The Touches The amazing touches of Jewish Philosophy on the world

The Philosophy and Jewish thought Offer the world Unique Values

Description

The nature and the function of Jewish philosophy in a new light

The Jewish philosophers have a long and amazing history. They put their heart, mind, and soul into even their smallest acts. This is the secret of success.

They have a good head and a good heart that led them to impact the world.

They are the source of some of the greatest thinking in history – philosophy and culture.

They have suffered many tribulations and have been the cause of a few as well. They have been central figures in much of the unrest in the Middle East where the nation of Israel was created by the United Nations in the 20th century.

This book offers a list of the greatest Jews – those who have influenced the world.

The purpose of this book is to provide a resource that accurately describes the Jewish contribution to the culture, thought and philosophy and to offer a new periodization of Jewish philosophy and to reflect on the definition of Jewish philosophy.

It will therefore deal with the characteristic style of each Jewish philosophy rather than with their content.

This book illuminates the extraordinary creativity of Jewish intellectuals.

It presents an original and innovative ideology that stirringly affirms the unity of the Jewish people.

The selected philosophers and concepts are mentioned here because they give us the opportunity to reflect on the nature and the function of Jewish philosophy in a new light.

It brings to light both the complexity and the ambivalence of reflecting on Jewish identity and philosophical thought.

It attests abundantly to the variety and the profundity of Jewish works.

This book is certainly the most perspicuous treatment of the philosophical issues arising in any effort to comprehend the Holocaust, in whatever terms, historiographical, artistic, moral, epistemological.

It invites the readers to consider old questions and new; the book continues to be a voice of responsibility and great subtlety as we seek to come to grips with injustice and atrocity in our lives and to locate ourselves between language and silence, despair and hope.

This book brings new attention to the impact of philosophy and Jewish thought on the world.

It shows how philosophical ethics and Jewish identity were two inseparable aspects of Jewish thinking.

In this excellent book, words move beyond uninformed polemics on both sides to provide hitherto unavailable information as well as expert historical knowledge of the contexts.

In this remarkable work, the writer Sayed Abuelmagd takes you through history to show how the ethical and moral values that are held dear in the West, such as respect for human life, social responsibility, political pluralism, peaceful co-existence, tradition, family etc, all originate from the Jewish civilization which gave the world the Bible.

The Torah says the Jews need to be ' A Light Among The Nations'.

You will gain a much greater insight into the mind of Jewish people and reading about their journey through time.  

The book is very clear in making all this understanding simple enough for people without a lot of historical knowledge to understand.

 It is a rich guide to Jewish history and culture which can provide for a young person should they study and read the book carefully a real education in the subject.

 Introduction

What motivated me to write this book was a deep desire to thank Eliana my grandmother who was Jewish.

My Grandfather Muhamad (the father of my mother) who was an Egyptian Muslim married Eliana my grandmother (the mother of my mother) who was Jewish. I was very, very close to my Grandma when I was younger. While my parents were at work a lot, she practically raised me. God welcomed a very special angel into heaven: my grandmother. We sadly said goodbye to an amazing woman, who brought joy to so many throughout her 84 years on earth.

A wife, sister, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, nurse, volunteer and devout Jewish, my Grandmom selflessly gave of herself, all the way up to her final weeks.

Over the past few years, I’ve thought a lot about my grandmother (the mother of my mother) and the impact she had on my life, and the lives of all the persons she touched. After some serious reflection, I’ve pared down everything my grandmother has taught me into core lessons that I hope to carry with me throughout the rest of my life, in her honor.

After the death of my grandfather, Eliana (the mother of my mother) my grandmother lived in a small three-bedroom row home in Kholosy in Shoubra. Life was not easy, but I learned from her how to be optimistic.

My grandmother (the mother of my mother) was a stay-at-home mom and worked hard to take care of my mother Thoria and her other children. 

When I was a little boy, I watched a weekly ritual Eliana did.

Another discipline my brother, sister, and I learned from Eliana my grandmother is that working hard is a part of life.

She loved to chat I mean that she was interested in all the minutia of my day, including who I was in the elevator with, who I heard was getting married and what I had for lunch. This may get annoying, but I can’t say she doesn’t care.

She was completely obsessed with her own family, and when she was not at lunch with them, she was on the phone to them.

But this has significant advantages for me because family gatherings were a huge fun affair where both my families come together regularly.

She created a warm family environment where my family was always more than welcome to hang out, and I loved her for it.

Her home was always immaculate. She was the one personally plumping the cushions and sweeping under the bed and her home life was organized, functional and easy.

She got my humor and not many people do, so I should really be grateful that she laughs at my jokes, despite having heard them a hundred times, and understands all my cultural references.

She was sure to pour as much love and devotion onto us.

She was highly efficient and on top of everything.

She gave her heart and mind to the well-being of the poor person. Eliana taught me to love my neighbor as myself.

Eliana my grandnother was fair and just. She was treating others as she wants them to treat her. She didn’t discriminate.

She always did her best and strove to do better.

She didn’t give up and saw obstacles and setbacks as lessons.

She tried hard to find ways to better her community, family, self, country, etc.

She always began with an act of kindness and ended with an act of kindness.

She was providing shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, assistance to the poor, visiting the sick, comforting mourners.

 She did no harm to anyone, or anything, including herself. She was cooperative. She got along well with others, willing to compromise; committed to the concept of neighborhood, society, country, and world.

I remember that my grandpa (the father of my mother) Muhamad Hassan El Sheikh was always praising her as a perfect wife and a kind mother. He was speaking in front of her and behind her.

He always said,

“My wife Eliana’s self-worth leads her to a secure mind.
She is a figure who always supports me in my life as well as my career and always by my side when the whole world walks out. She also gives me freedom to develop myself as I want.

She looks beautiful and attractive in her own way, her simplicity and friendliness. From the inside, you notice that she is a person who has an extraordinary and inspiring personality. She knows when to speak and listen to my words. She also can speak tenderly (without yelling) when she expresses her opinion to me.

In addition, she is modest and humble in everyday life. She doesn’t demand a lot of facilities to indulge herself.
She has Inner beauty. Inner beauty is a kind of beauty that’s on the inside.” Really, she was a great ambassador for Judaism.

 I knew through her that The Jews are the most essential instrument for civilising the world. I knew it is true that although the Jewish people constitute a mere one half of one percent of the world's population, Jewish contribution to religion, science, literature, music, medicine, finance, philosophy, entertainment etc., is staggering.

Without a doubt, much of our ideas about art, beauty, philosophy, government, and modern empirical science do come from classical Jewish thought. Western law, government, administration, and engineering were also powerfully shaped by Jews. Indeed, we do overwhelmingly get the lion’s share of our culture from the Jewish civilisation.

A perfect world must include these universal values:

1. Respect for Human Life. In a perfect world, all people would be guaranteed certain basic human rights, paramount among which must be the right to life. They should be able to live that life without constant fear of its loss and with certain basic dignity.
2. Peace and Harmony. On all levels—whether communal or global—people and nations should co-exist in peace and harmony with respect for each other.
3. Justice and Equality. All people, regardless of race, sex, or social status should be treated equally and fairly in the eyes of the law.
4. Everyone should receive a basic education that would guarantee functional literacy within society.
5. Family A strong, stable family structure needs to exist to serve as the moral foundation for society and as the most important institution for socializing/educating children.
6. Social Responsibility. On an individual, community, national and global level, people must take responsibility for the world.

This should include an organized social network to address basic concerns such as disease, poverty, famine, crime, drug-related problems, as well as environmental and animal protection issues.

The question is: Why?

Are these six basic ideas intrinsic to human nature? Have people always felt this way? And if not, where did we get these values? What is the source of this utopian world vision?

Jewish Nobel Prize Winners

At least 170 Jews and persons of half-Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize,1 accounting for 22% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2005, and constituting 37% of all US recipients2 during the same period. 

In the scientific research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Medicine, and Physics, the corresponding world and US percentages are 26% and 39%, respectively. 

(Jews currently make up approximately 0.25% of the world’s population and 2% of the US population.)

• Chemistry (28 prize winners, 19% of world total, 27% of US total)  
• Economics (22 prize winners, 39% of world total, 53% of US total)  
• Literature (13 prize winners, 13% of world total, 27% of US total)  
• Physiology or Medicine (52 prize winners, 28% of world total, 42% of US total)  
• Peace (9 prize winners, 10% of world total, 11% of US total)3  
• Physics (46 prize winners, 26% of world total, 38% of US total)

What motivated me also to write this book was what I found in The Quran.

• When I read the Quran I am surprised by the fact that the Quran does not focus on Muhammed, Ishmael or the Arab people.
• Instead the Quran focuses primarily on the Jewish patriarchs and prophets.
• The Quran concerns itself primarily with the history and future of the Children of Israel.
• Thus the primary figures of the Quran are figures like Abraham, Joseph, Moses and King David. In fact the primary figure of the Quran is Moshe Aveynu (Moses the father of Jews) who is mentioned more than any other individual in the Quran.
• Many Jews are surprised to learn that one entire "Surah" (chapter) of the Quran (Surah 17) is titled "The Children of Israel".
• So, I began to analyze the Jewish history and culture since the Bible period to our times. Instead of focusing, as usual, on the disasters which struck the Jewish people, I show the ways of thinking which developed in the culture.
• I think that Jewish philosophy is pursued by committed Jews seeking to understand Judaism and the world in one another’s light.
• In this broad sense, contemporary Jewish philosophy maintains the central focus of classical, medieval and Enlightenment Jewish philosophy.
• But a certain kind of traditionalism distinguishes many contemporary Jewish philosophers from their predecessors: an effort to show how Judaism maintains continuity and coherence despite historical change.
• ”Unlike many others, I do not take a Jewish philosopher to be someone who is (a) Jewish and (b) a philosopher, but rather suggest that Jewish philosophy is the attempt to provide a well-argued and informed account of Jewish religious and cultural beliefs and practices.”
• The Jews started it all –
• And by "it" I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make Jew and Gentile, believer and atheist, tick. 

• Without the Jews, we would see the world with different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings. 

 And not only would our sensorium, the screen through which we receive the world, be different: we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us.  And we would set a different course for our lives.

 The Jews were the first people to find a new way of thinking and experiencing, a new way of understanding and feeling the world, so much so that it may be said with some justice that theirs is the only new idea that human beings have ever had. 

I thank Allah my loving Creator who created from nothing everything that is and saw that it was good, and loved it; a Creator Who is more powerful than earthquakes, floods, erupting volcanos, hurricanes or anything else in the world, and different from them for giving me the idea to write this book. 

The inside self journey that is taught in Jewish philosophy is accomplished through daily effort to go through the varied levels of the mind, to find within our own self the need for expressing in any particular way.

Again and again it is spoken in so many ways and so many days: you are free while yet in form. Enjoy that freedom.

Use it wisely. Remember that there is no separation in truth. Be not moved with all these things that your minds encounter from level to level: a greater light is truly dawning within your being.

It is the delusion created by a lack of awareness that we and we alone are indeed the cause of all things. Be a good dreamer and dream a life of beauty.

• Each day in every way, remind yourself that you are the peace that passes all understanding.
• For what you are doing, in truth, is telling the mind, for you—the soul—already know. It is the vehicle your soul is using that doesn’t know.
• Therefore, it is the vehicle that needs to be reeducated, for it is filled with many, many, many judgments that are not serving you well.
• Learn to speak to your mind. Learn to disassociate that which is truly you from that that you are using. You are not what you are using.
• And what you are using—the mind—must be reeducated in order that you may find the true purpose of being. 

• And so I ask you, “What is worthwhile in this life, or any life, to lead or to be responsible to?” Your children are born, they grow and go.
• And so do your husbands and wives, your brothers and your sisters.
• Governments rise, to fall again, to rise again. Money comes into your pocket and disappears again. What is the security that man has in Life itself?
• We all, I am sure, will agree: it is not our jobs; it is not our professions; it is not our bank accounts; it is not our wives, our husbands, our sons, or our daughters, our governments or ever our religions.
• It is the Divine Intelligence that you are able to be receptive to at any given moment.
• It is the only thing in life itself that will not fail you, because it is not dependent upon the fickle mind of man.
• And so does it not behoove us to give some thought to the true purpose of Life itself?

"Perception"

Usually the word "perception" means what one sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels by touch. Some philosophy does examine external perceptions.

However, there are inner perceptions, too: thinking and inner feelings are ways in which people also come to know themselves.

Therefore, it is possible to describe philosophy as the activity of thinking about knowing, or thinking about perception.

 Everyone is a practitioner of philosophy when he or she asks, "How do I know that what I think is right?" or "What is the nature of love?" Philosophy is more than just being aware--it asks questions about how everyone is aware.

The Story of Early Philosophy

Philosophy can be explained, as can most of the other humanities disciplines, by showing its history, its types, and its methods.

Its history began long before written records were kept. It may have started when the first human not only perceived the sun, moon, and stars--and his or her own needs and desires--but also asked, "Why do these exist?"

True philosophical thinking may have begun also when human beings first realized that they were separate from nature, that they could control it, and that they therefore had freedom and willpower- -the will to choose.

Perhaps philosophical thinking began even more simply in humans when they became aware that they could think--something like seventeen-century philosopher Rene Descartes' famous statement, "I think, therefore I am."

"philo" and "Sophia,"

The word "philosophy" comes from two roots, "philo" and "Sophia," which mean "love" and "Wisdom." Thus philosophy is the love of wisdom and, in actual practice, the pursuit, study of, and enquiry into wisdom. Some great philosophers have called philosophy the art of thinking; others have described it as the systematic study of human thought and feeling. Still others have said that whereas in real life people think about things, in philosophy they think about thinking.

So, here begins the initial journey of “The Touches”….. Because most philosophers also think about feelings--the meanings of artistic feelings, emotional feelings, and intuitions--feelings should be included, too. In fact, there is one more step to take: one simply can call all thoughts and all feelings perceptions.

Chapter One

The influences of philosophy, however hard to see, are far-reaching and of great importance.