Warren Zev Harvey, the author of the 2026 Cambridge University Press 74-page book “Spinoza and the Medieval Jewish Philosophers,” is an important contemporary historian of Jewish philosophy. His long career has included significant work on Maimonides, Hasdai Crescas, Judah Halevi, Spinoza, and other Jewish philosophers. He was born in New York in 1943. He studied philosophy at Columbia University and earned his B.A. in 1965 and his Ph.D. in 1973. He has published more than 150 studies on medieval and modern Jewish philosophy. He is known for explaining Jewish philosophy as philosophy, rather than treating it merely as an interesting branch of Jewish history.

Harvey has also become an important scholar of Baruch Spinoza, especially the question of how much Spinoza’s philosophy owes to Jewish thinkers who preceded him. He tells readers not to assume that Spinoza’s philosophical world began with Descartes and Hobbes. Spinoza grew up in Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish community, studied Hebrew texts, and encountered Jewish philosophy before reading many of the major early-modern European philosophers. He never gave up studying Jewish texts.

Harvey tells readers that Spinoza was born in 1632 into Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish community. He died in 1677. As a young man, he studied the Hebrew Bible, medieval biblical commentaries, Hebrew grammar, and medieval Jewish philosophy. Harvey emphasizes that Spinoza encountered thinkers such as Maimonides and Abraham ibn Ezra before seriously engaging with major contemporary European philosophers. Consequently, Spinoza’s philosophy can often look remarkably Maimonidean, while at other points it becomes what some readers see as anti-Maimonidean.

In his twelve chapters, Harvey organizes the book around the Jewish thinkers whose influence on Spinoza he investigates:

  1. Saadia Gaon (892-942)
  2. Rashi and Pseudo-Rashi (twelfth century)
  3. Judah Halevi (c. 1075- c. 1141)
  4. Abraham ibn Ezra (1089- 1167)
  5. Maimonides (1138- 1204)
  6. Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291)
  7. Joseph Kaspi (1280-1345)
  8. Isaac Polgar (early fourteenth century)
  9. Levi Gersonides (1288-1344)
  10. Hasdai Crescas (c.1340-1411)
  11. Profayt Duran (Efodi) (c.1350-c.1415)
  12. Joseph Albo (1380-1444)

 

He gives Maimonides special attention. He notes that Spinoza could adopt something recognizably Maimonidean in one argument and then reject an important Maimonidean conclusion in another. (Was this to hide his true opinion from the Amsterdam non-Jewish leaders who might feel threatened by his views?) He says his book aims to show what Spinoza learned from Maimonides, what he transformed, and what he rejected.

 

Harvey’s book includes many ideas people may not know. For example, Rashi on Exodus 7:1 defines the Hebrew nabi, “prophet,” as an “interpreter” or “translator,” and Spinoza agrees. Both Maimonides and Spinoza concur that the concept of “sin” is not in the Hebrew Bible, which uses different words that imply acting contrary to what is proper. Both state that there is a world of difference between what is true and what is morally correct, and between what is true and what is imagined. Harvey also thinks both philosophers held the view that nature is derived from God, and that this is the meaning of Spinoza’s ambiguous statement “God or Nature.” Significantly, they both felt that when the Bible says God did or said something, it does not mean God directly caused the event. It only means that God was the ultimate cause because He created nature that produced the event (see the Guide 2:48). The two also stated that the more we know natural things, the more knowledge of God is acquired; the belief that God pardons improper behavior is most likely not true, but most people need to think it is so; also, study and learning are not the goal of life, but only the means to the end.

This superb book presents many more such ideas.