Jacob Needleman

Jacob Needleman (October 6, 1934 – November 28, 2022) was an American philosopher, author, and religious scholar.

Needleman was Jewish and was educated at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Freiburg, Germany. He was deeply involved in the Gurdjieff Work and the Gurdjieff Foundation of San Francisco. He was a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at San Francisco State University and is said to have "popularized the term 'new religious movements'." He was a former visiting professor at the Duxx Graduate School of Business Leadership in Monterrey, Mexico, and former director of the Center for the study of New Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has also served as a research associate at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, a research fellow at Union Theological Seminary, Adjunct Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of California Medical School and guest Professor of Religious Studies at the Sorbonne University, Paris (1992). Needleman was honored by the Open Center in New York City in 2006. Needleman also narrated classical religious texts in audiobook format, including the Taoist Tao Te Ching and the Hindu Bhagavad Gita.

Alternative spirituality author and historian Mitch Horowitz, who has called Needleman a mentor, said that Needleman's "fullest gift as a writer was his capacity to compellingly describe inner contradictions and strivings," and that Needleman's activity in translating and publishing 20th-century French-language works of Traditionalist philosophy is of high significance to its recognition.

Needleman died on November 28, 2022, in Oakland, California at the age of 88.

Needleman authored articles, interviewed and wrote 24 books in a writing career that began in 1970.