My Introduction to Judeo-Ṣūfism and `Īṣunī Judaismby Mikhayah ben David

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בשם יהוה הרחמן הרחם/بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

 My family is one of mixed heritage and diverse religious practices. My mother’s side of the family is Jewish. My father’s paternal line was Cherokee and Portuguese, from a community said to have originated as Crypto-Jews fleeing the Inquisition. His mother’s side was from an American gunslinger that, during World War I, met and married the daughter of a Jewish convert in Germany. My father’s side of the family, however, was not particularly religious in any form. On the other side, my mother is halakhically Jewish, though she is a devout Christian.

Around adolescence I began to understand that most other families were not like this. I had been growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood and for all I knew, other white boys had a set of grandparents whose homes were decorated with menorōt, giant maps of Israel and such. When I was young I would see mail on the table from “Jews for Jesus” but it always seemed like a gimmick; I was never interested. It wasn't that I saw a problem with Jesus himself, but I knew what they meant. I knew that they meant their weird vision of a baby-god-man Jesus, who came as God-in-the-flesh, to save us all from eternal damnation. The idea never struck me as “Jewish.” Throughout my teenage years, intellectual dissatisfaction with the Christian theology I was raised in – along with extreme intrigue of many of the newly translated Dead Sea Scrolls – catalyzed a desire to embrace of my Jewish identity. My mother tried to nurture this by offering me “Messianic Judaism” literature. From a cursory glance, it seemed an obvious reconfiguration of JFJ propaganda.

My quest began instead with a personal reexamination of the Tanakh. Through several thorough readings I cemented an understanding that was more and more at odds with my Christian upbringing with each subsequent trip through the pages. The journey continued by “starting over” with Rashī, then exploring the philosophical style of the Rambam and the imaginal approach of early Modern Ḥassīdīm like the Besht and Rav Naḥman. In addition, I read anything extra-Biblical - and even extra-Judaic - that I could get my hands on. I wanted to understand religion itself; what it was human beings were experiencing throughout the ages, what it was we were doing.

Interest in “where it all went wrong” with Christianity expanded my investigation into the milieu of Second Temple Era sectarian expressions of Judaism. Of particular importance to me was the question of “What is Judaism?” considering how widely different Second Temple expressions of Judaism were. The Sadducees were clearly incompatible with what became Rabbinic Judaism. The Pharisees were an obvious precursor. Though even amongst them were the Beyt Shammaī and the prevailing Beyt Hillel. Both were Jewish yet held very different ideas. In the Second Temple Era, being “Jewish” meant, essentially, being “Judean” – in region and in customs. Thus, even the very non-Jewish Sadducees were regarded as a Jewish philosophy.

The Zealots too were Jewish, but was this “Fourth Philosophy” a sect at all? Josephus tells us that the hoi polloi were involved in their banditry. The Essenes as well, we read were not merely at Qumran but “in every city” – numbering many thousand outside of their presumed center. These too were Jewish and no one denies that today. Yet their Judaism was very different than Judaism today or the mainstream minhagīm since the Galūt… and what of those Jews who fell somewhere in between these competing identities?

What happened when Jerusalem fell? What happened when the Bar Kokhbā revolt failed? What happened when the Pharisees and the Essenes “in every city” were expelled? What happened to the Sadducees whose ideals relied on the existence of a Temple-cult? These questions fascinated me and made it impossible to buy into a myth that Judaism was ever a homogenous idea, culture or religion. The waves of `aliyōt to Israel highlight this myth today. So many Ashkenazīm imagined – and imagine still – that their Judaism is how Judaism is. This is why we are seeing some “Orthodox” Ashkenazīm clash so hard with Sefardīm and – more specifically – Mizraḥī presence in Eretz Yisrael. All one must do is observe the different liturgies, the vertical mezuzōt on their Mizraḥī neighbor’s entrances and the Arabesque kippōt and (not so long ago), turbans prevalent in such communities. Jews from around the world are often very different communities and these differences were even greater during the medieval period. The idea that there is or ever has been a single, homogeneous, “Judaism” is unhistorical and remains inaccurate to this day.

More or less unrelated to my quest, though certainly symptomatic as an expression of cynicism towards my Christian upbringing, I became immersed in various activist scenes towards the beginning of the 1990s. Animal Lib was my gateway drug to Black Power issues and naturally, issues of colonialism abroad. I was quickly acquainted with various Muslim movements and issues concerning human rights in what historian Marshall Hodgson calls the Islāmicate world. It was odd to me, however, that I would not see the same Muslim faces protesting against Female Genital Mutilation, the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, Women’s Issues in Sa`ūdī `Arabia and such, that I would see at the fiery Palestine rallies.

In 1998 I was introduced to the Ṣūfism of the Sri Lankan Shaykh M.R. Bawa Muḥaiyadeen. I encountered a fascinating man, decked out in all white attire while I was working at a Cincinnati bookstore. He approached me with a white kūfī or kippah. It was sort of ambiguous, like the man himself was. It was bigger than an Ashkenazi yarmulke, but smaller than a typical Muslim kūfī. The man looked like he might be Ethiopian or an Arab Sudanese. I greeted him as though he were an Arab, or at least probably a Muslim. I was somewhat enamored with my new vocabulary: “As-salāmu `alaykum.” He paused, looked at me and replied: “Wa-`alaykum as-salām.”

During that afternoon’s conversation, the man reminisced about how Bawa had studied with him, many years ago. At the time, this was no cause for alarm, as I had no idea that Bawa had even died when I was in Middle School. For all I knew, Bawa was 40 years old. The man further recalled that my perspective and vegetarian-Nazirūt – lifnīm meshūrat ha’Dīn – reminded him of what he described as a Jewish-Ṣūfī movement which he termed “the `Isāwiyyah Order.” Try as I might to locate this group amongst the Ṣūfīṭuruq, I found only a completely unrelated North African ṭarīqah branch of the Shadhiliyah – that was attached to Jesus (`Isā) – which clearly did not match his characterization. Every Ṣūfī-Muslim that I asked assured me that I had heard the man wrong and that this was the group to which he would have been referring…

The pluralistic world view of Bawa, I was told, complimented my own vegetarianism and universal approach. I would learn that the Sri Lankan Muḥaiyaddeen, who described himself as both a Jew because he followed the Law of Moses and a Muslim because he followed Muḥammad, had settled his Ṣūfī masjid in a former Philadelphia Synagogue. I particularly enjoyed his Islam and World Peace, which contained letters he wrote admonishing Khomeinī during the Iranian Revolution. I quickly discovered, however, that the open-mindedness and deep mysticism of mystic was an anomaly within the Muslim ummah, even amongst most modern Ṣūfī ṭuruq. Working at the aforementioned bookstore, I had a number of opportunities to converse with various Muslims and not one besides this man had even heard of Bawa, let alone think that he sounded like a Muslim at all, once I described him.

Nevertheless, I took advantage of my 33% discount and ordered every book from the old shaykh that I could get my hands on. In addition, I met some kids from the hardcore music scene who had moved to Philly where they attended the Bawa Fellowship on a weekly basis. Lucky for me, they were excited by the prospect of smuggling out Xeroxes of unpublished sermons and sending them my way. Over the next few years I continued to practice Judaism along side of Ṣūfism as I understood it from Bawa. I kept kosher, observed the major holidays, Shabbat and abstaining during niddah, while also making Salāt, fasting, and seeing no contradiction between these. Still, I found myself engaged and confronted at every turn. The majority of Muslims I encountered routinely accused me of being everything from a Hasbara fellow to a Mossad agent.

My intuition that there was a time when things were different – when Jew and Muslim saw each other as kindred branches of the same universal truth – took me on an exploration of the origins of Anti-Jewish polemic in the Muslim world, that I found throughout the ḥadīth literature and Qur’ānic exegesis. Strangely, as my knowledge of `Arabic increased, I realized that the Qur’ān did not say the anti-Jewish things it appeared to say in translation. I do understand that such a statement might be difficult for many to believe. It did not call Jews “apes and swine,” that was what called those who profaned Shabbat and taught others to only pay lip service to it. Time and time again I saw reference to the curse upon those who break Shabbat. I saw frequent Talmudic quotations that the Muslim world simply was unaware of. I saw codes of laws deriving from the Dead Sea Scrolls, not anti-Jewish, or contrary to Judaism, but apparently in line with Jewish sectarianism. The Muslim world never knew.

The source of the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world, I would find, seemed to ultimately trace to Caliphate-State propaganda. In the aftermath of a Jewish revolt against the newly-born Abbāsid regime – about 150 years after the death of Muḥammad – this revolt was unleashed by an Isfahan-based Jewish Nazirite Movement known in Hebrew as the `Īṣunīyīm, and to the Muslim world as the `Isāwiyyah. Contrary to popular misconception, it was not named after the `Arabic kunyah of its leader at that time.

The `Īṣunīyīm believed that both Jesus and Muḥammad – the historical, rather than mythological figures of religious lore – were simply minor prophetic figures. They accepted the actual sayings of Jesus, but rejected the Christian Testament and ever non-Jewish feature, including the Trinity, Divine Incarnation, Hellenism and any special status for Jesus. They accepted the Qur’ānic fragments of their time, but rejected the notion that the Qur’ān was intended to, or should, supersede or abrogate the Torah. Muḥammad was a prophet to the nations, the goyyīm, the amīm, or in `Arabic the umam; but his message was never to replace the Torah for Jews who accepted a halakhah that was in many ways stricter than the Qur’ānic injunctions for the nations. For this reason, Muslim commentators would write that this Jewish movement could never be regarded as Muslims. Rulings, fatāwat came down to this effect in spite of accepting the Oneness of God and acknowledging that Muḥammad was a prophet. Isaac Bashevis Singer said that “Jews are a people who can’t sleep and won’t let anyone else.” In that regard, the movement frustrated the sleeping Muslim ummah to no end. They accepted what the Caliphate insisted a full Muslim citizen must accept, and yet they did so in a way that did not take them outside of the fold of Judaism; contrary to the intentions of the Caliphate. Finally I had found the “Order” that the man in the bookstore had told me about…

The attitude of the ` Īṣunīyim was not anomalous in Judaism. By the time Ṣūfism had flourished in Muslim Spain, the Andalusian sage, rabbeinū Baḥya ibn Paqudah would write his famous “Duties of the Hearts” – Al-Hidāyah ilā Farā`idhu-l-Qulūb – in Judeo-Arabic, quoting Torah and Talmud right alongside of early aḥadīth of Muḥammad and `Alī, who he described with the term ḥassīd. The Judeo-Ṣūfī phenomenon was not an isolated incident either. The Jewish Neo-Platonist Netanel ibn al-Fayyūmī (d. c. 1164), leader of the Jews of Yemen, adopted into a Jewish context ideas current among the Islāmic Neo-Platonist group known as the Ikhwān as-Ṣafā’. The name was obviously pregnant with etymological connection to the term “Ṣūfī” and the group has also widely been cited as an influence on rabbeinū Baḥya. Netanel asserted the authenticity of the prophethood of Muḥammad, and revelation of the Qur’ān, as well as the reality that there are additional authentic revelations, apart from Muḥammad or Judaism.

It was not long after that the Rambam would famously fuse Islāmic kalām into his discourses and even his magisterial Mishneh Torah. Yet he also responded critically to Muslim theologians, notably in his Thirteen Principals; his answer to what separates Jewish kalām from its Islāmicate counterpart. The pseudepigraphical Iggeret Teman (Letter to Yemen) was purportedly penned to the son of Al-Fayyūmī, by someone who obviously did not know the perspective of his famous universalist father. An obvious polemic written in the wake of the Zaydī massacre and forced conversions, the author is frustrated with the Muslim world – and rightly so – but clearly does not know the personality of the family this letter was supposedly penned to, nor the perspective of the alleged author on many issues that conflict therein with the well-known views of Maimonides. To cite an obvious example, in the letter the Rambam is portrayed as describing a magical Mashiaḥ figure, in direct contradiction to the actual beliefs of the man in his Mishneh Torah.

The implications of the pseudepigraphical composition of the Letter to Yemen are far reaching, but we can be sure that the Rambam did not disapprove of his son, rabbeinū Avraham’s Judeo-Ṣūfism… because he told us in lauding terms how pious and devout his son was. Yet this son led his Egyptian Jewish community in reclaiming group salāt and various other practices traditionally associated exclusively with the Muslim world. He argued that the practices of the Ṣūfīs came from Judaism, not the other way around. His son `Ovadyah was even more overt about his Judeo-Ṣūfism in his al-Maqālat al-Hawḍiyyah (Treatise on the Pool).

The fate of Judeo-Ṣūfism is a longer story than could possibly fit into this brief introduction to it. What such an introduction attempts to convey is precisely what rabbeinū Avraham ben Rambam proclaimed in his Kifāyatu-l-`Abidīn (the Complete Guide for Devotees), that Ṣūfism and the practices associated with Qur’ānic islām come from the traditions of the B’nei Yisrael, not the other way around, or as the Qur’ān says, there was nothing new taught to Muḥammad that was not taught to those before him.

In this world where our culture and traditions seem to clash, so at odds with our Muslim cousins and Palestinian neighbors’ Judeo-Ṣūfism is an important reminder that this was not always the case. Instead, at their core, the two faiths have been understood harmonically by those who were willing to look beyond the cultural baggage of Islāmicate oppressors to see that the problem was not with the Qur’ān or a historical Muḥammad, but with the Imperialist Caliphate and the hateful fantasies they grafted onto this historical personage in the sīrah and ḥadīth literature. Imagine, if leading rabbis could come to see this, in spite of the barriers that would have made it easy to reject, then perhaps the Muslim world one day will be able to as well. Perhaps with a clarifying vision of the historical Muḥammad, their vision of Islām will truly come into focus as a peaceful one. Perhaps then we will all move forward together, as one human family.