The Convergence of Judaism and Islam. Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

Jewish Mysticism in the Lands of the Ishmaelites: A Re-Orientation r 165

5. See Shaul Shaked, “Medieval Jewish Magic in Relation to Islam: Theoretical At-
   titudes and Genres,” in Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication, and Interaction:
   Essays in Honor of William M. Brinner, ed. B. Hary, J. Hayes, and F. Astren (Leiden: E. J.
   Brill, 2000), 97–109.


6. David Halperin, “Hekhalot and Mi ̔raj: Observations on the Heavenly Journey in
   Judaism and Islam,” in Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, ed. J. Collins and M.
   Fishbane (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 265–88.


7. Steven Wasserstrom, “Sefer Yesira and Early Islam: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Jewish
   Thought and Philosophy 3 (1993): 1–30.


8. Yehuda Liebes, Torat ha-Yesirah shel Sefer Yesirah (Jerusalem: Schocken, 2000),
   233–35.


9. Paul Fenton, “Judaism and Sufism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jew-
   ish Philosophy, ed. D. Frank and O. Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
   2003), 201–17.


10. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ih ya’ ̔Ulum al-Din (Beirut, n.d.), 2:294.


11. Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov, Sefer ha-Emunot (Ferara, 1556) 4:14.


12. The Chronicle of Ahima ̔as, ed. Benjamin Klar (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1974)
    (Hebrew).


13. Israel Weinstock and Gershom Scholem traded arguments over the “secrets” of
    Abu Aharon in Tarbiz 32 (1962/63). Weinstock claimed he had found a text that con-
    tained the secrets, and Scholem argued that Weinstock was misled.


14. Published by G. Scholem, Mada ̔ey ha-Yahadut 2 (1927): 248-9. See Joseph Dan,
    ed., and Ronald Kiener, trans., The Early Kabbalah (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 169f.


15. Michael Sells has drawn useful parallels between merkabah visionary accounts
    and the famous mi ̔raj of Abu Yazid al-Bistami, who died in 878, though far from Bagh-
    dad. See Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qur’an, Mi ̔raj, Poetic, and Theological Writ-
    ings (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 357n65. Bension suggested such a dynamic (specifi-
    cally concerning the doctrine of paradise and hell) in his impressionistic The Zohar in
    Moslem and Christian Spain (1932; repr., New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1974), 48.


16. Yair Tzoran, “Magic, Theurgy, and the Science of Letters in Islam and Its Parallels
    in Jewish Literature,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 18 (1996): 19–62 (Hebrew). This
    osmotic dynamic also flowed from Judaism to early Eastern Christian mysticism. See
    Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 9–22.


17. Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 357n65.


18. Shem Tov b. Shem Tov, Sefer ha-Emunot, 94a, citing Isaac b. Jacob Cohen of Soria.


19. Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton: Princeton University
    Press, 1987), 56n12.


20. The Book Bahir: An Edition Based on the Earliest Manuscripts, ed. D. Abrams (Los
    Angeles: Cherub Press, 1994), 133, §28.


21. Ronit Meroz, “On the Time and Place of Some of Sefer ha-Bahir,” Daat 49 (2002):
    135–80 (Hebrew).


22. Michael McGaha, “The Sefer ha-Bahir and Andalusian Sufism,” Medieval Encoun-
    ters 3 (1997): 20–57.