For several decades I have been running a "Jewish Contemplatives website". That website has always had a dual focus. Firstly it was created (in 2004) to encourage the practice of solitary meditation and prayer for all Jews. Secondly it was created to promote intentional solitary contemplative lifestyles (for the very small number of observant Jews who felt called to this exceptional lifestyle). In that group were included all those who were trying to convert situations of unintentional isolation or loneliness into an opportunity for constructive prayer—generated by their desire to make a spiritual contribution to the communal life of Kehal Yisrael.
But behind all those intentions there was a greater intention.
There is a Jewish tradition that the experience of prophecy (intimate and receptive communication with the Divine) had been experienced not only by the biblical prophets, but by every single man, woman, and child who stood at Sinai. Furthermore, our Sages claimed that there would come a time when this awareness of the Divine (ruach ha kodesh and various levels of inspirational prophecy) would be restored to Israel, —and indeed, to all human kind— “when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of G-d, as the waters cover the sea-bed.” (Habakuk 2:14)
To further this process, in 2005 I wrote a very short booklet (Kuntres Ma’arat Ha-Lev/The Cave of the Heart) which presented a method of contemplative prayer that was, in fact and in intention, conceived as a method of prophetic training in receptive contemplation. This was followed by several articles on this website with the same “prophetic” aim, including one on general receptive intuition and one on a method of lectio divina called Hegyon Ha-Lev.
In 2008, and with the assistance of Christine Gilbert (an academic scholar of Judaism and a lifelong contemplative practitioner), I formed an online Community of Jewish Contemplatives aimed specifically at individuals already practicing an intentional contemplative lifestyle. We never made a minyan—with only seven members—and so after a few years I transferred the idea to form a Facebook Group promoting the original concepts. This was more successful (in some ways) but although the group has around 1,400 members, they are mainly there to support rather than participate. The first community experiment had been aimed at a tiny minority of Jews geared to eremitic practice, the Facebook Group version was inclusive of all Jews with a personal contemplative practice— a much larger(and ever growing) catchment group. The burgeoning of these spirituality orientated groups makes me think that the time for “the return of prophecy” is coming closer. Almost daily.
In November 2021 I began the third experiment in the process by creating a Jewish Sufi Tariqa, Derech Eliyahu Ha-Nabi, and recently began accepting members.
At the moment its membership is strictly limited to observant Jews who already have some knowledge or a deep interest in personal Sufi practice and/or the Jewish Sufi movement—but eventually its membership will become open to the general public. Watch this space, but please do not hold your breath. We are “preparing the sukka” still and are not yet ready “to receive guests” or passive observers.
First, here is some necessary personal and group background.
I had been interested in Sufism (a form of Islamic mysticism and philosophy) since my days as a student of Javanese Gamelan. I was taught by teachers (like Pak Rudhatin Brongtodiningrat of blessed memory) who believed that this kind of musical performance was a device to develop rasa (a kind of spiritual intuition that the Sufis called dhawq) and whose kraton based gamelan teaching was closely related in its methods and intention to the notion of kebatinan (the Javanese ‘science’ of ‘inner’ spirituality and mysticism). They were also all devout Moslems with a strong connection to the Sufi traditions believed to have been brought to Java by the Wali Songgo. It was during my decades as a resident of Java that I (coincidentally?) first developed the form of receptive prayer and intuitive practices that were described in Kuntres Maarat Ha Lev.
Shortly after writing Kuntres Ma’arat Ha-Lev, after relocating to live in Andalusia, Christine Gilbert introduced me to a paper by Professor Paul B. Fenton, the leading academic commentator and translator of the Judeo-Arabic manuscripts of the mediaeval Jewish Sufi Movement. (many of which he identified himself). I was stunned by this discovery and began a slow but persistent study of R. Abraham’s Kifaya (in an English translation by Rosenblatt and later by that of R. Wincelberg). This led to further reading on the Jewish-Sufi mode of contemplative prayer in the writings of R. Obadyah Maimuni and the Egyptian Pietists. In November 2021, I was blessed to have a two hour meeting with Professor Fenton himself who enlightened me still further, and introduced me to some of the ideas of R.David ben Joshua Maimuni, whose sprituality spoke to me most profoundly and personally.
ooOoo
What was it that excited and moved me so much about this mediaeval group of “Egyptian Pietists”— a group which had been very large and influential for centuries, and whose ‘lost’ writings are still being discovered in the Cairo Genizah and in private collections globally?
The answer to that question is described in my book “The Mitkarevim—Jewish Contemplatives and the Return of Prophecy” which is in the final stages of preparation, but here are the headlines:
(i) The Rambam and his descendents believed that the era when prophecy would return was fast approaching. (It is, but we have to see “time” a little more in a Divine perspective,as it were.) This belief was crucial to the members of the mediaeval group of Jewish Sufis.
(ii) The penultimate chapter of R. Abraham’s magnum opus (the Kifaya) supports hitbodedut (solitary seclusion) in four forms: (i) a personal practice of solitary meditation: (ii) a temporary practice of secluded retreat (resembling the extended khalwa of the Islamic Sufis), (iii) the practice of “solitude whilst in a crowd” which the Sufis called “khalwat dar anjuman”; (iv) the institution of a form of “communal eremiticism” for intentional (often celibate) Jewish Sufi contemplatives housed in a “convent” or attached to a synagogue. These ideas are developed in the books and fragmentary manuscripts that were penned by members of the Maimuni family and its pietist circle.
(iii) The mediaeval Jewish Sufis were an elitist group. They spoke of a “suluk ha khas” —a special way for the minority of Jews attracted to a particularly intense form of ascetic and contemplative practice. It seemed to me when I discovered this, that I had “found my tribe” as I had described it on this website. They also insisted that before one embarked on this “special path” one had to be meticulous in the practice of the “common path” of the Halakha: the loving and meticulous obervance of the mitzvot. To me, as an observant Orthodox Jew, this was most significant.
(iv) In their private individual worship and in their congregational liturgy (in their own small houses of prayer), the Jewish Sufis under R. Abraham’s tutelage practiced choreographed postures and silent acts of bodily devotion that were designed to increase the more spiritual and reflective moments in the recitation of the daily services. His motivation was to increase decorum and the contemplative element in Jewish worship. This growing focus on contemplative Jewish worship practice is precisely what we can see happening online nowadays with the proliferation of Jewish Meditation websites, Zoom meetings, and “spiritual” literature. It is also what I have been writing about so passionately all these years as readers of this blog will have already realised.
It was with all this in mind that I decided to form a new group (tariqa/mesora) whose aim is to renew the contemplative elements of the mediaeval Pietist movement of the Maimunis— in a totally Orthodox Jewish manner.