ASCETICISM INSTITUTIONALIZED
Asceticism, the voluntary self-denial of legitimate pleasures for religious
ends, though it had its most profound appeal in Christianity. It has, however,
left its mark on Islam and, to a somewhat lesser extent on Judaism. From the
outset, Judaism had its own highly detailed legal and social mechanisms to
shield and separate the faithful from the surrounding paganism, while
Christianity, which was more exposed, had to construct its own psychological
carapace, which it did in the ascetic ideal: the holy man as world-denier. In
Islam, asceticism was likewise a prophylactic, in this instance against the
worldly success which it itself had created.
In all three communities like-minded adepts of self-denial band together not
merely from holy mimesis but for mutual support in what is a daunting exercise.
This drawing together had ended in a degree of institutionalization, particularly in
Christianity, the most structured and hierarchical of the three communities. In
Christianity, institutional asceticism is known as monasticism, associations of
men or women living in common under vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience
to the community superior and whose observance was governed, often down to
the slightest detail, by a formal and, in the West, a papally-approved rule. Islam
too had its ascetics, called Sufis, and despite a well-attested Prophetic report that
“there is monasticism in Islam,” Sufis soon enough lived in communities and
came together in larger associations called tariqasor brotherhoods.
The tariqas too shared a common life based on a rule which often went back to
the personal practice of a sainted founder, though without either the stringency,
the perpetual vows, or the control of the Christian monastic orders. A similar phe-
nomenon is visible in the Hasidic associations of 18th and 19th century Eastern
Europe. These brotherhoods like the Lubovitchers and Satmars were given not
so much to asceticism as to a shared and personal vision of the Jewish life, and,
like their Christian and Muslim counterparts, they followed a kind of common regi-
men based on the lifestyle and practices of the founding tzaddiqor holy man,
and like monks and Sufis, wore distinctive clothes and had their own rituals.