#abulafia
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hesgen.com
This chap delivered the sermon at my shul on Saturday. Harvey was a doctoral student of historian David Abulafia, who died very recently. He is now rector of Ben Gurion University in Israel.
Chaim Hames - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
February 16, 2026 at 10:20 AM
rosecrow.bsky.social
The Torah of Personality - A Treasury of Biographical Sketches
#firstedition 1980

knoxvillerose.etsy.com/listing/1450...

#judaism #religion #hebrew #rebbe #rabbinical #seforim #biography #baalshemtov #abulafia #ari #rabbiakiba #gedolim #booksky #bookseller #nonfiction #torah #mishnah #talmud
February 11, 2026 at 2:13 PM
tryangregory.bsky.social
I thought you might enjoy this, dear friends.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/chap...
Epistemic fragility and epistemic arrogance If, as suggested, humility is more often born of confidence than is arrogance, what are we to make of the aggressively negative reactions of some Western scientists to proposals involving the inclusion of Indigenous epistemologies? In this, the concept of “epistemic fragility” introduced by Skopec et al. (2021) is informative, which they define as “an effortful reinstatement of an epistemic status quo, as a reaction against introducing ideas, narratives and research associated with decolonizing the higher education curriculum”. Skopec et al. (2021) modeled the notion of epistemic fragility on the concept of “white fragility” (DiAngelo, 2011, 2018), which describes the defensive or dismissive reaction of white individuals when challenged to confront issues such as systemic racism, implicit bias, privilege, or the ongoing legacy of white supremacy of which they are beneficiaries whether they recognize it or not. In the case of epistemic fragility, “challenges to one’s conceptualization of knowledges and knowledge hierarchies elicit defensive moves” (Skopec et al., 2021). Similar connections have been made between white and male fragility and “epistemic arrogance” (e.g., Mitchell, 2019). Again, epistemic humility and epistemic pluralism do not undermine the importance or efficacy of science, and they do not create a permissive environment for any and all ideas to be taken as equally valid. Nevertheless it is not difficult to find very strong objections to any notion that other ways of knowing besides Western science might also have merit. Take, for example, Dawkins (1995) who argues: “Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I’ll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes built according to scientific principles work. They stay aloft, and they get you to a chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications, such as the dummy planes of the cargo cults in jungle clearings or the beeswaxed wings of Icarus, don’t. If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there—the reason you don’t plummet into a ploughed field—is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sums right.” Dawkins (1995) considers this a “knock-down argument” against cultural relativism, and I myself recall being reassured and emboldened by it as a science student in the mid-1990s. More recently, Dawkins (2023) has made it clear that he considers this critique applicable to Indigenous knowledge systems writ large, having expressed his vocal opposition to initiatives aimed at teaching Māori ways of knowing to students in New Zealand, which he calls “adolescent virtue-signaling” because “there is only one way of knowing: science”. On the one hand, it would indeed be hypocritical for an extreme cultural relativist to argue that any and all claims about the physical world are equally accurate while cruising at 30,000 feet. On the other hand, I surmise that there are very few academics whose education in Western science would allow them to survive unaided in the Arctic, the Australian outback, the Amazon rainforest, or anywhere else where Indigenous knowledge, practices, and technology have proved their practical utility over the course of tens of thousands of years. If long-distance travel is to be the metric by which the validity of knowledge systems is judged, then it bears noting that Indigenous technology and wayfinding methods enabled exploration of land and sea long before European mariners ever set sail for distant shores (e.g., Lewis, 1972; Davis, 2009; Abulafia, 2019; Thompson, 2019). Finally, one wonders whether those who hold the view that “there is only one way of knowing” avoid hypocrisy by refusing to partake of the ∼40 % of Western pharmaceuticals “borrowed” from Indigenous traditional healing systems (World Health Organization, 2023; see also Fabricant & Farnsworth, 2001), crops domesticated by Indigenous agriculturists (Janick, 2013), or technologies inspired by the works of Indigenous inventors (Kiger, 2019; Yasinski, 2021; Gumbo & Williams, 2023; Havistock & Kay, 2023).
February 7, 2026 at 2:07 PM
epsteinweb.bsky.social
Part 2/2 — HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013626.jpg
#epsteinweb #houseoversight013626
the Jewish ecstatic, Abraham Abulafia, and not those of Moses Maimonides, that the human mind in an altered state of activated intellect, man’s Nevesh, can understand such mystical happenings. | would continue to work at it. One of the early personal church experiences with my sons’ religious path came after accepting an invitation to go with them to a Sunday service at their current charismatic church. By then, the eldest was married with children, the 126 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013626
February 7, 2026 at 10:55 AM
epsteinweb.bsky.social
Part 2/2 — HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013592.jpg
#epsteinweb #houseoversight013592
ordinary objects, people and events an hierophany. In the state that this requires, “...all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality....” The entire world can become a hierophany with what Abraham Abulafia called an activated mind, the Jewish soul of emergent properties called the Nefesh. This entirely new world, Rudolf Otto in his 1917 Das Helige (The Sacred) called it ganz andere, (wholly other, something else), seemed to emerge 92 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013592
February 7, 2026 at 10:47 AM
epsteinweb.bsky.social
Part 1/2 — HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013505.jpg
#epsteinweb #houseoversight013505
Century proponent of a school of Jewish ecstatic mysticism, Abraham Abulafia, whose interpretation of the Guide and his own Commentary on the Secrets taught that the human mind, if transformed into a “state of active intellect,” could become one with Spirit, realizing the Kingdom of God in rational mystical experience in a state of excitement with new ideas. The new consciousness achieves deep knowledge of both the “upper” and “lower” realms of what he called “reality” both spontaneously and directly. He said that without personal transformation, this knowing is not possible. Abulafia’s lesson was that the mundane intellect of man has the potential for transformation into another kind of mind in a spiritualization of thought. This occurs via developmental stages that begin with intellect and imagination and culminate in what he called prophetic emanations. The exercises leading to this transformation are to be strongly willed and practiced with regularity. This work results in ascension to an ecstatic state accompanied by great intuitive powers, which Abulafia called “prophesy.” Ibn Adret, the Chief Rabbi of Spain at the end of the Thirteenth Century, banished Abulafia from the Country, a Century before the Spanish Inquisition ousted all the Jews. Following what my father said was required in the practice of Kabbalah, a 43" Century tradition of esoteric and mystical interpretations of the Scriptures, | learned the secret meanings of each of the twenty-two letter Hebrew alphabet. Much like the Platonic view of mathematics, that it existed before the physical universe, these symbolic equivalences were believed to be eternal in the transcendental realm. One of the rare written accounts of this oral tradition is in the thirteenth-century Hebrew Book of Splendor called the Zohar which describes the Hebrew alphabet as the heavenly code of the cosmos. | learned that the Tegragrammaton’s repeated letter Hei, being fifth in the Hebrew alphabet, represents the number
February 7, 2026 at 10:26 AM
jewishchron.bsky.social
David Abulafia: the historian who reshaped our understanding of the sea and civilisation

www.thejc.com/opinion/davi...
David Abulafia: the historian who reshaped our understanding of the sea and civilisation - The Jewish Chronicle
His Jewish faith and identity came through in a quintessentially British way. He helped secure a permanent home for Cambridge’s Reform Jewish community and guided those seeking to join the faith
www.thejc.com
February 2, 2026 at 6:04 PM
dgb-ancientstudies.bsky.social
We are deeply saddened by the passing of Professor David Abulafia, founding member of our flagship series The Medieval Mediterranean, board member of 'Cultural Interactions', and an important inspiration for innovatory studies of the Mediterranean.
www.cai.cam.ac.uk/news/david-a...
brill.com/cim
January 30, 2026 at 12:51 PM
sasanianshah.bsky.social
So awful to hear the sad news of the passing of Prof. David Abulafia. Had the honour of discussing ideas about “sea kingdoms” with him a few times & benefit from his wisdom. Always innovative, interesting, and encouraging. What a loss to scholarship. RIP
January 28, 2026 at 6:45 PM
medievalists.bsky.social
David Abulafia, historian of the medieval Mediterranean, has passed away www.medievalists.net/2026/01/davi... #medievalstudies
David Abulafia, historian of the medieval Mediterranean, passes away - Medievalists.net
David Abulafia, one of the leading historians of the medieval Mediterranean and the maritime world, has passed away at the age of 76.
www.medievalists.net
January 28, 2026 at 4:05 PM
camhistory.bsky.social
Remembering Professor David Abulafia.

Read the many tributes from colleagues, peers and former students, now published on our website ⬇️

www.hist.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

@caiuscollege.bsky.social @marylaven.bsky.social @lucydelap.bsky.social
camhistory.bsky.social Cambridge University History Faculty @camhistory.bsky.social · 22d
Members of the History Faculty are deeply saddened to learn of the news of the death of Professor David Abulafia (1949-2026).

David is remembered for his innovative and wide-ranging scholarship on the Mediterranean sea and region in the medieval and early modern periods, and his warm collegiality.
David Abulafia was Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. Credit: Gonville and Caius College
January 28, 2026 at 10:19 AM
acevedofiore.bsky.social
De los obituarios sobre Abulafia me llamó la atención que se pudiese ser "antiwoke" mientras luchaba "incansablemente por la verdad".
January 28, 2026 at 7:42 AM
mrfw17thc.bsky.social
Scholarship and anti-scholarship.
Obituary of historian David Abulafia in The Telegraph, reading ' ... outstanding historian and latterly fearless critic of woke academe.'
January 27, 2026 at 9:43 PM
guel-sen.bsky.social
David Abulafia. The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (Penguin U.K., ebook 2011, paperback 2014)

Publisher: www.penguin.co.uk/books/55861/...

#maritimehistory #histbookchat
The Great Sea
For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centres of civilization. David Abulafia's The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean, from the erec...
www.penguin.co.uk
January 27, 2026 at 7:24 PM
guel-sen.bsky.social
David Abulafia, the author of "The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans" (Penguin Books UK, 2020) passed away on Jan. 24, 2026. R.I.P.

The publisher: www.penguin.co.uk/books/182654...

#maritime #seafaring #oceans
David Abulafia, the author of "The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans" (Penguin Books UK, 2020) passed away on Jan. 24, 2026. R.I.P.
January 27, 2026 at 7:10 PM
royalhistsoc.org
We are sorry to hear of the death of Professor David Abulafia FBA, who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1981.

A historian of Italy and the Mediterranean, Professor Abulafia's major later works included 'The Boundless Sea' (2019) bit.ly/46ji00b
David Abulafia (1949-2026)
Professor David Abulafia CBE has died. He was 76.
bit.ly
January 27, 2026 at 6:21 PM
thehillpaul.bsky.social
A balanced and generous obituary of the magnificent David Abulafia in today’s @thetimes.com
cc @theresthistory.bsky.social
January 27, 2026 at 10:49 AM
jewishchron.bsky.social
David Abulafia, distinguished and pioneering historian and campaigner against anti-Jewish racism, dies at 76
David Abulafia, distinguished and pioneering historian and campaigner against anti-Jewish racism, dies at 76 - The Jewish Chronicle
An increasingly outspoken public intellectual, Abulafia became a fearless champion of intellectual and academic freedom
buff.ly
January 27, 2026 at 10:19 AM
panbello.bsky.social
In memoriam David S. #Abulafia [°Dec. 12, 1949 – Jan. 24, 2026]🕯️

spectator.com/article/davi...
David Abulafia was a rare, truth-seeking historian
Notwithstanding his lifelong fascination with the Mediterranean, David Abulafia – the Cambridge historian, who has died – was a Brexiteer
spectator.com
January 27, 2026 at 10:11 AM
panbello.bsky.social
R.I.P., David #Abulafia [°Dec. 12, 1949 – Jan. 24, 2026]🕯️😌🌹

#MediterraneanHistory #TheGreatSea #TheBoundlessSea #MedievalHistory #FrederickIIAMedievalEmperor #UniversityofCambridge #2020WolfsonHistoryPrize #2020MountbattenAward #AnnaBrechtaSapir #DavidSamuelHarvardAbulafia #DavidAbulafia
January 27, 2026 at 10:06 AM
bradweis.bsky.social
#obitpatrol Who died? Doctor and scientist William Foege; sculptor Seyni Awa Camara; singer and writer Marie Rouanet; historian David Abulafia; guitarist Yuri Rymanov www.obitpatrol.com
January 26, 2026 at 7:27 PM
cabrerademar.bsky.social
📚 Si Stefan Zweig ensalzó la "identidad europea" frente a los sentimientos nacionalistas, David Abulafia hizo lo propio acuñando el concepto de "identidad mediterránea".

Hoy a muerto el profesor Abulafia pero su legado le sobrevive.

#Humanistas
#DavidAbulafia
January 26, 2026 at 7:15 PM
florianlouis.bsky.social
David Abulafia, outstanding historian and latterly fearless critic of woke academe

www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...
David Abulafia, outstanding historian and latterly fearless critic of woke academe
Interested in the medieval Mediterranean, Abulafia crowned his career with books on man and the oceans, The Great Sea and The ​Boundless Sea
www.telegraph.co.uk
January 26, 2026 at 5:19 PM
marcfigueras.bsky.social
Oh, s'ha mort en David Abulafia, gran historiador especialista en la Mediterrànica medieval. No fa gaire, @velesiventsedicions.cat va publicar en català el seu "La lluita pel domini de la Mediterrània. La gran expansió catalana del 1200 al 1500".

www.cai.cam.ac.uk/news/david-a...
David Abulafia (1949-2026)
Professor David Abulafia CBE has died. He was 76.
www.cai.cam.ac.uk
January 26, 2026 at 2:42 PM
florianlouis.bsky.social
David Abulafia was a rare, truth-seeking historian

spectator.com/article/davi...
David Abulafia was a rare, truth-seeking historian
Notwithstanding his lifelong fascination with the Mediterranean, David Abulafia – the Cambridge historian, who has died – was a Brexiteer
spectator.com
January 26, 2026 at 1:54 PM