Maimonides and the Lost Secrets of Israel

Judaism’s greatest philosopher, Moses Maimonides, believed that Judaism’s ancient mystery tradition with all her secrets, had been lost to sands of time, and took it upon himself to reconstruct them, on his own, from scratch, with the tools of philosophy and rationality.

Maimonides is known as the great Jewish rationalist of the Middle Ages, but his rationalism, goes deeper than most might suspect. Maimonides was a rationalist who believed that through the very tools of philosophy, with a perfect synthesis of mysticism and rationalism, he could re-discover the lost secret traditions of ancient Jewish mysticism, and uncover the true meaning of the bible.

Join us in this final episode, where we hope to, for once and for all, answer the question of whether Maimonides was a rationalist or a mystic and find out he was really up to in his Guide for the Perplexed.

Watch the rest of the Maimonides and Mysticism series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4ZgHJxQQVo&list=PL_7jcKJs6iwXUKaVOvNJWr5DSLPTYV0j9

00:00 Maimonides Rationalism

13:13 Maimonides Mysticism

28:42 Lost Traditions

31:47 Prophecy and Reason

48:09 Telling Secrets

53:41 Maimonides today

Thank you to Elisha Pearl, David Fried, Jeffery Radon and Levi Morrow for their thoughtful feedback and suggestions on this episode.


Sources and Further Reading:

• J. Heschel, “Did Maimonides Believe That He Had Attained the Rank of Prophet,” in Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets, 1996

• Alexander Altmann, “Maimonides’ Attitude Toward Jewish Mysticism,” in Alfred Jospe, ed., Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), 200-219

• Diana Lobel, “Silence Is Praise to You” Maimonides on Negative Theology, Looseness of Expression, and Religious Experience, in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly vol. 76, no. 1, 2002, pp. 35-6

• Elliot R Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, Kabbalist and Prophet Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy, 2000, pp. 9-93

• Elliot Wolfson “Via Negativa in Maimonides and Its Impact on Thirteenth- Century Kabbalah.” In Maimonidean Studies 5, 2008

• Gideon Freudenthal, The Philosophical Mysticism of Maimonides and Maimon

• Ithamar Gruenwald, “Maimonides’ Quest beyond Philosophy and Prophecy,” in Perspectives, ed. J. L. Kraemer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)

• José Faur, Homo Mysticus: A Guide to Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, 1998

• Julius Guttmann, “Introduction” in Maimonides, The Guide Of The Perplexed, An Abridged Edition, East And West Library New York, 1947

• Louis Jacobs, Attitudes of the Kabbalists and Hasidim towards Maimonides, in The Solomon Goldman Lectures, vol. v, ed. Byron L. Sherwin and Michael Carasik (Chicago Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1990, pp. 45-55)

• Moshe Halbertal, “The History of Halakhah, Views from Within: Three Medieval Approaches to Tradition and Controversy,” in Harvard Law School Gruss Lectures (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School, 1994), 1-19

• Moshe Idel, “Maimonides and Kabbalah,” in Studies In Maimonides, Isadore Twersky (ed.), Harvard University Press, 1990

• The Cultures of Maimonideanism, by James T. Robinson (ed.) 2009, p. xi

• W. Z. Harvey, "The Return to Maimonideanism," Journal of Jewish Studies 42 (1980) 263, n. 1

• Yamin Levy, “How I was Taught to Read the Guide” in Principles, Essays on Halakha, Maḥshaba and History, Journal of the Ḥabura, January 2022, Edition 4


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