Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Ha-Levi's Kuzari

3. The Language of Perception: Religious Experience as Witness (Mushāhada ) and Taste (Dhawq)

PART 3 The Language of Perception Religious Experience as Witness (Mushāhada) and Taste (Dhawq) In Part 1, we saw that Ha-Levi describes religious experience in relational terms as contact or connection (ittiÓ sāl), a term which figures prominently in Book One of the Kuzari. Part 2 described HaLevi ’s rejection of human-invented paths to achieve such contact with God, all of which he denigrates as qiyās. True religious experience is ultimately a gift of God. Ha-Levi thus weaves his critique of Karaite qiyās into a global critique of all human-invented paths of striving for religious experience. In the following chapter, we shall explore Ha-Levi’s alternative to human qiyās: religious experience described as sense perception, using the metaphors of witness (mushāhada) and taste (dhawq). 1. Experience vs. Knowledge Among the most powerful claims of the Kuzari is Ha-Levi’s assertion that direct religious experience and not logical demonstration stands at the heart of Judaism. Only a God known through direct experience, he argues, could have aroused the will to make the kinds of sacrifices made by Judaism’s founding father Abraham. Hence the following epiphany in Book Four: The King: Now it has become clear to me the difference between God and Lord, and I understand what [the difference is] between the God of Abraham and the God of Aristotle. The Lord, may He be blessed, one longs for with a longing of taste [dhawq] and witness [mushāhada], while we [only] incline logically [qiyāsan] to God. 89 And this tasting prompts one who has attained it to be consumed in love for him, and to [prefer] death to being without him; while that logic [qiyās] [only] shows that veneration is incumbent as long as one does not suffer or bear hardship on account of it. . . . The Ó Haver: Whereas Abraham bore justly [all that] he suffered in Ur of the Chaldeans, in emigration, in circumcision, in the removal of Ishmael, and in his distressing resolution to sacrifice Isaac—for he perceived [shāhada] the ™amr ilāhı̄ by taste, not by logic. (IV:16 –17: 168–69) A key to this passage, of which the Arabic reader would have been aware, is that Ha-Levi has borrowed a Sufi term for intense religious experience , mushāhada. Derived from the root sh-h-d—which also appears here as a verb to describe Abraham’s sensing of the Divine—the term literally means “witness.” Medieval Arabic writers of all shades use mushāhada to depict direct experiential perception of God and the spiritual world. A second key term in the passage is qiyās. While I have translated the term here as “logic,” we have seen that qiyās would carry diverse overtones for Ha-Levi’s Arabic readers: for the lawyer, a method of legal analogy; for the philosopher, the Aristotelian syllogism; for the theologian , a tool that enabled one to prove the existence of God inductively, to argue that just as all things in this world have a cause, so must the world as a whole have a Creator.1 In the passage quoted here, the Ó Haver goes on to argue that someone who has directly experienced God’s presence would forsake the way of qiyās as useless. He suggests that sensory experience, direct and irrefutable , is more reliable than logic. Ha-Levi’s prime example is the patriarch Abraham, and he draws upon oral traditions about the life of Abraham to graphically illustrate his claim: Abraham withstands the test of being thrown into a fiery furnace in his early life in Ur of the Chaldeans;2 later in his life, he composes the philosophical and scientific work Sefer Yetsirah;3 finally, God tells Abraham unequivocally to give up study of the stars. Drawing upon a well-known medieval topos—that of the philosopher or poet who rejects secular pursuits in his old age4—Ha-Levi offers a revolutionary interpretation of the rabbinic traditions he has inherited . Once God touched Abraham directly, the Ó Haver argues, Abraham completely abandoned his philosophical quest: For he [Abraham] perceived [shāhada] the ™amr ilāhı̄ by taste, not by logic [qiyās]. . . . How, then, could he not reject his earlier logical speculations [qiyāsāt]? This is the way the Sages explain [the verse] “He brought him [Abraham] outside [to view the stars]” [Gen 15:5]: He said to him: “Give 90 Part Three [18...