A prominent Jewish writer influenced by Sufism, Bahya ibn Pakuda, served as a Hebrew jurist in the city of Zaragoza, Spain during the Islamic period, before the re-conquest by the Christians. Toward the end of the 11th century, he wrote a classic of Jewish ethics that is widely read today, "The Book of the Direction of the Tasks of the Heart." originally compiled in Arabic, the common Jewish language of the period the great Islamic historian Bernard Lewis has called the "Judeo-Islamic" era, Bahya's work drew much attention to the writings of early Arabic Sufis, such as the Dhunnun of Cairo, who died in c.859 . Bahya shared with the Sufis that the belief that obedience to religious law will not, only guarantee perfection of the soul, but that the believer must be committed to God in the heart. He was not, however, a joyful person - he believed in loving God from an honorable distance. __________________________________________
__________________________________________ The methods used by joyful Sufis and joyful Kabbalists are often synonymous: absorption in the repetition of the Names of God, accompanied by music and physical effort. Israeli scholar Moshe Idel, in his 1988 book "The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia," analyzes the biography of a Kabbalist who was born in Zaragoza in 1240, after being recaptured by Christians. Abulafia traveled through Muslim countries and Eastern Christian countries before returning to Barcelona, where he began his Kabbalah studies. his encounter with the Kabbalah pushed him to a new and original way to study Jewish law which brought condemnation from the Jewish rulers of his time, even though he later became known as a Jewish thinker. __________________________________________
__________________________________________ Abulafia's method of attaining ecstatic union with the divine has parallels in Sufism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and yoga. This includes reciting the names of God in combination with "intricate techniques involving components such as breathing, chanting and head movements, which have absolutely nothing to do with the traditional orders of Judaism," in the words of Idel, idel records one element in the Kabbalah Eid. Incredible fitri - a requirement for the recitation of the divine names while in breath, and not in the air - and find parallels between these Sufi disciplines.