This book looks at the Jewish pietist movement initiated by Abraham Maimonides in thirteenth-century Egypt. Its existence, as well as its strong affiliation with Islamic Sufism, has been known since the nineteenth century, when large portions of Abraham Maimonides' writings were published. Later, with the gradual discovery of the Geniza, many documents related to Abraham's biography were published, shedding new light on his life and thought. Of special importance are S.D. Goitein's works, which portray Abraham's personality and world view. Paul Fenton's groundbreaking studies of this topic, in which the movement was first identified as “Jewish Sufi”, followed slightly later by the contributions of M.A. Friedman, are especially worth mentioning. Given this considerable accumulation of data and new insights, the time has come for a comprehensive study of this intriguing historical episode. Russ-Fishbane's book satisfies this need.
The book has three main sections. The first part, which examines the historical and social foundations, discusses the movement's antecedents and its impact on the social fabric of Jewish society in medieval Egypt. This part concludes with a more descriptive chapter on the devotional practices of the Jewish Egyptian pietists, which are systematically paralleled to those of contemporary Sufi institutions and rites. The second part concerns Abraham Maimonides' reform of the synagogue service. Abraham understood and presented the reformed rituals, with a great resemblance to Islamic practices – not necessarily Sufi, as a revival of the original and long-forgotten Jewish customs that had been preserved in Muslim worship. He considered their restoration vital for the rehabilitation of Israel in exile and for the advent of the messianic era. Despite the striking similarity between the reformed ritual and Islamic practice, Russ-Fishbane denies a connection between Abraham's innovations and the supererogatory prayers for which the Sufis were known, because Abraham's reforms are not additions to the service but an integral part of the liturgy incumbent on every believer, not just pietist devotees. Russ-Fishbane prefers to view Abraham's prayer reform as a continuation of the ritual changes launched by his father, Moses Maimonides, and believes that both reforms were motivated by “a palpable self-consciousness of the Islamic environment” (p. 157).
The third and last part concerns the redemptive aspect of the movement. The pietists' ultimate and final goal was to use ascetic practices and mystical experience to achieve the prophetic state. They held that biblical prophecy could be recovered in the present. Once achieved, they believed, it would hasten the redemption of Israel and usher in the long-awaited messianic era. According to Russ-Fishbane, here lies “the primary objective and driving inspiration of the entire pietist movement” (p. 240).
This book is much more than just a summation of the accumulated knowledge about this movement. There is a clear doctrinal thesis running throughout. Russ-Fishbane regards the movement primarily as a creative expression of Jewish pietism and believes it should therefore be examined through its sources, on their own terms and relying on their own definitions (p. 39). He strongly opposes attempts to study it through the lens of modern terms borrowed from the post-colonial lexicon and to relate to it in terms of political power or powerlessness, which he thinks reduces “a rich and dynamic phenomenon to … a struggle of political emancipation” (p. 38). Because he views it as an essentially internal Jewish phenomenon, it is no wonder that Russ-Fishbane plays down the mystical aspects of the movement and strives to trace its continuity, drawing a direct line from Bahya ibn Paquda and Maghrebian pietists of the eleventh century, through the legacy of Maimonidean thought in the late twelfth century, and on to Abraham's movement.
Nevertheless, the Sufi subtext of the Jewish pietist movement can hardly be ignored, given that Abraham Maimonides himself explicitly presented the Sufi model as a key inspiration for his reforms, as Russ-Fishbane notes when necessary. Still, he treats the similarities between the institutions of Jewish pietism and Sufi institutions as no more than “a socio-religious backdrop” (p. 92) required for the historical examination of the Jewish movement. In some cases he explicitly refrains from studying them in detail (p. 182). What is more troubling is Russ-Fishbane`s essentialist perception of Sufism itself. He treats Sufism as a monolithic movement, disregarding its many variants and the large diversity of religious groups and trends it encompassed even as late as the thirteenth century. Russ-Fishbane's monolithic perception of Sufism obstructs his comparative approach, as when he contrasts the “mystical rationalism” of the Jewish pietists with the allegedly pure mysticism of Sufism, ignoring the many Sufi groups, such as Sufiyyat al Muʿtazila, that also combined these two trends.
Medieval Sufism can perhaps be best understood as a key source of energy that circulated throughout its wider environment, though its specific appearance varied by the religious context. So it should not surprise us that Sufi elements are central to medieval Jewish pietism. In this sense Russ-Fishbane is right when, rather than looking for parallels between Jewish pietism and Islamic Sufism, he prefers to detect their points of dissimilarity and to highlight the idiosyncrasies of Jewish pietism. Nevertheless, his insistence on viewing Abraham Maimonides' movement as an internal Jewish development and its similarities with Sufism as mere external resemblances narrows the picture and conceals the “energy gradient” (to use Walter Benjamin's terminology) that flowed from Sufism and animated Jewish pietism and probably other pietist and mystical trends as well.
Russ-Fishbane's book is a serious and welcome scholarly work. Despite its approach it will be of great interest not only to those in Judaic studies but also for the study of Sufism.
