American Jews and Sufism

Quite a lot of Traditionalists have been Jewish, perhaps disproportionately, just as quitea lof of American Sufis have been Jewish, and quite a lot of American Buddhists, too. A new book, Emily Sigalow's American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change (Princeton University Press, 2019), asks why. her book and its implications for Sufism are discussed in a post on the sister of this blog, at "American Jews, Buddhism, and Sufism."

New book on Western Sufism

A new book on Western Sufism is due out some time around October 2016: Mark Sedgwick, Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age (New York: Oxford University Press).

Western Sufism is in some ways the continuation of Against the Modern World, but also goes a long way back in time, as the subtitle suggests. Actual Guénonian Traditionalism is only one topic among many, but perennialism is a topic that comes and goes throughout the book, and Guénonian Traditionalism appears in a new light (as do many other things, from Maimonides to Gurdjieff). Ivan Aguéli is covered in more detail than in Against the Modern World, as Swedish sources have been used.

The table of contents can be seen on the companion website, which also has a gallery which gives a good idea of the book's contents. There is also a companion blog, which will be used for posts that are not relevant to Traditionalism.

It is possible to pre-order the book now: $35.00 from Amazon in the US or from Oxford, or £22.99 from Amazon in the UK.

Hugo Bergmann and Frithjof Schuon

In a recent article, Paul Fenton tells the story of the relations between Samuel Hugo Bergmann and Frithjof Schuon.

Bergmann was a Jewish philosopher who was born in Prague, a friend of Kafka and Max Brod. He moved to Israel in 1920 and taught philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, of which he was rector from 1935 to 1938. He became friends with Gershom Scholem and, especially, Martin Buber, with whom he founded Brit Shalom (covenant of peace), a small but important Zionist organization that pursued the forlorn hope of a bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs would live together in peace.

Bergmann worked on symbolic logic, which he attempted to reconcile with transcendental logic (Kant etc). He was also interested in the work of Rudolf Steiner, and by 1954 was interested in the work of Schuon, to which he had been introduced by Agi Lamm, a Jewish follower of Schuon from Argentina.

In 1957, on a trip to Europe, Bergmann met Schuon twice, meetings which he described as the high point of his trip. These meetings were a success on an intellectual level, but not on a personal level: Bergmann described the first encounter as “painful,” as Schuon seemed to him “stilted” and “affected,” dressed “as a prophet.” Despite this, the two men continued corresponding until 1970.

On his return to Israel, Bergmann wrote an article on Guénon for the Festschrift for Scholem which may be the most important piece on Traditionalism to have appeared in Hebrew.

Jews in the Maryamiyya

On August 15 I described Rabbi Yéhouda Léon Askénazi as "almost the only significant Jewish figure to have taken a deep interest in Traditionalism." And then on August 18, I read a new(-ish) article by Paul B. Fenton, "Les judéos-soufis de Lausanne: Un point de rencontre dans la mouvance guénonienne" (in Réceptions de la cabale, ed. Pierre Gisel and Lucie Kaennel; Tel Aviv: L'éclat, 2007, pp. 283-313) in which one argument (made in a book published in Israel, by the way)  is that there were a disproportionate number of Jews among the followers of Frithjof Schuon in Lausanne.

Fenton does not pursue this argument, which is made in passing. And I am not sure that he is right. He certainly draws attention to another very significant Jewish figure with a real interest in Traditionalism (see separate post), and he is right that there were a number of Jews among Schuon's followers in Lausanne, some of whom became Maryami Muslims and some of whom did not. He points to a continuing interest in the kabbalah among these, which Schuon did not share--strangely, he held that there was no inititation in Judaism.

But a disproportionate number? Disproportionate to what? To the overall Jewish element in the population of Switzerland, perhaps--but I am not sure that is a relevant measure. In general, what was the rate of Jewish participation in the intellectual avant-garde of the time?

A Soft Traditionalist Rabbi on Christianity and Islam

A new article on Rabbi Yéhouda Léon Askénazi (“Manitou,” 1922-96), almost the only significant Jewish figure to have taken a deep interest in Traditionalism (this is my first even blog post to use the index "Judaism").

Born in Algeria, Manitou was deeply read in French thought, as well as in Orthodox Judaism and the kabbalah. He agreed with Guénon that what mattered was the original philosophia perennis, in esoteric as well as exoteric form, but disagreed with Guénon about what this was. For Manitou, the original revelation was, simply, Judaism–and the esoterism that mattered was the kabbalah.

In “From Monologues to Possible Dialogue: Judaism’s Attitude towards Christianity According to the Philosophy of R. Yéhouda Léon Askénazi (Manitou)” (In Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature, Marcel Poorthuis, Joshua Schwartz, and Joseph Turner, eds., Leiden: Brill, 2009, pp. 319-336), Yossef Charvit examines Manitou’s views on Christianity and Islam, the background to a participation in inter-faith dialogue which included writing a special prayer for the opening of what Charvit calls the “Temple de l’Universel,” presumably the Sanctuaire de l’Universel, a Parisian multi-faith venture of the very un-Traditionalist Sufi Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan.

Christianity, Manitou thought, “purported to be the New Israel,” (p. 332) and in beginning to abandon this claim by recognizing that Israel was actually Israel, was approaching the day when all humanity might realize its “Abrahamic features.” Islam, in contrast, had never claimed to be the New Israel. When it came to Christianity, “Our theologies are highly polarized, but there are points of interface regarding ethics.” However, “The opposite is true of Islam, with which we possess theological interfaces but stand in diametric opposition regarding ethics” (p. 325). Unfortunately, Yossef Charvit does not examine Manitou’s views on Islam in much detail in this article; perhaps he will do so in another.