About
(A rare daytime photo of Aboulafia taken near Aspen, CO. , July 2008)
When not commenting on world matters, the author is a professor of liberal arts and philosophy, and Director of Liberal Arts at The Juilliard School.
Author and editor of several books on Social and Political Philosophy. Co-editor of the journal, Contemporary Pragmatism. In the fall of 2010 Stanford University Press will publish his latest book, Transcendence: On Self-Determination and Cosmopolitanism.
NOTE: The views expressed in postings are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of The Juilliard School. (And just in case you were wondering, in the classroom I am nonpartisan about political parties.)
Several readers have asked about the origin of my last name, Aboulafia. My father’s family is Sephardic, descendants of the Jewish peoples who settled in what is today Spain and Portugal. (Sometimes the term Sephardic is used to refer to Jewish peoples who are from Middle Eastern countries.) My father’s ancestors spoke a form of Spanish known as Ladino, which combined Spanish and Hebrew. The name itself is probably derived from Arabic or Aramaic. I am told that it means father of well-being, vitality, or health. (So, I am not going to argue about it….)
UPDATE: August 21, 2008: On August 20th I added a little feature to the site, a cluster map. If you click on the map, you can see the locations of the visitors to UP@NIGHT. (There can be more than one visit from one location, since a location is an IP address).
Hello,
Most people have never heard of Ladino. My daughter was being interviewed on a radio program in Barcelona and when she referred to “Ladino,” the interviewer politely offered “Latino.” Ah, well.
My daughter is a harpist and performs a lot of Sephardic music with Ladino titles and verses. She also plays a lot of Celtic music, the hot thing in Isreal today.
You might be able to download a free Ladino title from her web site, http://www.sunitaharp.com
She is also involved in using music for healing. I don’t know how to add a scan of a recent magazine article about this work.
I hope that you don’t mind that she went to The Manhattan School of Music.
Sincerely,
Paul Staneslow
Paul Staneslow
May 24, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Hello. Just thought you’d be interested to know that “lafiya” was a Hausa word I learned in my Peace Corps stint in Nigeria — it was always the positive answer to ritual greeting questions such as how’s it going, how’s your mother, how’s your work, etc. Funny that it was often difficult to get hospital patients from that culture to give helpful responses to medical questions. “Lafiya” was the polite and constant reponse to such questions.
Tad McArdle
May 25, 2008 at 4:12 am
Thanks for leading me here. I studied Dewey and Mead with Joe Flay in the Penn State Philosophy Dept back in the early 1960s, and both left a lasting impression. After a long detour, I returned to both of them about 10 years ago, working on a new line of applied political theory. Working with my old comrade, Tom Hayden, in setting up the ‘Progressives for Obama’ project, is one small piece of it. I’ll look at this more thoroughly.
Carl Davidson
May 29, 2008 at 12:48 am
Hi I’ve put together a ‘mashup’ of speeches from MLK and Obama which you might be interested in listening too. I believe that this is a new ‘idea/concept’ combining music and speeches into social commentary – although I might be wrong. Would appreciate your thoughts – you can listen here on http://www.myspace.com/lewgarou
Lew Garou
June 18, 2008 at 7:13 am
hello
Aboulafia in the north african arabic dialect means:
father of health and was given as to important ministers and officials in the musleim kings courts, when spain was under musleim rule it was given among others to many local jews too.
my ancestors for example where originally named Halevy (that was a commun sephardic name), and to that Aboulafia was added. later Halevy was left out.
rafi
rapahel aboulafia
August 5, 2008 at 6:23 am
hey, just read the post about your name, and i thought i’d mention that Aboulafia is the name of the computer in “foucault’s pendulum” by umberto eco, and it’s a name that has roots in the kaballah, I believe.
Laurent
October 5, 2008 at 2:00 am
Dear Mr. Aboulafia<
Found your post on Obama’s pragmatism on TPM and checked out your site. Just want to thank you for this very insightful and downright helpful post.
Yours sincerely,
Patricia Eakins
Patricia Eakins
December 18, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I had a next door neighbor once named Aboulafia (San Francisco, Jones St., if they are family) — and I happened to be looking at some data from the census bureau, on the frequency of last names. “Hayes”, a nearby street, is 100, but a kind of remarkable thing happens around the 700th entry — you stop finding anything familiar at all. I checked and Aboulafia and it is something like bottom 10, I was amazed to see something recognizable down there, with the “Aalderinks” and “Aarsvolds”. And then to see this blog come up as a google reader recommendation!
Timon
March 11, 2009 at 5:41 am