Ki Teitze: Jewish-Sufi Jihad

Kifaya trans Wincelberg p 431

Can one fight a battle  alone?

  G-d is  the  only true Teacher but all Sufi traditions insist that we  must follow a Guide—though some are Uwaysi, and some have  been instructed by Al Khidr. 

 Every one of  us  will have a favourite teacher from their schooldays. The  more fortunate  amongst us  will have  met and  been assisted by several such teachers.

  Some  of us  will have realised that everyone and  everything can become  an educational tool if we are granted the  appropriate insight.

  Such teachers encourage and  inspire. They point the  way and sometimes direct us  away from false choices, though the really good teachers will always remind us that we alone can actually make those choices.

  But in this  school of life  we also meet good classmates....fellow students who support encourage; and sometimes become our teachers as well. The  salik (R.Abraham’s term for  a Jewish-sufi “seeker” on the  Path) thrives best when  supported by their fellow salikun. (tariqa members).

In our Tariqa’s private online page this week, one of our salikun (Robert Kaiser) published a thoughtful reflection on Ibn Pequda’s use of the  term “jihad”  in the Jewish-Sufi classic Al-Hidāyah ilā Farā’id ̣al-Qulūb (often referred to today in its translations from the  Arabic as “Hovot al Levavot or “Duties of the Heart”). 

  Robert reminded us  that, in Sufism, the  term can refer to a Spiritual and Internal battle as well as a physical one.  I’d like  to continue  his thread in this week’s short Shabbat “Hegyon Ha Lev”.   We begin with the following text (with my italicised emphases) from the Kifaya of Rabbenu Abraham ben HaRambam:

“Whenever the concentration of ten individuals who have joined together for prayer...is combined, it is greater than the concentration of each of the ten praying individually. 

Mysteries are thereby revealed by intuition (asrar yakshufuhu al-dhawq) to one who has followed the Paths of the Pietists and contemplated their diverse states...

There are certain times and certain states that can enable an individual to attain serenity in contemplation (khalwah)  in which his mind is purified in his state of contemplation  far more than it is during formal public prayer.” 

(Rabbi Avraham ben ha-Rambam:  Sefer ha-Maspik le-‘Ovdey Hashem, Kitab Kifayat al-‘ābidīn; (translated N Dana) p188)

 

Though  he  was speaking  principally  of  “khalwa” as reclusive solitary prayer —we can  also view the passage as a statement  in support of the  kind of  “communal khalwa”  that our Tariqa practises during its weekly meetings.

 It is  to be  hoped that by  joining together as a congregation in silent Dhikr/Hazkara each week, we might attain something of the  shared “serenity” spoken of in the above text.  Significantly in this context: one recent  visitor to our meetings wrote to me  afterwards to say that she  had found  it easier to meditate with others present than when she  was alone, even though the  silent session she  attended  was not  a “guided” meditation.   

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   Gershonides  (R. Levi ben Gershon,1288 –1344)  says that the   strength of an  individual soldier is multiplied exponentially when  he   enters  a battle in the company of like-minded soldiers.

 That is  why it is  important  that our members should supplement their solitary private khalwa (whenever possible) by practising such contemplative silence with other group members  at our weekly meetings. 

   By  doing this, they can generate  a shared  beraka which can uplift both the members and the entire nation, for as Robert pointed out earlier this  week in his commentary:  We are engaged in a jihad (battle) with ourselves. That is an ascetic process  of purification, and it is especially apt during this penitential month of Elul. 

But we are similarly engaged in a shared jihad as a spiritual community—and  each of us has the  power to contribute both support and encouragement. 

At the moment: Our tiny nation is under intensive attack—regionally, internally, and even  globally—and I believe that  our spiritual combat is urgently needed as much the  military one.  Perhaps  it is  needed even more.

Our weekly meetings in Safed, and  by extension—the expression of solidarity in linking-up  with the  group here online— can generate a profound unity amongst the  salikun (seekers/members) of Tariqa Eliyahu. Our Jewish-Sufi mystical tradition  insists that the  Light that is  generated by such activity  can, somehow,  be transmitted to all worlds.  

In Kuntres Maarat HaLev , I quoted R. Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev on the effectiveness of such spiritual activity  when he  claimed (with an unintended reference to fana and  baqa! ):

“When man nullifies himself completely and attaches his thoughts to Nothingness,  then  a new sustenance flows into all the universes. This is a sustenance  that did not exist previously.”

 The Chassidic Masters, R'Aryeh Kaplan, page 73,

   Even if one cannot attend  the Safed Jewish-Sufi  meetings in person, one may share in its beraka by having the  kavanah to be there in spirit.

As an oft-quoted  European Hasid is reputed to have said:

 “One  is  where one’s  thoughts  are”.

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 In a few weeks time on Yom Kippur, we will accept shared responsibility for our  failings as Am Yisrael. On that day we  always confess in the plural.  

Then—just as in our communal khalwa meetings—we will each attempt to meet G-d in interior solitude: but we will be  doing it as one.  Engaged in the  Greater Jihad. Each of us alone....All of us  together. 

 

Yes, with G-d as  one's only Guide, one can  engage in a spiritual Jihad alone—but it helps to have the support and encouragement of "like-minded troops", both before, and  during such a battle. 

 

Nachman Davies

Safed 12th Sept 2024

ketiva v'hatima tova

Shabbat Shalom