Submission to God - Study and Dialogue Interfaith Encounter Group on 14th January 2009:

The encounter of the Study and Dialogue Group for Interfaith Encounter took place on January 14th and dealt with the submission to God in the Sufi Muslim tradition and in the Jewish Sufi tradition.

We read parts of the first chapter of the book "Hamaspik Leovdei Hashem" , written by Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, who describes two levels in the service of God. The first level is the full fulfillment of all the Torah's commandments. There is no room for compromise on that. The human is like a slave to God and can not refuse any of God's commandments. The human is born with infinite debt to God and all his work to follow the commandments is just some of the repay of that debt. A person who accomplishes the full observance of all commandments is called righteous.

Only after achieving righteousness the person can go to the next level of the mystical way. A person who tries to go to that level before completing the basic level can be compared to a person who rents a house and instead of paying his landlord the rent – brings flowers to him.

In the conversation we touched, among others, on the following issues:

The Hazon Ish (an important leader of the Ultra Orthodox society some sixty years ago) said "We are zealous but not extreme".

We came with three interpretations for that saying:
a. We are not violent
b. We are zealous to our way but the way itself is not extreme
c. We are pragmatic: we know we can not achieve 100% of what we want and we are willing to negotiate in order to achieve as much as we can.
In Judaism the social obligations are part of the divine commandments;
In Islam there is no room for asceticism. A person should not separate himself from the world but live in it. The body too has rights such as food, washing etc.

The next encounter is planned for February 11th.

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