Jewish Religion: A Rough Sketch
At the heart of our practices, theories, and forms lies חסידות, a word translated variously as piety, loving-kindness, and mysticism.
For reasons that I hope will become clear, I prefer the somewhat clunky translation “benevolent sensitivity.”
The first usage of חסיד in the Torah is in Moshe rabbenu’s blessing of the tribe of Lewi: “Your tummim and urim [priestly oracle] to your Hassid” – a reference to the tribe’s general role, and the specific responsibility of the descendants of Aharon haKohen, in the guidance of Jewish religion, both in the central nexus of the Qodesh (al Quds) and scattered throughout the cities and communities of the nation.
Moshe was the rabban of all nebiim but we see that traditions, praxis, and concepts were transmitted, developed, and shared in the context of the Levitic activity, especially at the Qodesh. Ruwwah haQodesh – the psycho-spiritual experiential mode associated with this activity – was established as the preliminary to full nebua. From these circles emerged many of the nebiim that contributed to our textual and spiritual heritage.
But why Hassid?
I believe that the path of Israelite religion, as actively taught and developed by the nebiim especially of the tribe of Lewi, is one of cultivation of benevolent sensitivity, to one’s self – one’s nature and needs, to one’s fellows – their natures and needs, and to one’s God – and the nature and needs of the divine pathos, as R Heschel z”l described it, within the creation.
This path of cultivation brings the human being from raw animalistic potential to actualized psycho-spiritual resonance with the divine. It is the revelation and the attunement of the divine image in which all human beings were created, and it is the generative process that lies at the heart of all religions, including Islam, in the context of which it is called التصوف the tasawwuf, Sufism.
Rambam, the last and greatest of the Geonim, drew upon the Sufi discourse and works of his Mediterranean milieu in formulating his exploration of nebua in his famous Guide. It may be justly said that the entire project of the Guide is the cultivation of a cognitive and intellectual sensitivity to the divine as an active alternative to the barren and often irrational quagmire of theology.
Rambam’s son, R Abraham Maimuni, overtly recognized the Islamic Sufis as contemporary adherents to the same Way of the ancient nebiim and publicly taught a form of practice that harmonized with theirs. Subsequent generations of the Maimuni family developed the Sufi themes of
Maimonideanism, both in writing and in practice, all with the aim of cultivating the self along the way of the nabi, as described above.
While the Maimuni Sufism did not directly survive the vicissitudes of history in a region ravaged by competing empires, it later contributed (along with the broader Sufi influence) to the development of the kabbalistic circles around the Mediterranean, which in turn resulted in the emergence of European Hassidism. And of course Rambam’s legacy, in the widespread impact of both his Guide and his legal rulings, definitively shaped the חסידות that came after him, both in illumination and in shadow.
It is only natural that Religionists – Sufis of whatever community – should work together to heal a world in desperate need of Religion, of “benevolent sensitivity.”
It is my hope that on this festival of Sukkoth, in which we continue the theme of unity with creation in worship of our Creator with an expansive hope for all the world’s families to join us in celebration of our Creator’s goodness, we will merit to traverse the bridges our ancestors and prophets built before us and between us, and bring the world to a more perfected state both in justice and in awareness of the divine.