Although overshadowed in the popular imagination by the towering stature of his more famous father, Abraham Maimonides (1186–1237), the only son of the celebrated author of the Mishneh Torah and the Guide for the Perplexed, was himself a remarkable figure who has long merited a substantial biographical treatment of his own. Abraham's short but eventful life, which seemed to reel from one crisis to another, is well documented thanks to the preservation of a considerable portion of his own writings—among them his commentaries on Genesis and Exodus, over a hundred responsa, and significant sections of his monumental legal and ethical treatise, Kifāyat al-ʿābidīn—as well as a large number of contemporary documents and records that illuminate his career as a public servant. Over the past century, the colorful figure emerging from these sources, who was at one and the same time the chief spokesman for a spiritual movement focused on religious reform, an original and prolific scholar, a practicing physician, and the head of the Jewish community in Egypt, captured the attention of some of the greatest historians of medieval Jewry, among them Gerson Cohen, Naphtali Wieder, and S. D. Goitein. The latter, who coedited Abraham's responsa at the outset of his scholarly career and penned numerous articles about him over the years, returned to him one last time in the final pages of his magisterial Mediterranean Society. In an admiring and touching portrait entitled “A Perfect Man with a Tragic Fate,” Goitein presented Abraham as the realization of the highest ideals of the Middle Ages and the embodiment of the intellectual and cultural achievements of Jewish society in the Arabic-speaking world. “He represented,” Goitein wrote, “all the best found in medieval Judaism, as it developed within Islamic civilization.”Footnote ¹ Recent years have seen a new wave of interest in Abraham's writings and career as witnessed by the important work of Paul Fenton, Mordechai Friedman, Y. Zvi Langermann, and Nathan Hofer. Elisha Russ-Fishbane's excellent monograph builds on this extensive body of scholarship and goes considerably beyond it, providing Abraham at long last with the major study he has long deserved.

In his introduction Russ-Fishbane reconstructs the chronology of Abraham's life, offering at a number of junctures insightful corrections to previous scholarship. Here he also presents the reader with the central argument of his book, namely that Abraham Maimonides was, above all else, a reformer who worked tirelessly to effect a revolution in the spiritual life of the Jews of his generation through a multipronged program of reform that stands out for its broad appeal within Jewish society and, perhaps more importantly, for its unabashed adoption of Islamic religious practices. The chapters that follow thus constitute an intellectual biography of Abraham Maimonides and a history of the origins and early development of the spiritual movement he led. The introduction concludes with a thoughtful critique of the way historians have invoked the idea of cultural symbiosis as an explanation for the kind of acculturation reflected in Abraham's reform agenda.

The historical development and social makeup of the Jewish pietist movement are the focus of chapter 1. While isolated calls for the adoption of ascetic practices informed by Islamic models were heard in Jewish circles before, Russ-Fishbane argues that only in early thirteenth-century Egypt did a social movement committed to such a program emerge. While the nascent movement is sometimes portrayed as a rejection of Aristotelian philosophy, Russ-Fishbane prefers to view it against the backdrop of what he identifies as a “pervasive culture of piety” (55). Illustrating the broad appeal of the pietist program, he notes that its devotees included both full-fledged ascetics and occasionalists, scholars and lay people, Rabbanites and Karaites, rich and poor, and men, women, and children. The pietist movement was not without critics, and the chapter ends with a discussion of the main arguments raised against it—namely, that it promoted deviations from normative observance, imitated Islamic praxis, and popularized doctrines best kept secret—as well as Abraham's rejoinders to them.

The second chapter discusses the key institutions of the pietist movement and provides a general overview of their unique ascetic practices, drawing repeated parallels to the development and consolidation of Sufism in Egypt during the Ayyubid period. Of critical significance was the emergence of brotherhoods organized around the relationship between a master and his disciples. Contemporary sources from the Cairo Geniza reveal that Abraham functioned in such a capacity, serving as the spiritual guide for a circle of pietists that met regularly in his residence. Stressing the importance of practice rather than doctrine for the pietists, Russ-Fishbane examines individually a number of the key devotional rites embraced by the pietists, including fasting, nighttime vigils, solitary prayer, meditation, musical chanting, and the wearing of distinctive attire. Each of these, he observes, was firmly rooted in the Sufi tradition, and a number of them were at variance with the views of classical rabbinic texts.

The third and fourth chapters focus more narrowly on the most well-known dimension of Abraham's reform agenda: his attempt to revitalize worship by instituting changes in public prayer. Previous scholarship generally assumed that Abraham tried to impose a number of pietistic prayer customs on the Jewish community as a whole, a move that met with substantial resistance. Reexamining the available source material, however, Russ-Fishbane has come to a new interpretation of this episode, arguing that while Abraham actively pursued various liturgical changes in the synagogue service (in opposing the Palestinian rite, for example), he in fact made no attempt to force the wider community to adopt the particular postures and prayer innovations practiced by the pietists. After a careful consideration of the possible reasons for Abraham's reluctance in that regard, the author offers an important corrective concerning the putative source for the pietists’ prayer rituals. While Naphtali Wieder traced them to distinctive Sufi practices, Russ-Fishbane convincingly argues that they can more simply be understood in light of normative Islamic prayer traditions. Not everything in Abraham's reform program need be viewed through the lens of Sufism.

The distinctive prayer rituals included the washing of face, hands, and feet before all prayers; sitting face forward in the synagogue (rather than around the perimeter); maintaining specific body postures like kneeling, standing in straight rows, and lifting the hands in supplication; and, most controversially, full prostrations on the ground throughout the service. In a remarkable move, Abraham acknowledged that he was advocating the importation of practices observed by contemporary Muslims, insisting, however, that they had originally been Jewish practices. Russ-Fishbane demonstrates that in a number of instances Abraham's program built on borrowed customs that were already well established within Jewish circles.

Chapters 5 and 6 consider the ultimate goal of the pietist program. Abraham's reforms were intended to bring about a complete revitalization of Jewish society, a process that began with the restoration of prophecy. While such a state would be restricted to the pietists alone, owing to the unique physical and mental training their practices afforded, Jewish society as a whole would enjoy the benefits of their success through a renewal of its religious life. The focus on prophecy can be understood in light of a popular view within philosophical circles equating the prophetic experience with the attainment of human perfection and felicity. In line with these ideas, the restoration of prophecy had also come to be seen as a hallmark of the time of redemption. Viewed in such a light, the pietists’ program takes on an unmistakably messianic character. What makes Abraham's efforts all the more extraordinary is his conviction that Jewish renewal hinged upon the appropriation of observably Islamic forms of religious devotion.

Elegantly written and persuasively argued, Russ-Fishbane's outstanding book makes a number of important contributions. Two especially noteworthy achievements are its successful presentation of Abraham's career as a coherent whole by integrating his role as spiritual guide for the pietist movement with his more public position as nagid, and its repeated demonstration that much of Abraham's program had roots in the work of his father. This will long remain the standard work on Abraham Maimonides.