A Guide for the Perplexed
Author: Jonathan Levi
Release: June 16, 1992
Tagline: A Novel
Publisher: Random House
Genre: Fiction,
ISBN-10: 0679408932
ISBN-13: 978-0679408932
Main Character(s): Hanni and Holland
Synopsis: Stranded by a strike at an airport in Spain, two women – Hanni, in Spain to locate important family documents, and Holland, a documentary filmmaker–discover that they are related by ties that reach back to the Spanish Inquisition.
Declassified by Agent Palmer: A Review Loosely Based on A Guide for the Perplexed: A Novel
Quotes and Lines
So Maimonides, in the bumbling way of all devoted fathers-in-law, sat down to write a letter and stood up, having written a book–the Dalālat al-Hāirīn, known by its Hebrew title as the Moreh Nebuchim, or Guide for the Perplexed.
“when you’re immortal, it’s just one mid-life crisis after another.”
“But you are obsessed with knowledge, with an unfillable desire to know, to learn. You search out new experiences, feast greedily on new books, new maps, new ideas. You are always ready to listen, because you are always ready to change your mind. You draw exquisitely, Esau, because you know how to erase.
Games not war, deerhide not skulls. When in doubt, eat, but avoid shellfish. And when they pitch you high and inside, as they will, move. My destiny is secure in your survival. Your survival is assured only in your motion.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, survive because of metaphor, because of story. They survive because wise men are able to recognize parables, arguments, theories, intangible lessons, in the tales of these warm scriptural actors.
“True flamenco thrives only under fascism–the Spanish Jews before the Expulsion, the gypsies up to the death of Franco, American rock through Watergate. Forget about anything after that.”
Perhaps Hassan the Palestinian academic was right, all those years ago in Paris at the Battle of Trocadéro. It takes a balanced mixture of Catholic brandy, Jewish pastry, and Islamic coffee to achieve intestinal harmony.