"Jewish Ṣūfīsm" in Medieval Egypt

The dissertation that follows is a study of an interaction between the Jews and Muslims in medieval Islām, particularly in Egypt. Their interaction was in the area of spirituality in which the Jews absorbed some aspects of Ṣūfīsm and incorporated it into their spiritual system. The aim of this religious and cultural gesture, among others was ethical improvement and Jewish spiritual renewal. In this regard the religious phenomenon may tentatively be called “Jewish Ṣūfīsm.” The main concern of this study is the understanding of the milieu and context that allowed agency activity at the frontier of the other, in this case is the Jews and Ṣūfīsm. It is an attempt to understand the strategy of Jewish identity formation within the mainstream cultural context while at the same time boosting their Jewish identity and spiritual ideal. The research employs “frontier perspective” and Mikhail Bakhtin cultural theory in analyzing this religious phenomenon. Frontier perspective helps to understand the diversity Jewish diasporic experience whenever encounters with other cultures and religious traditions. Frontier is the place of contention and complexity, of contestation and transformation, of conflicts and traumas, of nourishment and harmonies, in which Jewish identity always contested and transformed. Bakhtinian framework helped to analyze this dynamic.