Author: Dr Ruchama Johnston-Bloom
Teaching great texts and big ideas from the medieval and early modern periods in Social Foundations II in London, I sense that freshman often do not find medieval thought as accessible and engaging as for instance the work of Machiavelli or Locke. In order to make medieval thought come alive, I combine teaching an extraordinary twelfth-century Islamic text, Hayy ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufayl, with a co-curricular trip to the University of Cambridge’s Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit. In addition to sparking students’ interest in the medieval Weltanschauung, both this text and this trip also contribute to a larger discussion we have throughout the term about the relationship between Islam and the so-called West.
A friend of mine once described Hayy ibn Yaqzan (which translates as “Alive, son of Awake”) as a medieval science fiction novel, and there is something to that. Ibn Tufayl (a physician and minister in the Almohad court), wrote Hayy ibn Yaqzan in order to synthesize the Islamic philosophy and Sufism of his day. The text tells the story of Hayy, a male child who—either because his mother abandons him or because he spontaneously generates—grows up alone on an uninhabited island. Initially, a female gazelle suckles and cares for him, but when she eventually dies Hayy is left to develop alone. Ibn Tufayl then details Hayy’s autodidactic journey, one in which Hayy, through only the use of his own reason, arrives at complex ideas about the existence of God, the soul, and enlightenment. The text introduces students to many of the major topics in medieval philosophy and theology; however, it does so within the framework of an intriguing story, all while opening onto contemporary issues like environmentalism and nature vs. nurture.
After reading Hayy ibn Yaqzan, as well as excerpts from better-known medieval thinkers, including Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas, we visit the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit (a genizah is a place where Jews store no longer needed Hebrew language and religious texts) in Cambridge, where my students are able to view some of the most interesting manuscripts fragments found in the famous genizah discovered in Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue in the nineteenth century. The fragments run the gamut from verses of the Bible to shopping lists and, on our visit, students learn about the medieval Mediterranean universe. We are able to see not only handwritten letters by the likes of Maimonides, but also scraps of magical incantations and children’s primers. This trip helps students connect the philosophical and theological texts we have been reading to their cultural context and to the lived experience of medieval people.
One of my major goals in SFII is to get students thinking critically about the idea of Islamic exceptionalism. Reading the Qur’an in its late antique context, or examining Thomas Aquinas’s use of Ibn Rushd, or exploring the reception history of Hayy ibn Yaqzan (frequently translated in early modern Europe), all help students see how connected Islamic civilization and Europe are and have been. The interdisciplinary structure of the Liberal Studies Core Program allows and encourages such intellectual border crossing: medieval thought can come alive, and connections between Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought can be foregrounded.
Ruchama Johnston-Bloom lectures at New York University in London. Her research focuses on German-Jewish Orientalism and connections between Jewish and Islamic modernities. She received her PhD in the History of Judaism from the University of Chicago in 2013. Publications include: “Symbiosis Relocated: The German-Jewish Orientalist Ilse Lichtenstadter in America,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 58 (2013). She has held fellowships at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at Hebrew University and at the American University in Cairo. In 2011–2012 she was also the recipient of a Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Dissertation Grant.