Showing posts with label Elul. Show all posts

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

Elul: Ani l'Dodi v'Dodi Li

The phrase “Ani l'Dodi v’Dodi Li” displays an acronymic reference to the Month of Elul.

In this month of Elul—perhaps the most ‘Sufi’ of Jewish months because of its history as a time of retreat and meditation — the phrase offers us a springboard for contemplative reflection, and also presents us with a potential recitation mantra for our private dhikr.

The imaginative possibility that this biblical text from the Song of Songs might refer to the Sufi concepts of fana and baqa was apparent to our Jewish-Sufi forebears. Furthermore, they chose to emphasise such a reading of its hidden meaning within their unique system of Jewish mysticism.

R.Abraham Ibn Abi'l-Rabi (d c.1223)—also known as Abraham He-Hasid—was the teacher and colleague of R. Abraham ben HaRambam (1186-1237) and he made a clear reference to these two Sufic concepts in his Commentary on Shir HaShirim.

In a fragment discovered and translated by Prof. Paul Fenton, Rabbenu Abraham He-Hasid connects the phrase to the aspirant’s need for a mentor and guide (Shaykh/Murshid). The essential nature of this system of transmission and guidance was later stressed by both R. Abraham ben Ha Rambam (in the Kifaya) and R. Obadya Maimuni (1228-1265) in his Hawdiyya.

Most significantly, for us here in Tariqa Eliyahu haNabi, R. Abraham He-Hasid also connects this pattern of transmission and guidance to the Bnei Neviím: the biblical “Schools of the Prophets” that so inspired Rabbenu Abraham ben Ha Rambam and his circle.

Rabbenu Abraham He-Hasid writes:

“The Sage (Solomon) at times refers to this vision and communion as "bride" and at others as "love", whereas the seeker (qasid) of this "bride" and "love" is called "beloved", as it is said

"My beloved is mine... as an apple among the trees of the orchard, so is my beloved among the young men". (Cant, ii.3)

The plural is here mentioned as an allusion to those who choose a master in their quest for the goal, these are (2 Kings vi.i and elsewhere) "the disciples of the prophets." ^*1

It was the intention of the Mediaeval Cairene Pietists to revive the esoteric practices of the BneiNevi’im that they considered to have been temporarily lost to Judaism— yet fortuitously preserved by the Islamic Sufis. These practices were understood to be a path that led to spiritual maturity, human perfection, and the potential attainment of prophecy. Our Tariqa Eliyahu seeks to renew this specific Jewish-Sufi Path.

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The Ani l'Dodi quotation appears in connection with the concepts of the fana (annihilation) that leads to baqa (intimate union with the Divine) in the writings of R.David ben Joshua Maimuni (1335-c1414).

Here the debt to Islamic Sufism is explicit— both linguistically and philosophically— and his writings indicate precisely how enthusiastically the concepts of fana and baqa had been adopted by the Jewish-Sufis of his era. Following his example,we regard them with the same enthusiasm in our own Tariqa's spiritual practice.

In an unattributed (but possibly autographic) commentary on Shir HaShirim ( from a manuscript that is nevertheless most certainly in R. David ben Joshua’s own handwriting) we read:

“I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine” (Cant. 6:3). We have already explained earlier (fol. 8b, Cant. 2:15) that whenever thou turnest to the love of an object and desirest all that that object desires, then it is as though [that object] had become thyself and thou hast become it, insofar as thou possessest it and thou art enslaved unto it. To be sure, thine annihilation (fana) within it is a mighty witness and indication that he belongs to thee and thou belongest to him.” ^*2

In the Murshid, R. David ben Joshua Maimuni writes:

“...during the final station, the soul sinks so deeply into love that it is no longer aware either of itself or of its love. Indeed, when the lover reaches the stage where he declares: ‘I am my beloved and my beloved is I’, he loses awareness of his own self due to the contemplation of the object of his love, which occupies him to such an extent that he perceives nothing except [that which he perceives] through his Beloved.” ^*3

Paraphrasing Mansour Al-Hallaj^*4 — R. David Ben Joshua declares:

אנא מן אהוי ומן אהוי אנא

“I am my Beloved and my Beloved is I

...Oh Goal of my desire, in You I am freed from my Self.

You brought me so close to You

that it seemed as though You were I " ^*5

Safed

Elul 1 2023

Revised Sept 16 2024

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*1 Fenton, P. “A Mystical Commentary on the Song of Songs in the Hand of David Maimonides II,” (p.49) in Esoteric and Exoteric Aspects in Judeo-Arabic Culture, ed. B. Hary and H. Ben-Shammai (Leiden: Brill, 2006)

*2 Fenton,P ibid. p 42

*3 translated from: Fenton, P. Deux traités de mystique juive;Lagrasse: Éditions Verdier; 1987. (p.288-289)

*4 Mansour Al-Hallaj (c.858-922): a Persian Islamic Sufi saint and martyr who was a proponent of the concept that annihilation of the ego could lead to true unio mystica. He was tortured and then executed for stating this belief.

*5 translated from Fenton. P. Deux traites, p289The phrase “Ani l'Dodi v’Dodi Li” displays an acronymic reference to the Month of Elul.