The Communal Khalwa (Hitbodedut) of Sinai


R. Abraham He-Hasid was the teacher of R. Abraham ben HaRambam. They were both leaders of the Jewish-Sufi group we call "The Egyptian Pietists" . It will soon be Shavuot, when we remember and re-enact the Revelation at Sinai. Abraham HeHasid wrote a highly original interpretation of the three day preparation period before Sinai ........which will explain why I am sharing this with you now.

The Divine Revelation of Sinai is unique among recorded instances of prophetic experience because it was a revelation simultaneously received by each and every man,woman, and child present— and not solely by a community’s charismatic Leader and Prophet.

  The prophetic status and capability of Moses was incontestably unique, but even he  wished that all Israel might be prophets,  and  to some  degree we all can be and  will be—if we seek G-d with all our hearts in receptive contemplation.

  Various scholars   have expounded their  views on the differing levels of prophecy that may have  been experienced by the Prophet Moses and by the rest of the Israelite community.[1]  Many of them opine that it was only the initial ‘words’ of that revelation that were ‘heard’ by the entire community.

    Nevertheless, all agree that each and every Israelite  received something inspirational during this  unique group-prophetic event—each in accordance with their own individual capability, perspective, and levels of understanding.

   Exactly how and  what happened might  be imagined—and it is beyond the reach of any pragmatic science or academic research to know such things factually anyway— but the overriding significance of Sinai remains:  It is the recorded statement that all the people were united in a  shared prophetic event of such momentous power that it created a religion that has survived to the  present  day.

But there is  more.

The  Sinai event is  not  just  something momentous  that happened in the  past.  It can be experienced anew in our own times — and maybe  we are  actually obliged to make that happen.

With the  aid of some Jewish-Sufi genizah texts, this  short essay hopes to show  you why that is  so.

 

Why am I writing  this essay now?

  In 2022 I inaugurated TariqaEliyahu HaNabi —an online, predominantly anglophone, Jewish-Sufi confraternity with the  aim of studying, renewing, and developing  the special path (suluk al- khass) of  the Jewish Sufis of the Egyptian Pietist movement.[2] 

Its special focus and area of activity was the  development of contemplative gnosis through ascetic practices which they believed were derived  from those of the   biblical Bnei HaNevi’im (Schools of the  Prophets). They held that these practices had been lost to Judaism  but preserved by the  Sufi movement of Islam.  It was their aim to reclaim and restore these contemplative  practices to Judaism [3]— in order to prepare  for  the return of prophetic ability to Israel.  This  is also   the  stated aim and practice of  our Tariqa Eliyahu.

  Although it has a fundamentally Orthodox perspective/adab, the  members of Tariqa Eliyahu actually  come from many Jewish denominations and streams of thought, and  they   include Modern Orthodox, Masorti, and  Reform members; Ashkenazi, Sefardi, and Mizrahi members; Mekubalim, Haredi Chasidim, Progressive Neo-Hasidim,  and Maimonidean  Rationalists.     At the moment,  all our members are  Jewish but some  of them have  also received Islamic-Sufi or Universalist-Sufi initiation before joining our Tariqa.

   Quite unexpectedly (and  as the  group’s Administrator) during the  Omer period I felt it was time to “act locally and  geophysically” as well as “think globally and  online”— and thus  I began the process of forming a local group in Safed.  I began  to gauge local interest for  this project last week and, with the  aid  of a friend or two—we are hoping to inaugurate this  Safed Jewish-Sufi group  in the week before Shavuot.

   There are very specific reasons  for  that pre-Shavuot date which  I  hope will become  clear as you read on. This brief  blogpost is intended to serve as outline preparatory or follow-up reading for those Tzfatim who have expressed an interest in attending our first meeting.

 

Khalwa-Hitbodedut

The mediaeval Jewish-Sufis of the Maimuni dynasty and the Egyptian Pietist   group that they led—all wrote in Arabic, often in Judeo-Arabic which uses Hebrew characters.    In their seminal writings  the  Arabic (and Sufic) term “khalwa” referred variously to (i) concentrated meditation itself; (ii) ascetic  and physical isolation techniques,both short-term and  long term; (ii) the  contemplative practice of solitude generally— whether it is practiced through solitary periods of meditation or through  solitude in the  crowd (khalwat dar anjuman).

 In mediaeval times, the Arabic term khalwa was usually  translated by the  hebrew word hitbodedut  which— in those pre-Breslover days— denoted (i) solitude itself; (ii) reclusion from society; and  (iii) concentrated silent contemplation with all of the Sufic inflexions of the Arabic term readily understood and  appreciated by the  Jewish Pietists.

   Unquestionably (in both Jewish  and  Islamic Sufism) Khalwa is  a term that is most often used with a focus on the individual in solitude or engaged in an interior process of personal meditation.  Some Islamic Sufi orders  practice periods  of silent meditation communally whilst performing zhikr (mantra recitation), [4]  though  for many such groups the term khalwa is used exclusively in reference to the individual process of seclusion. 

    In imitation of Moses and Elijah, the  Jewish-Sufis of mediaeval Egypt  practiced periodic or extended retreats alongside Muslim Sufis in the  Maqqatam mountains outside Cairo.  In imitation of the  Prophet Muhammad, the  Sufis had developed a particularly isolated form of solitary retreat for extended periods (often forty days long, an interesting fact which links that practice to the  Mosaic retreats on Sinai). These isolation retreats were often practiced in extremely confined dark spaces [5] as an intense form  of contemplative practice designed to induce semi-prophetic experiences.

  It is  quite  clear from  the extant writings of the  Maimuni dynasty (and from the  numerous  anonymously written fragments from other Egyptian Pietist authors) that solitary retreat and extended retreat was perhaps the most important and characteristic practice  of the Jewish-Sufi Movement.  It is  clear that they were usually envisaging an individual contemplative  and  ascetic practice performed in as deep a form of reclusion as was deemed individually appropriate:  But did they ever practice such meditation congregationally?    I believe  we have  the hint to a possibly affirmative  answer to that question— in the  writings of Rabbenu Abraham He-Hasid.[6]


The Communal Retreat before Sinai

   The Divine Revelation at Sinai was made to Moses but also—in some  form— to each and everyone present.  It is an event which describes the universal and  shared experience of prophecy (intimate communication with the  Divine) that is the   aim of  all  Jewish-Sufi contemplative  strivings.

 More than this, it is also  a part of  the entire Jewish Nation’s  journey to the  time when a  form of   prophecy will return to all Israel — at a time when  the  people of all nations:

  “ will be  filled with the  knowledge of G-d as the  waters  cover the  sea.” [7]

The Egyptian Pietists believed that the path to such prophetic restoration was Khalwa (solitary retreat and contemplation) Might it be that the one of the forms of Khalwa they had in mind was  a communal re-presentation (an anamnesis-zikarah) of that experience at Sinai?

ooo0ooo

 The Judeo-Sufic Texts

In his  1981 paper Some Judaeo-Arabic Fragments by Rabbi Abraham he-Ḥasīd, the Jewish Sufi, Professor Paul Fenton identified,translated, and commented on a group of fragments authored by anonymous mediaeval Jewish Sufis and (most especially) by Rabbenu Abraham HeḤasid (Abraham ibn Abi’l-Rabi’ d.circa 1223).

The texts  contain  Biblical commentaries  that place an original and inspiring Jewish-Sufi interpretation on the  Three-day retreat before Sinai.

   In his  examination  of one of the  fragments by R. Abraham He Hasid, Professor Fenton writes:

Rabbi Abraham is of the opinion that in the days that preceded Revelation, Moses imparted to the Israelites an esoteric doctrine whereby they might attain to prophecy. Details of this doctrine were not disclosed by Scripture, on account of their subtlety, but are alluded to in the "sanctification" that the Israelites underwent. Elsewhere, Abraham Maimonides intimates that this external and internal purification consisted in "inward contemplation" (khalwa batina). [8]

For me, the  key expression for our discussion here is “hakhanah we-qedushah” which Professor Fenton translates as preparation and sanctification”.  The phrase refers specifically to the  three day period of preparation before the Sinai Revelation.

Here is R. Abraham’s HeHasid’s  phrase in its  context (emphases mine) :


EXTRACT ONE

Therefore keep these two sublime principles and forever observe them. The first is the state of vision and revelation. Recall the "preparation and sanctification" [hakhanah we-qedushah] which I have indicated to you, which is the path that leads to Him and the details of which I have informed you, as well as the purifications which I have imparted to you, so that you may be elevated to this spiritual state. [9]


Meditative Observations[10]

In Extract ONE  we read  “Recall the "preparation and sanctification" [hakhanah we-qedushah] which I have indicated to you, which is the path that leads to Him”   Might we take  the term “Recall”  literally and liberally and  regard it as an invitation to make  the Prophetic experience  of Sinai actually present (in congregational re-enactment) ?   Might the “path” be taken as a reference to the process of Judeo-Sufic suluk/tariq generally, or  is R. Abraham hinting that the  path of khalwa is some undisclosably-secret and  esoteric practice or  method of prayer that he was transmitting privately to his immediate disciples.  Both possibilities may also be derived from the continuation of this passage cited  below in Extract Five.

 

EXTRACT TWO

A  term that mirrors hakhanah we-qedushah appears later in another fragment (from an anonymous Pietist author) as follows:

"The testimony of the Lord is sure" alludes to the Ten Commandments inscribed on the Tables of Testimony. They are qualified as "sure", since they were imparted to the Israelites' souls through Revelation (kashf), ecstatic vision (mukashafa) and internal illumination (basira  batina) in the highest degree of certainty (yaqin) and the most elevated type of faith(iman),of which there is no higher. Furthermore, the truthfulness [of these commandments] was experienced through a spiritual state and procedure - that is, the procedure of sanctification and preparation" (qedushah we-hakhanah) alluded to in the verse (Ex. xix.10-11) "And they shall be ready... and you shall sanctify them" — and through the unveiling of mysteries, as well as the outpourings of supernal wisdom and inspiration that result from this spiritual state without one's knowing whence or how they derive.  Therefore, they are described as "making wise the simple", for through them he who has attained this state shall become wise. [11] 

 

Meditative Observations:

In EXTRACT TWO  we read “Furthermore, the truthfulness [of these commandments] was experienced through a spiritual state and procedure - that is, the procedure of sanctification and preparation" (qedushah we-hakhanab)”   The author describes the retreat before Sinai as both a “state” and (even more significantly) “a procedure”.   It seems  clear that the  former refers to the  attainment of a state (hal)  or station (maqamat) immediately experienced  before the  reception of the influx that produces  attainment/gnosis/prophecy.  Might the  second  term (“procedure”) indicate  a specific practice of khalwa (as receptive  contemplative  prayer) that was transmitted privately without  any human intermediary as well as by instruction from the Prophet Moses?  Something that was to be deliberately taught in the  Sufi circle  but also experienced privately during the intimacy of silent contemplation.    Again, Extract FIVE  below might hold  the  key — but there is  also a clue  to be  found  in Extract Three which we will now  consider: 

 

EXTRACT  THREE

This third fragment by another anonymous  author from the circle of  R. Abraham HeHasid states (emphases mine) :

"The first chapter in the fundamentals of this Path is (Deut. iv.35) 'Unto thee it was shewed' " Moses here means that this Path, that is the Path of Revelation (kashf), provides knowledge of God and His Oneness, not by manner of induction nor rational enquiry [nazar] into His works and deeds  but through and from God Himself. For the heart's eye perceives that which the [sensual] eye cannot see, nor reason grasp, nor demonstration prove. This is the deeper meaning (yudaq) of the following verse "out of the heavens He made thee to hear His voice that He might instruct thee. His Revelation to thee and thy Path to Him are not those of other nations, but they stem from within thyself towards Him." This is an allusion to the "preparation and sanctification" at Sinai through which thou heardst His voice from the Heavens. [12]

Meditative Observations:

This EXTRACT THREE testifies to the  prevailing Jewish Sufic view that it is dhawq (intuitive knowledge) that trumps all  forms of spiritual seeking and mystical knowledge. But it also traces  a kind of “root” to that practice in the   retreat before Sinai. Most significantly, it stresses that the  True Teacher is G-d Himself and  that His revelation comes to the individual in prayer as well as through the textual and legal revelations  of the  Oral and Written Torah.  One sees this with the  “Eye of the  Heart” and the bakhanah we-qedushah that prepares one  for this—With this reading we might see the  process as the  kind  of training in receptive contemplation I described in  Kuntres Maarat Ha Lev.[13]

 If so, then  we are discussing a specific   preparation for  direct input from the  Divine experienced in meditation. This is a view that is expressed in several  passages from another section from the  fragments under discussion here.  R.Abraham HeHasid  writes:

 

EXTRACT  FOUR (selections)

"And I will make them hear my words that they may learn to fear Me. "To make hear" alludes to the state of unveiling and spiritual illumination (mushahadda)...

Therefore man arrives at this state by means of the heart's vision, illumination and purification...

"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him". (Ps. cxlvii.11) "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him." For the latter know God through God Himself ...

 For His holy ones see with an internal vision and perceive truth according to its reality. Their grasp of the Most High is intuitive (dawqiyya) and intimate." [14]


By now, I hope the  reader will appreciate the enormous debt we owe to Professor Fenton for translating and  sharing this collection of fragments in one  single collection for  us to reflect on.  

 ooo0ooo


THE TRANSMISSION OF “THE PATH”

  We now come  to a brief examination of the  most significant section of R.Abraham HeHasid’s message  to us  as latter-day  Jewish-Sufis in Tariqa Eliyahu—and even more crucially— to every single Jew who wants  to be  part of  the  restoration of  Israel’s prophetic intimacy with G-d.

I quote  the text  here as Extract FIVE in R.Elisha Russ-Fishbane’s translation.  Rabbi Abraham HeHasid writes (emphases mine):

 

EXTRACT FIVE

The first meaning grasped by spiritual intuition is the proximity of revelation and the unveiling of outer and inner visions and illumination. The second [verse refers] to the giving of the statutes and laws...

Preserve both of these noble doctrines and practice them, the first of which is the  state of unveiling and revelation through... preparation and  sanctification........ the path of divine attainment which I have explained to you for your benefit and the purifications which I have entrusted to you, by which you may ascend to that state

So bequeath and teach them to your descendants so that they will be an inheritance that will never be severed, such that your descendants will transmit the wayfaring path (tariq al-suluk) received from their ancestors... [15]

Paul Fenton renders  this  passage  as follows:

[T]he first verse alludes to the proximity of Revelation and to the unveiling of the external and internal sight and their illumination (basira qalbiyya). The second verse alludes to the prescription of the Laws and ordinances.

 Therefore keep these two sublime principles and forever observe them. The first is the state of vision and revelation. Recall the "preparation and sanctification" [hakhanah we-qedushah] which I have indicated to you, which is the path that leads to Him and the details of which I have informed you, as well as the purifications which I have imparted to you, so that you may be elevated to this spiritual state.

 Bequeath and teach them to your descendants so that they will be continuously transmitted within your midst and thus the practices of this path shall be handed down from your forebears to your descendants. If each generation attains to the state of vision, then they will witness to the authenticity of the Torah which they possess and how it was revealed and accepted by their ancestors. Thus each generation shall inherit this Torah from Sinai and its appropriate spiritual state

In footnote Paul Fenton quotes a related passage,but this  time   from R.Abraham ben Ha Rambam:

"The Revelation took place in order to familiarise you with the ways and means of Prophecy, so that the perfect ones among your descendants (i.e. the Jewish Sufis) may attain thereby that which you have attained. (Ex. xx.20) [16]

Meditative Observations

 It is apparent that both these passages  are talking about  the ”preparation” for transmission of something  that was received at Sinai.     By stressing that there are  TWO aspects of the  Sinai Revelation both of which are to be preserved  and actively transmitted it also seems (to me) to indicate the  hidden agenda of  implying   that the   path of  the bnei ha nevi’im  had been neglected in Jewish practice. 

   I believe  this imbalance in  common Jewish observance  to be  as present today as it was in the   view of the  Egyptian Pietists  of  the mediaeval period.

In Kuntres Maarat HaLev,  I wrote:

"Israel’s response at Sinai was, and is: “We will do and we will hear.”  That is most often interpreted with the meaning: Israel hears G-d’s voice by observing the commandments—that the practical action of observing the mitzvot  leads to spiritual understanding. That is most certainly true. But a complementary interpretation occurs to me.

I’m absolutely certain that there are no accidents:

It surely must be of primary significancethat the first commandment in the principal text of Judaism,is Sh’ma!— Listen! —

Judaism has been focussed for centuries on ‘doing’.  But the time is coming when the significance of ‘listening’ will grow in importance." [17]

 

To expand  this  somewhat:

We have Halacha and  Liturgy in abundance....

We study the Written and Oral Torah assiduously....

But in our day:

Where is our religion’s  contemporary practice of Khalwah-Hitbodedut?

 Where is  our contemplative  Hakhanah we-Qedushah ?

These are  questions  we should  all be  asking, not  just in the  Omer lead-up to the  commemoration of  the Sinai Revelation at Shavuot.....but every day and  right now.

 

Should Communal and  Congregational

Khalwah-Hitbodedut,

be restored in Jewish Practice?

*

  I think The Mediaeval Egyptian Pietists quoted above

  would support my answer in the  passionate affirmative...


ooo0ooo 


A suggestion for Shavuot

  Perhaps the  most immediately apparent  form of  practice to renew and  commemorate the Three Day  Sinai prophetic-preparation period would  be  for Jewish Sufis to engage in an annual  three day retreat immediately before the  festival of Shavuot.

Perhaps  this might  be  an annual community gathering at a retreat centre.

Perhaps it might  be a private practice that Tariqa members could pursue in their  own locations or at a retreat environment of their  choice.

Perhaps the Mediaeval Jewish Sufis may have  actually practiced something  resembling the Sinai retreat like this  already whilst up in the Maqqatam mountains?

 Nevertheless,  because of its connection with Shavuot, it would  seem to me  that a community gathering of Tariqa members Three days  before Shavuot  might  be  a most poignant way to commemorate and  renew the  first Sinai retreat.  It could  then  culminate in some  form of congregational contemplative  event such as a  silent zhikr meeting before or after Shacharit on Shavuot day.

 The fragmentary texts we have reflected on here could  even be the inspirational generator for the  establishment of  an initiatory  or periodic   Formal Khalwa  for individual Tariqa Eliyahu members — a full- on three day individual  isolation retreat in the  manner of an Islamic -Sufic Khalwa in a confined space.

ooo0ooo

But Sinai is not merely a event  that resides in  historical memory—to be  commemorated  only at  Shavuot.  It is  not an event that is recalled only when we are in a synagogue during the  reading of the  Torah.  It also resides in the  memory of each individual Jew and  it  is  recalled every time  an individual hears  the call to attention that is  expressed in the  Sh’ma. 

The mediaeval texts   just quoted refer to the  Torah of the  Heart as well as to the  Torah of Jewish Law and Liturgy. To use R. Obadyah Maimuni’s expression from his Maqala Al Hawardiyya [18]  It  is the Torah al-haqiqiyyathe real and true essence of the Torah—that the Jewish-Sufi is striving to receive in contemplative prayer. 

The  Voice  which goes out from Sinai  does so every day [19] and  at every moment.

 Our task, our nisayon/training   is to become  aware of that—by sudden or by gradual intuitive  illumination— and  actually listen to it: To be attentive  to that Voice, in some sense, just as we did  at Sinai.  

In  Kuntres Maarat HaLev I put it like  this:

"The Torah of the Heart is eternally given and when we  receive it intentionally,  it  produces a connecting link between our intellect and our life-force.  Our tangible experiences and our spiritual perceptions are thus bound up with our essential soul root, and from there, bound up with our G-d.

When  we open up this channel we deepen our relationship with the Supernal Torah, because our obedience to the commands of the Torah would be incomplete if love and true internalisation were absent.

G-d speaks to all of us through the Torah She-bi’chtav (Written Torah) and the Torah She-ba’al Peh (Oral Torah). He also speaks to us in our own prayers and in our own private study and meditation.  When  we read the scriptures with pauses for meditation or when we meditate in silent prayer, we are hoping to access the Torah of the Heart. 

 We know how and when we are called to action as a nation and as individuals through the words of the written and oral Torah—but we each receive that Torah according to our own abilities and character, and for this reason we also need to receive and digest those ‘words’ personally, in the Cave of the Heart, alone with our  G-d."

ooo0ooo

 

CONCLUSION

   After years of practicing  and writing about solitary khalwa in reclusion and physical isolation, it is only now, in 2024, that I have considered that  khalwa could (and should) be a communal and congregational practice as well .  Both forms might hasten the day when prophecy returns to Israel as of old. 

  The Sufic term khalwat dar anjuman describes the  state of shiviti consciousness and absorption into the  contemplation of the  Divine that persists even when the devotee is amongst a crowd.  It usually denotes a high  state of individual interior detachment from the  created world and  its  creatures. 

  In recent  days, I remembered the periods of communal silent and totally undirected meditation that I had engaged in daily as a Carmelite  monk. (long before my conversion to Judaism in 1992).  I remembered also the  clean simplicity of Quaker meetings.   Both these events  made communal silence in deep contemplation the regular form of their meetings—for  the  Carmelites who spent  the majority of their time  alone in their cells they were a daily event:  an hour every morning and  an hour every evening.

   We might give  a specifically  Jewish inflection to the concept  of khalwat dar anjuman  by relating it to  the Sinai experience :  

We can be alone but  simultaneously united with the other seekers in a silent meditative congregation: All of us  together, yet each of us  alone — with both the individual and the  community engaged in  communal preparation for an intimate meeting with G-d  Himself.  Just as at Sinai.

   Spurred on by the above fragments from R.Abraham ben HeHasid and his circle—and inspired by the convergence of my ruminations with the proximate festival of Shavuot............ we have scheduled the first meeting of Tariqa Eliyahu’s Jewish-Sufi Group in Safed to be convened in the days immediately before Shavuot.

Its principal practice on that day?

Silent  congregational contemplation....

no guided meditations,no chatter, no preoccupation with systems or liturgies or performances— just silent shared  hakhanah we-qedushah.

As we read in the Zohar:

“The acts of G-d are eternal and continue for ever.

 Every day the  one  who is  worthy receives the Torah standing at Sinai.

He hears the Torah from the mouth of the Lord as Israel did….

Every Jew is  able to attain that level, the level of standing at Sinai.”  [20]  

 

©Nachman Davies

Safed May 27 2024

 

[1] See the  detailed analysis of Jewish Sufi  theories on what was received,who received it,and the  personal variation in  its reception in  Lobel.D, Moses and Abraham Maimonides Encountering the Divine, Academic Studies Press,2021, Massachusetts—especially Chapter 6.

[2] The Egyptian Pietists were an Oriental/Middle-Eastern Ḥasidic movement centred  on Egypt and later spreading  to the Palestinian and  Syrian region, believed to have been in existence at the time of the Rambam (who was not part of the  movement).

  His son and successor (Rabbenu Abraham ben HaRambam (1186–1237)  was taught  by the movement’s prolific author and leader, Rav Abraham HeHasid (Abraham ibn Abi’l-Rabi) d.circa 1223.  

Subsequently, R. Abraham ben HaRambam  became one of  the  movement’s authors,leaders,  and dynamic defenders himself, as did  other members of the Maimuni family such as R. Obadyah Maimuni (1228–1265)  and R.David ben Joshua Maimuni (1335–c.1414).  

[3] They believed that these practices were originally Jewish—and  several scholars  make  a convincing  case that they were— but it is also possible that the  Egyptian Pietists were actually being i predominantly innovative,but wished to prevent accusations  of heresy.

[4] Zhikr recitation comes in many forms: vocal or  silent; involving movement and gesture or  performed  statically; sitting or kneeling/prostrated; and often  focussed on Divine Names or short mantra phrases.  The  term also refers to a constant remembrance of the  Divine: as such it bears  a close resemblance to the  Jewish idea of a “shiviti conciousness”  practiced at all times.

[5] The Archeologist Dr. Yossi Stepansky discovered a Sufi Khalwa cell of this  type on Mt Canaan in Safed, which has led to scholarly observation  that the practice was clearly familiar to the  Safed Kabbalists  who may have  been inspired (as were the  Egyptian Pietiests  before them)  to develop such (originally Jewish/Christian) practices in a Sufi manner.

[6] Abraham ibn Abi’l-Rabi’ was known as Abraham HeHasid (the  term “Hasid”signifying “Sufi”in his time and  location). The  fact that the  son of Moses Maimonides (Abraham ben HaRambam)  was also known as  “Abraham Ha Hasid” caused some confusion in previous  centuries  over authorial identities, confusion  that has since been resolved.

[7] Joel 3:1

[8] Fenton. P:  Some Judaeo-Arabic Fragments by Rabbi Abraham he-Ḥasīd, the Jewish Sufi, in  JSS 26 (1981), page 57

[9] Fenton P: Some Judeo-Arabic Fragments,  page 66 

[10] These are merely my own  Hegyon HaLev reflections for the reader’s own contemplation, not academic theories about linguistic textual interpretation.

[11] Fenton P: Some Judeo-Arabic Fragments,  page 71

[12] Fenton, P:  Some Judeo-Arabic Fragments,  page 71

[13] Davies, N: “The Cave of the  Heart-Kuntres Maarat HaLev”,KDP Amazon, Safed, 2022 (page 48)

[14] Fenton P:  Some   Judeo-Arabic Fragments,  page 66 &67

[15] Russ-Fishbane E:  Judaism Sufism and  the Pietists of Mediaeval Egypt, OUP, Oxford, (page229)

[16] Fenton P: Some Judeo-Arabic Fragments,  page 66

[17] Davies, N: “The Cave of the  Heart-Kuntres Maarat HaLev”, KDP Amazon, Safed, 2022 (page 57)

[18]  Fenton, P: The Treatise of the Pool: Al-Maqala al-Hawdiyya. London, Octagon Press, 1981.  Page 108

[19] See also Pirkei Avot 6:2

[20] ZOHAR I:90a