Sufi-Jewish Dialogue

Diana Lobel is Associate Professor of Religion at Boston University. She is the author of Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Ha-Levi's Kuzari.

• PrefaceIntroduction:Bahya's Work in Its Judeo-Arabic ContextChapter 1. Philosophical Mysticism in Eleventh-Century Spain: Bahya and Ibn GabirolChapter 2. On the Lookout: The Exegesis of a Sufi TaleChapter 3. CreationChapter 4. The OneChapter 5. Speaking about God: Divine Attributes, Biblical Language, and Biblical ExegesisChapter 6. The Contemplation of Creation (I'tibār)Chapter 7. Wholehearted Devotion (Ikhlās): Purification of Unity (Ikhlās al-Tawhid), Purification of Intention in Action (Ikhlās al-'Amal)Chapter 8. Reason, Law, and the Way of the SpiritChapter 9. The Spirituality of the Law Chapter 10. Awareness, Love, and Reverence (Murāqaba, Mahabba, Hayba/Yir'ah)List of AbbreviationsNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"An ambitious attempt to fill a long-standing lacuna in the history of Jewish thought by presenting a synthesis and evaluation of Bahya in his intellectual context. It draws on over a century of scholarship, suggests some new sources for Bahya and new readings of old sources, and offers an interpretation of his thought." (Charles H. Manekin, University of Maryland) "This manuscript contains a subtle, probing, and rich exposition of the key issue of devotional self-examination within Jewish and Islamic mysticism. The author has a superb sense of Arabic, Sufi mystical psychology, and the extraordinary dialogue (sometimes openly acknowledged, often left unacknowledged) among Jewish, Islamic, Christian, and Greek traditions at the time of Ibn Paquda." (Michael Sells, University of Chicago) "Lobel illustrates the power of philology in the best sense. Her critical ear for the nuances and history of Arabo- Islamic terminology . . . enables her to probe the deep structural penetration of Sufi ideas in the work of Jewish thinkers and seekers. To put it another way, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue traces the process by which Arabo-Islamic conceptual frames are imported into Judaism through shared use of the Arabic language. . . . Lobel is keenly attuned to the historical dimension of the work and its place in the cultural and intellectual history of the Jews of al-Andalus and all of Islam." (The Medieval Review)