Hussein, this was a pleasure to read. Its been a long time since I read something this spiritually enlightening. It's people like you who help us see the Mahfouzian potential in other faiths.
Excellent essay here and your blog generally, Hussein. Thank you and bless you. I've also read your work elsewhere. I remember when Mahfouz was stabbed and nearly killed by radical Islamic assassins.
Mahfouz's allegory is surely an allusion to the parable of the three rings, a story that circulated for centuries around the medieval Mediterranean and Near Eastern world and that probably began in the Levant. In the West, it is best known in the versions given in Boccaccio's Decameron and Lessing's Nathan the Wise (whose protagonist is modeled on Moses Mendelssohn.)
Your discussion of egoism really gets to something important. The great historical religions have always aimed to lead their followers out of narrow egoism. Feuerbach was completely wrong about this. But such was the misplaced confidence of the Hegelian ideologues of 19th century progressive German thought. For example, Feuerbach completely misunderstands the point of the dietary laws (kashrut). They take appetite and refine it -- not canceling it into mere asceticism -- to a plane of holiness. Marriage takes potentially disordered and destructive sexual, romantic, and familial relationships and reshapes them to serve divine purposes, without canceling their human aspect. (The Hebrew word for marriage, kiddushin, reflects that in the word itself.)
The great first century rabbi, Hillel, put it succinctly with his three-part aphorism about "if I am not for myself, who will be?" If you're not for yourself, don't expect anyone else to be. But then he adds, "if I am only for myself, what am I?" In other words, ego is unavoidable and even a good thing. But the ego-ism of each must be checked for the sake of the all of us. We're about ourselves, but not only about ourselves.
(It's weird to see a copy of the Artscroll edition of the Rambam's writings here. Artscroll is a publishing house with a strong ultraorthodox bent and preservation of the Ashkenazi tradition of yeshiva learning from eastern Europe. It's reflected in their commentary and translation style, which goes sometimes overboard with a certain point of view. But their editions are always thorough and useful, even if you have to keep their interpretation at arm's length at times.)
("Kisvei Rambam" = "Kitvei Rambam" = "Writings of the Rambam," Rambam being the contraction of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides. The Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew softens the "tav" to "s", so a Semitic language speaker would probably miss the K.T.V. root for writing, like "kitab" in Arabic. For those us raised with modern Hebrew pronunciation and its forerunners among Sefardi and Mizrachi Jews, closer to the ancient pronunciation, the Ashkenazi form always sounds strange.)
This is a good reading of Maimonides. And just a generally good essay. Thank you
Hussein, this was a pleasure to read. Its been a long time since I read something this spiritually enlightening. It's people like you who help us see the Mahfouzian potential in other faiths.
Excellent essay here and your blog generally, Hussein. Thank you and bless you. I've also read your work elsewhere. I remember when Mahfouz was stabbed and nearly killed by radical Islamic assassins.
Mahfouz's allegory is surely an allusion to the parable of the three rings, a story that circulated for centuries around the medieval Mediterranean and Near Eastern world and that probably began in the Levant. In the West, it is best known in the versions given in Boccaccio's Decameron and Lessing's Nathan the Wise (whose protagonist is modeled on Moses Mendelssohn.)
Your discussion of egoism really gets to something important. The great historical religions have always aimed to lead their followers out of narrow egoism. Feuerbach was completely wrong about this. But such was the misplaced confidence of the Hegelian ideologues of 19th century progressive German thought. For example, Feuerbach completely misunderstands the point of the dietary laws (kashrut). They take appetite and refine it -- not canceling it into mere asceticism -- to a plane of holiness. Marriage takes potentially disordered and destructive sexual, romantic, and familial relationships and reshapes them to serve divine purposes, without canceling their human aspect. (The Hebrew word for marriage, kiddushin, reflects that in the word itself.)
The great first century rabbi, Hillel, put it succinctly with his three-part aphorism about "if I am not for myself, who will be?" If you're not for yourself, don't expect anyone else to be. But then he adds, "if I am only for myself, what am I?" In other words, ego is unavoidable and even a good thing. But the ego-ism of each must be checked for the sake of the all of us. We're about ourselves, but not only about ourselves.
(It's weird to see a copy of the Artscroll edition of the Rambam's writings here. Artscroll is a publishing house with a strong ultraorthodox bent and preservation of the Ashkenazi tradition of yeshiva learning from eastern Europe. It's reflected in their commentary and translation style, which goes sometimes overboard with a certain point of view. But their editions are always thorough and useful, even if you have to keep their interpretation at arm's length at times.)
("Kisvei Rambam" = "Kitvei Rambam" = "Writings of the Rambam," Rambam being the contraction of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides. The Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew softens the "tav" to "s", so a Semitic language speaker would probably miss the K.T.V. root for writing, like "kitab" in Arabic. For those us raised with modern Hebrew pronunciation and its forerunners among Sefardi and Mizrachi Jews, closer to the ancient pronunciation, the Ashkenazi form always sounds strange.)