HABERMAN, Jacob 1932-

PERSONAL: Born September 14, 1932, in Zurich, Switzerland; son of Alexander (a manufacturer) and Esther (a homemaker; maiden name, Liebowitz) Haberman; married Henryka Korngold (a business executive), 1955; children: Sinclair, Brook. Ethnicity: "White." Education: Yeshiva University, B.A., 1950; Columbia University, Ph.D., 1954; New York Law School. J.D., 1969. Politics: Independent. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Chess, cycling, walking.

ADDRESSES: Home—765 Shore Rd., Long Beach, NY 11561. Offıce—Haberman Group, 315 Central Park W., New York, NY 10025.

CAREER: Congregation Ramath Orah, New York, NY, rabbi, 1954-60; Haberman Group (real estate and development firm), New York, NY, senior member, 1960—.

MEMBER: Rabbinical Council of America, Association for Jewish Studies.

WRITINGS:

Maimonides and Aquinas: A Contemporary Appraisal, Ktav Publishing House (New York, NY), 1979.

(Translator) The Microcosm of Joseph Ibn Saddiq, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Cranbury, NJ), 2003.

Contributor to books, including The Reader's Guide to Judaism, edited by Michael Terry, 2000; and Encyclopaedia Judaica. Contributor to scholarly journals in the United States and abroad, including Bitzaron, Deot, James Joyce Quarterly, Jewish Quarterly Review, Journal of Jewish Studies, Judaism, and Tradition.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Research on philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy, and Jewish studies.

SIDELIGHTS: Jacob Haberman told CA: "The scholarly ideal which I pursue (but which I certainly have not attained) is thus stated by Thomas Huxley: 'Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads or you shall learn nothing.' My field of inquiry is medieval Jewish thought and the preconceived notion, not only by Jewish authors, but by some of the church fathers and Muslim writers as well, that the Jews were the original cultivators of philosophy, and that the Greeks owed their progress in that study to the Jews. The reality, I soon learned, is far different."

"The Jews received philosophy from outside sources, and the history of Jewish philosophy is a history of the successive absorptions of foreign ideas which were transformed and adapted into a new and particular point of view. While this newfound knowledge may have deflated my chauvinism, it also taught me an important lesson: there is a unity of the philosophical experience in the Middle Ages among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sages. It is uncommonly gratifying for me to find that, in this period of strife and warfare in the Middle East, the leading thinkers of the three monotheistic religions, so intimately related in origin and history, were in the very front ranks of those who strove for the cause of peace and harmony among mankind. We all have much to learn from them."