Lecture
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Thursday 6.11.2025
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Sufism and Kabbalah
Thursday 6.11.2025
Summary
After the decline of philosophy, we see the rise of Muslim and Jewish mysticism, which in this lecture we explore through the minds of major figures like Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), Moses de León (1240-1305), and Rabbi Yosef Caro (1488-1575). We also examine education in the Safed schools under the Ottoman empire.
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite teaches Chinese History, Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and sometimes Jewish history, at New York University. He is author of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Harvard, 2005); The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford, 2009); co-editor of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Culture, and Politics (Brandeis, 2013); The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept (Columbia University Press, 2017); and Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History (Hawaii University Press, 2023).