From Andalusia to Shanghai: Ariel Bension’s Cross-Cultural Mysticism and Cultural-Political Creativity
Alberto Bardi
Journal of Language Culture and Religion October 13, 2026 DOI: 10.64830/001c.171890 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Key points | Argues that Ariel Bension situated the Zohar in medieval Andalusia to recover Judaism's Eastern dimensions and challenge Eurocentric Jewish intellectual history, and that this historical work underpinned his later Shanghai-era articulation, via Tagore, of a modern Jewish ethics of dialogue, spiritual universality, and cultural mediation. Contends that Bension's originality lay in using affinities among Jewish, Islamic, and Indian mystical traditions for Hebrew cultural renewal and Jewish participation in an East-West spiritual conversation. |
Abstract
This article examines Ariel Bension’s reinterpretation of Jewish mysticism as a resource for modern Sephardic cultural-political renewal. Focusing on The Zohar in Moslem and Christian Spain , it argues that Bension situated the Zohar within the intercultural world of medieval Andalusia in order to recover the Eastern dimensions of Judaism and challenge Eurocentric accounts of Jewish intellectual history. Yet Bension’s engagement with Andalusia was not merely antiquarian or historical. It formed the intellectual foundation for his activity in Shanghai, where his encounter with the writings of Rabindranath Tagore enabled him to articulate a modern Jewish ethics of dialogue, spiritual universality, and cultural mediation. The article therefore reads Bension’s engagement with Islamic philosophy, especially Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān , and his reflections on Tagore as parts of a single intellectual trajectory: the transformation of Sephardic mysticism into a public language of intercultural ethics. Bension’s originality lies not in the simple identification of affinities between Jewish, Islamic, and Indian mystical traditions, but in his modern cultural-political use of these affinities as the basis for Hebrew cultural renewal and Jewish participation in a wider spiritual conversation between East and West.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |