Middle East Focus: Sufism and Judaism and all That………
Sufism and Judaism and all That………
“Rabbi Abraham wrote openly in his works of his admiration for the Sufis. He describes biblical figures as pietists with Sufi characteristics and sees the Sufis as the real heirs to the traditions of Israel. He considers that important Sufi rituals are based on the Jewish prophets; through the sufferings of exile, the Jews had forgotten this spiritual tradition and now had to rediscover it. Abraham did not just see the matter theoretically; he introduced a number of changes in the synagogue services, such as the washing of hands and feet before prayer, which is not traditional in Judaism; the ordering of the congregation into rows, as in Muslim practice; facing Jerusalem in prayer, as Muslims face Mecca; and various gestures, such as standing, kneeling, bowing and stretching out the hands during petitionary prayers. Most noticeable were typical practices of the Sufis such as hitbodedut, solitary meditation in the dark, and the ritual of dhkir (Arabic for "thinking of God"). Abraham found sources for all these new practices, which he rediscovered in Islam, in the Jewish Bible. The family of Abraham Maimonides continued these Sufi-influenced tradition for another 200 years. And this Sufi-Jewish pietism was not a local Egyptian phenomenon: there is evidence of Sufi-based Jewish mysticism among the Jews of Andalusia, of Damascus, Yemen, Palestine and Persia………” Cheers
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