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From the Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers have sought to provide intellectually coherent accounts compatible with traditional Judaism. Their efforts remain meaningful.
Jewish philosophers in action: a 1943 work by Max Lasky entitled “Talmudical Discussion” (Image: supplied).
Published: 9 September 2025
Last updated: 9 September 2025
Jewish intellectual culture is rich and complex, but often difficult to access. This short piece is intended to introduce readers to a small caste of medieval Jewish philosophers.
Widespread Jewish engagement with the Greek philosophical tradition began when Jews came in contact with Islam. Although Philo of Alexandria wrote philosophical works in the Platonic tradition in the first century CE, ancient rabbinic Jews seem to have made a point of not engaging with “Greek wisdom” until the early Islamic conquests (c. 622-750 CE), which brought profound cultural and political changes.
The openness of the dominant culture allowed Jews to pursue scientific knowledge alongside Muslims, Christians, and members of other religious and cultural minorities. From this period onwards, Jewish scholars engaged deeply in scientific and philosophical activity.
1. Saadia Gaon (d. 942)
Perhaps the most underrated Jewish thinker, Saadia made a profound impact on Jewish philosophy. He was deeply intellectually curious and eager to share the fruits of his research.
In his commentary on the mysterious esoteric-scientific work Sefer Yetsirah (The Book of Formation), he presented a summary of nine competing theories of the origin and nature of the cosmos. His major philosophical work The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, covers topics in systematic theology, cosmology, psychology (philosophy of mind) and ethics.
Saadia was an eclectic thinker and seems to have read whatever scientific and philosophical material he could get his hands on in Arabic translation. His theory of the soul is based on Platonic sources, his physics integrate Stoic material, and his ethics are primarily Aristotelian. He applies the methods of Islamic systematic theology (Kalām) to Jewish thinking and is a foundational figure for the Jewish philosophical tradition.
2. Baḥya ibn Paquda (11th century)
Is the Torah all about what we do, or does it demand any internal or inward actions or states?
This is the question driving Baḥya Ibn Paquda's one known work – The Guide to the Duties of the Heart. His answer is that the Torah does indeed demand certain beliefs (e.g. monotheism) and states (e.g. trust, love, awe). He proceeds to build systematic arguments for core beliefs and prescribes practices to cultivate the desired inner states.
Ibn Paquda drew on several different intellectual traditions, including Islamic Neoplatonism, Kalām, and Sufism (Islamic mysticism) to create a classic of Jewish philosophy.
3. Judah ha-Levi (d. 1141)
The Kuzari, Judah ha-Levi’s major work on Jewish thought, is presented as a dialogue between a Khazar king and a Jewish scholar exploring the true path of life.
After questioning a Muslim, a Christian, and a philosopher about the true and correct path in life, the king reluctantly initiates a conversation with a Jewish scholar, and the ensuing dialogue covers everything from revelation to cosmology, from the human soul and ethics to linguistics.
In some ways, Judah ha-Levi is an anti-philosopher: The king is unconvinced by the philosopher and turns to the Jewish scholar. However, ha-Levi engages very deeply with the philosophical tradition and integrates a tremendous amount of philosophical and scientific material into his work.
4. Moses b. Maimon/Rambam/Maimonides (1138-1204)
The most impactful of all Jewish philosophers, Maimonides authored major works in Jewish law, medicine, and philosophy, including the most comprehensive Jewish legal code, the Mishneh Torah.
Maimonides’ major philosophical work, The Guide of the Perplexed, is a dense and labyrinthine work that was composed as a series of letters to his student Joseph ben Judah Ibn Shim‘on of Ceuta. It attempts to demonstrate that the true teachings of the Torah are none other than the fundamental principles of philosophy (in its Aristotelian transmission).
Maimonides treats central topics in psychology, cosmology, physics, and more, and concludes with a breathtaking account of ethics and political philosophy as the true expressions of the concept of imitatio dei – living in imitation of the Divine.
Maimonides is unique insofar as he is remembered quite differently among Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Among Jews he is primarily remembered as a jurist and a philosopher; among Christians as a theologian; and among Muslims as a medical theorist and practitioner.
5. Abraham Maimonides (1186-1237)
Moses Maimonides' son Abraham established a circle of devotees who adopted a range of Sufi practices, while remaining committed to their Jewish religion. He drew deeply on the Islamic philosophers Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), as well as on Sufi thought, composing a vast work on Jewish practice that covered topics in law and philosophy.
Like Saadia Gaon and his father Moses Maimonides, Abraham Maimonides’ ethical writings are focused on the cultivation of virtues – but in his works, the virtues and their cultivation and practice are very much shaped and informed by Sufi literature, and much more emphasis is placed on direct experience of the Divine.
6. Levi ben Gershom/Gersonides (d. 1344)
Gersonides is one of a small club of Jewish scholars who have lunar craters named after them. His pathbreaking work in mathematics and astronomy included the use of a measuring tool of his own invention that came to be known as a Jacob’s staff.
Gersonides argues that the Torah does precisely the same thing as Aristotle in the Metaphysics: it provides a corrective to the opinion of ancient materialists (who believed nothing exists outside the physical world) and introduces the concept of a remote cause of all things (i.e. the Divine).
He embraced a version of astrology known as astral determinism, which was a major scientific theory of his time; harboured a commitment to empiricism; and formulated a theology that was utterly impersonal – even more austere, it might be argued, than that of Maimonides. We can appreciate Gersonides for his intellectual rigour, and for his uncompromising quest for truth.
7. Tanḥum ha-Yerushalmi (d. 1291)
Tanḥum ben Joseph ha-Yerushalmi wrote extensive commentaries on the Hebrew Bible prefaced by introductions modelled on various literary genres known to us from the philosophical tradition.
For example, his introduction to Ecclesiastes incorporates a full classification of the philosophical sciences, while his introduction to the Song of Songs incorporates the only known original Judaeo-Arabic philosophical bird allegory – a genre widely embraced in the Islamic world, including by the great philosopher Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), the mystics al-Ghazālī and Ibn ‘Arabī, and perhaps most famously the Persian Sufi poet ‘Aṭṭār.
Indeed, his works show a broad familiarity with and interest in Sufism. Similarly, many philosophical and scientific excurses are scattered throughout his biblical commentaries.
Following earlier philosophers, Tanḥum divides philosophy into the practical sciences (ethics, household management, and politics) and the theoretical sciences (mathematics, physics, and metaphysics). In his description of these sciences, he demonstrates his familiarity with al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, the Brethren of Purity, and Maimonides.
Drawing on philsosophers such as Maimonides as well as Sufi sources, he presents a philosophical curriculum that reaches its climax with the Rank of Sanctity, in which the individual contemplates the underlying wisdom of the cosmos. According to Tanḥum, this contemplation is the ultimate purpose of all philosophy and all spiritual practice, and one of the defining features of the human mind.
Raphael Dascalu is co-founder of Beit Midrash Oz, an open and inclusive home for Jewish learning in Melbourne. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for the History of Philosophy (CHOP) at the University of Notre Dame Australia, and an Adjunct Research Associate at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University.
Comments1
JG16 September at 12:25 pm
worth considering? Taylor, Joan E., Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo’s ‘Therapeutae’ Reconsidered (Oxford, 2006; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Sept. 2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199291410.001.0001