Abraham Maimonides

The hinge of this whole wing, and the reason its bench-label bends: son of Maimonides, Nagid of Egyptian Jewry at nineteen — and an open admirer of the Sufis, whom he called heirs of a discipline the prophets of Israel once practiced and the exile had let fall. His enormous Kifayat al-Abidin ("Guide for the Servants of God") argues for restoring to Jewish worship the practices he saw perfected next door: solitary retreat, night vigils, prostration, ordered breathing, weeping. His pietist circle prayed in rows facing Jerusalem, prostrating like the neighbors. He was denounced to the Sultan for it and did not stop. Proof that the two traditions did not merely resemble one another — they met, in the open, under the same roof of one man's practice.