Baḥya Ibn Paqūda is an enigmatic figure in the history of Jewish thought. We know very little about Baḥya; we have little evidence external to his work itself. The Hidāya was written in Judeo-Arabic around 1080. It was the first work to be translated into Hebrew by Judah Ibn Tibbon, who set out to systematically make the Judeo-Arabic classics available to the Jews of Provence who did not know Arabic.

In his introduction, Ibn Tibbon informs us that Baḥya was a dayyan, a judge of the rabbinical court: “one of the scholars of Spain was our Rabbi [Rabbenu] Baḥya ha-dayyan,...

Baḥya and Ibn Gabirol represent two models of philosophical mysticism. Both thinkers lived in the city of Saragossa in eleventh-century Muslim Spain and were absorbing the same intellectual and spiritual currents, specifically Neoplatonic philosophy and Sufi spirituality. To compare and contrast their approaches will thus shed light on Baḥya’s distinctive spiritual contribution.

Before we undertake this phenomenological investigation, it will be useful to clarify our terms. The term “mysticism,” in particular, is multivalent and somewhat problematic. Should we use the term “mysticism” to describe the philosophical spirituality of thinkers such as Baḥya and Ibn Gabirol?

Israel Levin, in his work...

Baḥya’s First Gate is a meditation on what it is to be One. The key to his discussion is a riddle that appears in classical Sufi sources such as the Ṭabaqāt of Sulamī, Abū Nu‘aym’s Ḥilyat al-awliyā’, and Qushayrī’s manual of classical Sufi thought, the Risāla. This chapter will demonstrate that in Bahya, we cannot divorce the philosopher from the Sufi—that Sufi themes and sources are intertwined in his Jewish and philosophical discourse.

This discussion will draw in a multiplicity of voices on the question of what it is to be One: Sufi thinkers who seek ultimate absorption in...

Baḥya’s creative union of philosophy and mysticism is evident not only in the First Gate’s discussion of the unity of God but also in its philosophical proofs for God’s existence. It is Baḥya’s conviction that intellectual understanding is integral to a heart lovingly devoted to God, and that such understanding is contingent on recognizing that God is our Creator.

Why is creation such an urgent theme for medieval thinkers? No issue vexed Baḥya as much as the question of whether the world is eternal and beginningless or whether it has been created at a certain time by a Deity. The...

In the previous chapter, we saw that creation was a tremendously important topic for thinkers of the Middle Ages. What is the nature of the relationship between God and the world? Does the world exist independently, or does its existence depend upon a Creator? Creation is of passionate interest for Baḥya because he believes that the contingency of the world—and thus our ultimate dependence upon a Creator—is crucial to religious devotion. Baḥya’s stance anticipates Schleiermacher’s definition of religion as ultimate dependence.¹

The question of the origin and source of the world is also expressed in Baḥya’s milieu in...

Thus far, we have explored Baḥya’s approach to the One in the First Gate, sections 1–9, and touched upon his discussion of God’s attributes of essence and of negative theology in the First Gate, section 10. In this chapter, we will investigate more fully Baḥya’s approach to language about God’s attributes in 1:10. To do so, it will be important to begin with Sa’adya and to explore the way Biblical exegesis figures in both thinkers’ approach to God’s attributes.

The Hebrew Bible does not hesitate to speak about God; God is a main character in its text. In the...

Baḥya’s First Gate, on unity, points toward the contemplation of creation, the subject of the Second Gate. The purpose of such contemplation is to discern traces of divine beauty in every aspect of our world. Meditation on the beauty of creation awakens awe and wonder, inspiring human beings to love and serve the divine.

Baḥya speaks of the contemplation of creation (i‘tibār bi’l-makhlūqīn); we can recognize this as a form of the argument from design. There has been a strand of philosophers, scientists, and religious believers to the present day who have taken note of the intricate construction of the...

The question of motivation in action is at the heart of both Jewish and Islamic ethics. How does one keep motivation in religious life pure? In rabbinic ethics, this question is framed in terms of the concept of lishema or le-shem shamayim, doing an action for its own sake, or for the sake of God’s name, or for the sake of heaven. It is contrasted to acting for the sake of reward.¹ The classic statement of this in an aggadic (nonlegal) context² is found in the rabbinic compendium of moral maxims Ethics of the Ancestors (Pirqe Avot) 1:3 in the...

In the previous chapter, we saw that under the umbrella of the twofold sense of ikhlāṣ, Baḥya argues that knowing God’s unity is a necessary foundation for purity of action. Theory and practice must be united; genuine piety is grounded in reason. In this chapter, we will see that Baḥya likewise takes a rationalist approach to the origin of the Law and the relationship between reason and revelation.

One might well raise the following objection to Baḥya’s position. If the goal of the Law is absolute purity of motivation and internalization of the Law through exercising one’s reason, why do...

We have seen in Chapters 7 and 8 that Baḥya uses the term ikhlāṣ to signify, among other things, purity of motivation. This leads us to Baḥya’ s innovative classification of duties of the heart and duties of the limbs. Let us examine the sources of Baḥya’s distinction.

In his masterful 1979 study, Amos Goldreich argued convincingly that the source of Baḥya’s distinction between duties of the heart and duties of the limbs is most probably the ninth-century pietist al-Muḥāsibī. While there are many Sufi books with titles including the term “heart”—including Muḥāsibī’s Dawā’ al-qulūb (Medicine for the Heart)...

We began this study by noting that, like many Sufi manuals, Baḥya’s book is divided into gates, each of which describes a state of awareness, a quality, or a virtue that the seeker wishes to embody, or a stage on the spiritual journey. In the final stage of this investigation, we return to a theme that runs throughout the gates: the goal of heightened awareness (murāqaba) and the related nexus of love and reverence. We will look at Baḥya’s discussion of this nexus in the Tenth Gate, on love (maḥabba), and then return to the discussion in the Eighth Gate,...