant and that has developed and evolved over the millenia since.

Of the cultural imperative to build a society that is just and holy, inclusive and diverse.

As the verse states:
ברב עם הדרת מלך
“In the multitude of the people is the glory of the King”

Dr Sands may have gotten a lot wrong but his mission seems to me – again, as a religious Zionist – to be sufficiently on track to merit giving the points he may have gotten right, careful consideration.

Our nation is an astounding thing, and the marvels have only begun to be revealed. Between shared origins and shared destiny lie many paths through history. Those who were estranged have been brought close, those who were distant now live side by side.

Traditionally, we call this “the ingathering of the exiled,” which might be best described by the American motto:

“From Many – One”

May we merit to see our nation fully revived, the crown restored to its glory, and a just peace in this land.

Benevolent Sensitivity

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Jewish Religion: A Rough Sketch

At the heart of our practices, theories, and forms lies חסידות, a word translated variously as piety, loving-kindness, and mysticism.

For reasons that I hope will become clear, I prefer the somewhat clunky translation “benevolent sensitivity.”

The first usage of חסיד in the Torah is in Moshe rabbenu’s blessing of the tribe of Lewi: “Your tummim and urim [priestly oracle] to your Hassid” – a reference to the tribe’s general role, and the specific responsibility of the descendants of Aharon haKohen, in the guidance of Jewish religion, both in the central nexus of the Qodesh (al Quds) and scattered throughout the cities and communities of the nation.

Moshe was the rabban of all nebiim but we see that traditions, praxis, and concepts were transmitted, developed, and shared in the context of the Levitic activity, especially at the Qodesh. Ruwwah haQodesh – the psycho-spiritual experiential mode associated with this activity – was established as the preliminary to full nebua. From these circles emerged many of the nebiim that contributed to our textual and spiritual heritage.

But why Hassid?

I believe that the path of Israelite religion, as actively taught and developed by the nebiim especially of the tribe of Lewi, is one of cultivation of benevolent sensitivity, to one’s self – one’s nature and needs, to one’s fellows – their natures and needs, and to one’s God – and the nature and needs of the divine pathos, as R Heschel z”l described it, within the creation.

This path of cultivation brings the human being from raw animalistic potential to actualized psycho-spiritual resonance with the divine. It is the revelation and the attunement of the divine image in which all human beings were created, and it is the generative process that lies at the heart of all religions, including Islam, in the context of which it is called التصوف‎ the tasawwuf, Sufism.

Rambam, the last and greatest of the Geonim, drew upon the Sufi discourse and works of his Mediterranean milieu in formulating his exploration of nebua in his famous Guide. It may be justly said that the entire project of the Guide is the cultivation of a cognitive and intellectual sensitivity to the divine as an active alternative to the barren and often irrational quagmire of theology.

Rambam’s son, R Abraham Maimuni, overtly recognized the Islamic Sufis as contemporary adherents to the same Way of the ancient nebiim and publicly taught a form of practice that harmonized with theirs. Subsequent generations of the Maimuni family developed the Sufi themes of
Maimonideanism, both in writing and in practice, all with the aim of cultivating the self along the way of the nabi, as described above.

While the Maimuni Sufism did not directly survive the vicissitudes of history in a region ravaged by competing empires, it later contributed (along with the broader Sufi influence) to the development of the kabbalistic circles around the Mediterranean, which in turn resulted in the emergence of European Hassidism. And of course Rambam’s legacy, in the widespread impact of both his Guide and his legal rulings, definitively shaped the חסידות that came after him, both in illumination and in shadow.

It is only natural that Religionists – Sufis of whatever community – should work together to heal a world in desperate need of Religion, of “benevolent sensitivity.”

It is my hope that on this festival of Sukkoth, in which we continue the theme of unity with creation in worship of our Creator with an expansive hope for all the world’s families to join us in celebration of our Creator’s goodness, we will merit to traverse the bridges our ancestors and prophets built before us and between us, and bring the world to a more perfected state both in justice and in awareness of the divine.

Jewish Is Modern

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“To be Jewish is to be modern, and vice versa.”
– R. José Faur z”l

Understood correctly, Jewish ideas are at the forefront of human development and are produced by a forward-thinking, pro-social outlook that sees law as an instrument of social perfection, both directly and by creating the conditions in which individual spiritual perfection can be obtained. Jewish civilization is nomocratic and egalitarian, based on reason and conscience, and founded upon the principles of social autonomy, rights, and responsibilities.

This naturally aligns with social progress and the concerns of political progressives.

There is also a strong conservative dimension to Jewish culture and society – after all, we are the people of tradition. But the essentially progressive nature of Judaism gets underplayed, misunderstood, and distorted in today’s discourse.

Morir Habemos

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“Morir habemos” – we all have to die
“Ya lo sabemos” – I know it

And with that the Sabbath departs and 9 Ab begins.

With the departure of our additional consciousness and with a step across the edge of madness.

A return to our worst memories from which we can only hope will be birthed the hope to truly return to ourselves.

With the knowledge that everything must come to an end – has come to end before – maybe we will be ready to make a new beginning.