Spiritual Excellence:

Jewish Classics of the Spirit in Brief

Book One:

Bachya Ibn PakudahThe Duties of the Heart

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Bachya Ibn Pakuda's The Duties of the Hearts book one ofSpiritual Excellence: Jewish Classics of the Spirit in Brief byRabbi Yaakov Feldman

Copyright © 2009 Rabbi Yaakov FeldmanAll rights reserved, including the right to reproduce thisbook or portion thereof in any form.

This book is based on classes available at URL http://torah.org/learning/spiritual-excellence/archives.html

In loving Memory of Raizel bas Meyer Volff HaLevi (Rheta Goldberg)

This is the first in a series of works in the SpiritualExcellence series that has run for a number of years withconsiderable success on Project Genesis’ very popularwebsite, www.torah.org . To date we have presented anumber of classical Jewish ethical and spiritual texts there,including the one this book is based on, Bachya IbnPakudah’s The Duties of the Heart, as well Rabbeinu Yonah’sThe Gates of Repentance, Moshe Maimonides’ The EightChapters, and Moshe Chaim Luzzatto’s The Path of the Just.We’re honored to now offer this work (with somealterations) in book form, and we look forward to doing thesame with those other works and others.

We’re especially pleased, though, to offer this work first;not only because it was the premier work in the series, butbecause it has always touched the core so deeply and been acentral work of personal inspiration.

Table of Contents

About the Author ii

About Project Genesis iii

Acknowledgments iv

Prologue 1

Ibn Pakudah's Introduction 3

Gate One: The Wholehearted Acceptance of the Oneness of God 15

Gate Two: Reflecting Upon Created Things 33

Gate Three: Serving God 45

Gate Four: Trusting God 67

Gate Five: Dedicating Our Actions to God 91

Gate Six: Surrendering to God 113

Gate Seven: Teshuvah (Returning to God) 127

Gate Eight: Introspection 141

Gate Nine: Abstinence 165

Gate Ten: Loving God Wholeheartedly 181

Epilogue 191191

i

AcknowledgmentsThe author would like to thank Mr. Ori Pomerantz for all his input andsupport, as well as the the fine staff of Project Genesis and www.torah.org,most especially Rabbi Yaakov Menken its director and Mr. MichaelHarshaw its Executive Director, for all their encouragement and assistance.

iv

Author's PrologueThere are many things we’d need to know if we’re ever to achieve the sort ofspiritual excellence that the Jewish Tradition asks of us. But perhaps themost important of them would be the need to know our own hearts—which isto say, to know who we are, what we feel, what we consider important, whatour dreams are, and what realizations we’ve come to.

But that’s only the first half of knowing our hearts. After all,psychologists ask us to know ourselves that way, too; as well as career andrelationship counselors, time-management experts, and the like. Obviously,then, there’s a difference between their demands of us to know our hearts,and the demands that the search for spiritual excellence would make uponus to do that.

At bottom the difference between the two is this. When I set out to knowmy heart in pursuit of spiritual excellence I do it not just to make the bestuse of my time and to succeed in life: I do it to draw close to God Almighty.

For, we’re taught that “while people look upon outward appearances,God looks upon the heart“(I Samuel 16:7). So it would logically do me wellto know what He’s seeing. And it would also obviously be important torectify my heart once I’d come to catch sight of its shortcomings. That’swhere the idea of there being duties of the heart—things my heart and innerbeing would need to fulfill if I’m ever to achieve spiritual excellence—comesin.

But what are the duties of the heart? And how are they different from theother sorts of duties anyone trying to live a spiritually rich life has? We’lltouch on all that and much more that speaks to the life of the spirit, themeaning of life, the deeper meaning of many things said in the JewishTradition, and more in our study of Bachya Ibn Pakudah’s 11th centurymaster-work, The Duties of the Heart.

Let’s start off by saying that the ten so-called “Gates” that embody TheDuties of the Heart offer bright and rich explorations of the above themes aswell as the following ones, which serve as the Gates’ titles:

1

1. Wholeheartedly Accepting God's Oneness2. Reflecting Upon Created Things3. Serving God4. Trusting God5. Dedicating Our Actions to God6. Surrendering to God7. Teshuvah (Returning to God)8. Introspection9. Abstinence, and10. Loving God Wholeheartedly. In fact, the book also delves into such recondite and vital issues as the

nature of the soul, reward and punishment, Divine Providence, free will,God’s Being, our place in the universe, personal power versus subservience,health and vitality, and drawing close to God.

So let’s now begin to meander about this savory and captivating work ofclassical Jewish spirituality, insight, ethics, philosophy, and wisdom.

Just know that at bottom this book is a synopsis of a much lengthier andfecund work that tries as best as it can to explain it, and to highlight itswisdom (and in order to facilitate that we’ve set up the sections of each Gateto correspond exactly to that Gate’s chapters in the original). As such, you’llfind a lot said here in as few words as possible, which may confuse andfrustrate. So we quote a statement made in the 9th section of the 3rd Gatebelow that may serve as a guide for the whole work.

“… whole books can be culled from the rich mine of wisdom IbnPakudah provides us with …. So take heart if you find yourself dazzled and alittle overwhelmed. The best advice we'd offer would be to reread it fromtime to time and to savor its delights again and again.”

May God grant us the wherewithal to draw upon the wisdom we cite inthis work, and enable us to carry through on its reasoned suggestions forbetterment and true spiritual excellence.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

2

Ibn Pakudah's Introduction

1.Though the thrust of this work will center on the ways our heart can bestserve God, it would be silly of us to skirt past the mind as if it hardlymattered. For Ibn Pakudah argues that the greatest gift God has granted usbeyond mere conscious awareness of things is our ability to reason andacquire knowledge. In fact, he terms our mind the “life” of our spirits and the“light” of our intellects, inasmuch as without it we couldn’t hope to succeedon any level in our search for spiritual excellence, despite our very best andmost heart-felt intentions.

But there are many, many things to think about and know. There are thesorts we’d have to know in order to carry out everyday sorts of things, otherthings to know to accomplish some more exalted things, and yet other thingsto know to achieve our ultimate goal— drawing closer to God. And it woulddo us well to know the difference between them, and where our priorities areto lie.

In keeping with that, let it be said at this point that this introduction andthe Gate to follow are unusual, for while the bulk of the work concerns itselfwith the heart indeed and is quite inspirational and uplifting, these first twoGates are quite analytical and knowledge-based. They set out to rationalizewhy the heart matters, ironically … but then they let heart hold sway and geton to the business at hand: the devout and heart-felt search for God.

That being so, we’re told here that the knowledge of more practicalthings, as well as of even more exalted items that nonetheless don’t directlytouch on our relationship to God are at best secondary to the kind ofknowledge that would draw us closer to Him. And we’re informed that thelatter sort of reasoning and knowledge only comes to us when we delve intothe kinds of things we’d need to know to comprehend God’s Torah. Forwhile other forms of knowledge and insight certainly make life a lot easierand help us carry out our God-given functions in the world, only the lattertype directly help us achieve our ultimate goal.

3

As we’ll discover in the course of this work, Ibn Pakudah’s underlyingpoints will prove to be that the sorts of things that we’ll be concentrating onhere, in The Duties of the Heart, will indeed either directly or soon-enoughhelp us in our search for spiritual excellence. And that there are three sorts ofTorah knowledge as well: the knowledge of less-essential things like propercantillation, grammar, and story-line; the knowledge of more exalted thingslike the physical mitzvot (“commandments”); and the knowledge of ultimateissues like the duties of the heart.

But there’s a hitch. For despite the fact that certain studies directlynourish our beings and lead head-on to spiritual excellence, we’d still-and-allhave to engage in them for the right reasons in order to achieve our goal.We’d need to avoid delving into them for material gain, in order to advanceour “careers” so to speak, or to impress others. Our impetus should beachieving spiritual excellence for its own sake, and thus drawing close toGod.

After all, we’d be touching upon some of the very secrets of the universehere, and it wouldn’t do to delve into all that for selfish, self-serving reasons!

2.After having expounded on the intellect that God granted us to fulfill Hiswishes and to grow close to Him, Ibn Pakudah now points out somethingelse.

It’s that not only are we capable of drawing close to God with ourminds. We can also do that by means of the Torah which He transmitted tous prophetically through Moses, and by means of the oral traditions passeddown by the prophets and elaborated upon by the Jewish sages.

For as is known, the Torah and all its accouterments derives from aseries of prophetic revelations, starting with Moses’ at Mount Sinai, onwardto the revelations attained by the later prophets which were then passed on tothe sages, who then gingerly expanded upon those traditions to suit the needsof time, place, and individual.

But the Torah tradition itself can be broken down into two primaryelements: what God bids us to do physically to draw close to Him, and whatHe asks us to do within, in our hearts and minds. And each touches upon acategory of mitzvot.

4

The more manifest kinds of mitzvot can also be broken down into twokinds: perfectly logical ones (like not stealing or committing adultery, andthe like), and not at all logical ones (like not eating meat with milk, notwearing wool and linen together, and the like). We’ll find, though, that theduties of the heart will all prove to be quite logical and explicable.

We’ll also find that in both “camps”—physical, manifest mitzvot andinner ones—there are imperatives (things we’re charged to do) andprohibitions (things we’re charged not to do).

Now, the various imperatives and prohibitions connected with physicalmitzvot are well known, so we needn’t delve into them here. Instead, ourtask will be to lay out the inner imperatives and prohibitions, since they’reless known. And we’ll in fact be doing that in the course of this whole work.

In short, though, inner imperatives include: believing that the world hasa Creator who fashioned it out of nothing who is utterly unique; acceptingHis Oneness; serving Him with your heart; reflecting on His wondrouscreations; trusting Him; surrendering yourself to Him; fearing Him; dreadingand being abashed before Him knowing that He observes you both outsideand in; yearning to fulfill His wishes; dedicating your deeds to His Name;and loving Him and those who themselves love Him.

And inner prohibitions would touch on making sure we don’t engage inthe opposite of the above (by not believing in a Creator, not believing Him tobe One, etc.), as well as not coveting; not acting out of vengeance or bearinga grudge; not contemplating sin, not yearning to commit one, and notdeciding to commit one, and the like.

Needless to say, God alone knows if we’re successful or not in our innerdevotions; for only He can read our hearts. In fact, that will prove to be amajor factor in the duties of the heart, since engaging in them usually winsus no favor with others (as more external mitzvot might, which we could“impress” others with). They only win us favor in God’s eyes, and they’rethus uniquely able to draw us close to Him.

3.Since it became clear to Ibn Pakudah that there are in fact inner, heart-boundmitzvot waiting to be fulfilled, he wondered if a work dedicated to offeringand explaining them had ever been written. And he discovered that none had.

5

(Let’s not forget—The Duties of the Heart was written in the eleventhcentury!)

And he noted that the only books written by Torah scholars since theredaction of the Talmud were Torah commentaries, legal codes or responsa,or repudiations of the claims of heretics, none other.

He was taken aback. Had he been wrong? Had the Tradition not reallycharged us with pursuing inner mitzvot? Were they merely discretionary andoptional, he wondered?

So he went back to the drawing board, so to speak, and delved onceagain into the duties of the heart. And he determined that not only are theylogically imperative, but that the Torah itself as well as the Tradition arequite blunt about how obliged we are to make them a part of our devotionallife.

In fact it even became clear to him by then that the heart’s duties “are thevery foundation of all the mitzvot”—including the physical ones! And that ifwe were less than fully attuned to these duties of the heart, that “it would beimpossible for us to keep any of the physical mitzvot!” on any substantivelevel.

After all, he reasoned, if we’re comprised of an “inner” and “outer”being, if you will—body and soul—it follows that there’d need to be innerand outer ways of serving God. The outer way would involve the manyphysical mitzvot, while the inner way would involve the sorts of innermitzvot we’ll be delving into in this work. And it also seemed clear thatwe’d need to serve God on an inner level indeed, given that “physicalmitzvot could only be observed thoroughly when the heart was willing, thesoul wanted, and the self yearned to do them“, as Ibn Pakudah put it.

Then again, aren’t these sorts of mitzvot stated straight-out? Isn’t itwritten, "Love God your Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and withall your possessions. And the words I am commanding you today shall be onyour heart" (Deuteronomy 6:5), "Love God your Lord, listen to His voiceand cling to Him" (Ibid. 30:20), "Love God your Lord, and serve Him withall your heart and all your soul" (Ibid. 11:13), "Follow God your Lord andfear Him" (Ibid. 13:5), "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18);"And now Israel, what does God your Lord ask of you but to fearHim ..." (Deuteronomy 10:12) and, "Love the stranger ...: fear God and serveHim" (Ibid. 10:19), and the like.

6

We find much the same said by our sages and even more outright, as in,"The Compassionate One demands the heart" (Sanhedrin 106b) and, "Theheart and the eyes are the two instigators of sin" (Jerusalem Talmud,Berachot 1:8), aside from the many admonitions listed in Pirkei Avot (theseries of moral directives set forth by our sages known as “The Ethics of theFathers”).

Could it be that such inner obligations are only binding from time totime, he wondered? But that certainly proved not to be so, considering theirmake-up. It became clear that they are in fact relevant, as he put it, “ourwhole lives long, all the time, without exception ... each and every minute, inevery way, for as long as we’re conscious and alive”.

4.Continuing to wonder why a book dedicated to explicating the inner, heart-based mitzvot hadn’t been written before he had set out to write The Dutiesof the Heart, Ibn Pakudah thought that it was because there really weren’tmany heart-based mitzvot. But he discovered that while there’s a finitenumber of physical mitzvot (613, in all), there’s a nearly infinite number ofheart-based ones, when you consider how capable they are of coloring andinfusing nearly everything we do.

He then wondered if perhaps everyone was already so aware of and socommitted to fulfilling these mitzvot that it was simply unnecessary to laythem out in book form.

But to his dismay he knew (just as most of us know, and only too well)that the great preponderance of people simply don’t strive for spiritualexcellence. And that when they do the sorts of things that benefit us all, theyoften do it for self-serving ends—perhaps to appear intelligent, caring, orpious to others, and the like.

Such individuals not only do the right thing for the wrong reasons, theyalso bypass the need to concentrate on certain fundamentals of the faith we’llbe touching on later, including: faith in God's Oneness; whether we’resupposed to delve into the import and implications of it on our own, orwhether it’s enough to depend upon the tradition for that; and whether we’resupposed to say "God is One" the way most people do, without reallyknowing what they’re saying, or whether we’re to research the matter on ourown.

7

Many sages, though, have dedicated the requisite time and energyneeded to dwell on these points, as well as other duties of the heart. In fact,the story’s told of a certain sage who would only associate with others untilmidday, when he’d seclude himself and say, "Bring on the hidden light!”referring to the duties of the heart. Ibn Pakudah’s point is that it is theywhom we should emulate.

5.He had introduced a second theme above, aside from the original one, whichwas why heart-based mitzvot weren’t explored in the past. And that secondtheme touches upon the question of whether it’s wiser to explain certainmore “abstract” articles of the faith (that don’t touch upon actual practice) onour own, or whether it’s better to depend entirely upon the explanationswe’ve inherited.

And he remarked that while some of his contemporaries thought it bestto simply draw and rely upon our spiritual heritage when it came to suchthings, Ibn Pakudah himself thought we were obliged to delve into them onour own—if we have the acuity needed.

In fact, he likened anyone who’s able to delve into those things on hisown but doesn’t to the poor servant of the king who was charged withshirking his duties.

It seems there had once been a rather intelligent and capable servant of agreat king who was ordered to handle a very special assignment. He was tocollect all the taxes from the people, to categorize the funds he received, andto allot whatever was needed for each purpose. The servant was rather lazyor perhaps naive, though. And he let the people convince him to take theirword for what they’d paid out, and to allow them to decide which causesthey were to set aside money for. The king found out soon enough, and heordered the servant to come before him.

“How much did you collect, and what did you allot it for?” asked theking. The servant was dumbfounded and couldn’t say a thing. After all, hesimply didn’t know. And he was arrested. Not for embezzlement so much asfor dereliction of duty. After all, all he did wrong was to allow others to dohis work for him, when he was perfectly capable of doing it on his own.

“The same goes for you” charges our author. ”If you’re knowledgeableand clever enough, and you’re capable of understanding what you’ve been

8

taught” already by the sages, who explicated the more abstract fundamentalsof our faith—“then you’re obliged to make use of all of that to drawconclusions on your own.”

His point is clear, though, that you have to know what the sages passeddown to us in the form of the electric, light-studded, coalesced doctrines wehave. And only then can you—and must you—“put two and two together”and offer cogent insights of your own. Again, though, this doesn’t touch onpractical halacha so much as on the haunting abstract ideas the traditionoffers.

As the Torah puts it, "Should something too enigmatic for you to judgeoccur in differing bloods, laws, plagues ...” which is to say, when it comes topractice and halacha, you’re obliged to act “according to how you areinstructed" (Deuteronomy 17:8-10) without recourse to novel interpretationor insight.

The implication though according to Ibn Pakudah is that when it comesto things like “the nature of God's Oneness, about His various names andcharacteristics, about particular principles of the faith like serving God,trusting Him, surrendering to Him, dedicating your deeds to His name,ridding your good deeds of untoward influences, repenting, fearing Him,loving Him, being abashed in His presence, being introspective for the sakeof His name,” and so on, that you’re not only to delve into these matters inlight of the traditions, but on your own as well.

It’s important to underscore the point, though, that study of the traditionwould naturally come first. Otherwise your conclusions would be purelypersonal and conjectural. But the point is that the person who can arrive atclear, logical conclusions after having seeped himself in the Tradition“should delve into the matter on his own as deeply as possible, and arrive atas many proofs (i.e., of the underlying veracity of the tradition) as hepossibly can.”

6.Finally deciding that there were indeed legitimate reasons to lay out theduties of the heart, Ibn Pakudah then wondered about something else. Wouldthe people of his generation appreciate them?

It seemed to him that the people of past generations worked very hard onthe duties of the heart to the exclusion of some other certainly good things

9

that still and all didn’t directly spur on spiritual excellence. So, for example,rather than delve at length into the details of rarely-applicable halachicpractices, scholars of the past concentrated on general halachic principles,and on knowing exactly what to do in their daily lives. And should a more“exotic” question come up, they’d research the matter there and then, andarrive at a practical decision—but not before.

They were thus able to spend a lot more time on the duties of the heart—and to achieving spiritual excellence.

And so it’s said, "In the days of Rav Yehudah they only studied the(Talmudic) Order of Nezikim, while we study more than that. Yet rain wouldcome down when Rav Yehudah would (only have to) take off one of hissandals, while we’re overlooked (and our prayers go unanswered) when wefast incessantly."

That’s to say that Rav Yehudah and his contemporaries had achieved ahigher level of closeness to God than the latter day scholars, despite theirhaving studied less than the latter ones. And why? Because Rav Yehudahand his contemporaries “sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of God'sname”. That is, they dedicated their beings to their spiritual practices, “whilewe (the latter day scholars) don’t" (Berachot 20A).

Ibn Pakudah’s point was that his contemporaries were like those latterday scholars. For they, too, spent far too much time delving into halachotthat don’t touch upon the duties of the heart. And they weren’t very likely toappreciate them. In fact, the same can be said of many of us today.

Ibn Pakudah also came to realize that our spiritual practices have to berooted in good-heartedness and pure intentions if they’re to be effective. Andthat the whole point of observing the duties of the heart is to “align (our)inner and outer self in the service of God”, which is to say—to be the same,inside and out; to be a person of integrity, rather than someone whose "heartis not whole with God his Lord" (Kings I 11:4) or with other people.

Ironically, we also have to start off with integrity; for it serves as thevery core of the duties of the heart. After all, if I say one thing and doanother, my “insides” are obviously dissociated from my “outside”. Icouldn’t be expected to be anything but a hypocrite. And I certainly couldn’tbe trusted to be sincere when it came to my relationship to God.

Ibn Pakudah then offered an original insight. He declared that a singledeed is oftentimes more effective than many others, depending on the

10

integrity (and loftiness) of our intentions. For if we set out to do thingsbecause we love God or are in awe of Him—inside and out—and all weintend to do is fulfill His wishes, then what we manage to do then will beworth far more than what we’d do without those feelings and intentions.

7.Ibn Pakudah finally resolved to delve into the duties of the heart on his own.And he leapt from one citation to another, and one implication to another, tillhe grew dizzy with the rich spiritual undertones he was unearthing. But hewas afraid he’d forget it all. So he decided to actually write The Duties of theHeart itself, which was to serve as a primer on how to achieve spiritualexcellence from the inside out.

Then he engaged in a process of self-examination we’d all do well tofollow. He set out to determine just how true he himself was to what he wassaying; how genuine and rooted in personal integrity his own dictates were.(And this is where he lays his own obvious piety out for all to see, it seems.)

As he put it, “When my deeds agreed with my own words, I thankedGod for helping me in that and guiding me on the path; but when my deedscontradicted or were beneath what I said, I blamed and reproached myself,and used my own arguments against myself, contrasting my deeds with therighteousness of my words.” That’s to say, he set out to determine whetheror not he had a right to say what he was saying, and to improve himself whenhe saw that his own actions were off the mark.

But being human as we all are, and having the kinds of limitations andreservations we all do, he began to have second thoughts. “It occurred to me”he wrote, “that someone like me wasn’t equipped to write it”, i.e., such abook. After all, it would call for organizational and literary skills he didn’tthink he had (though he clearly did). “I was afraid I was burdening myselfwith something that would only demonstrate my limitations, and that I wasoverstepping my bounds” he said in all humility. “So I convinced myselfto ... not do what I’d decided to.”

But fortunately for us it occurred to him that “many good ideas wererejected because of fear, and that dread causes a lot of damage”, which is tosay that many great and important projects go by the waysides simplybecause their authors lapse into uncertainty and self-doubt. And he began torealize that “if everyone who ever resolved to do something good or to

11

instruct others in the path of righteousness kept still until he himself couldaccomplish everything he set out to, then nothing would have been said sincethe days of the prophets”. For while they were told what to say straight-outby God, we’re certainly not; we have to depend on self-evaluation and theguidance of teachers and friends.

And he realized as well that “if everyone who ever resolved to advancegoodness but couldn’t, then abandoned whatever he’d already accomplishedinstead, that humanity would be without goodness or nobility, everyonewould just chase after empty fantasies, the paths of goodness would turn toruin, and the abodes of kindness would be deserted.” Which is to say that ifeveryone who was capable of enlightening us in how to better ourselves hadto wait till he himself had become the very best he could be, the rest of uswould never benefit from his insights, and mankind as a whole would suffer.

Ibn Pakudah also knew full well that people were “reticent to act kindly,and that they were lazy when it came to pursuing goodness.” So he knew thata work like his was in fact necessary. But he was also convinced that “withGod's help ... and a strong determination to subjugate himself to the serviceof God”, that people could indeed improve himself. So he put pen to paperand followed through on his idea to compose The Duties of the Heart.

8.Ibn Pakudah then finished this introduction by detailing the process he usedin writing this work. He first broke the various duties down into ten majorones, which he presented as “Gates” or major sections. He decided to includethe following elements in each Gate: a working definition of each duty, alaying out of its composite parts and implications, and a listing of the sorts ofthings that would deter us from being successful at that duty. As he said, hewrote it all in “straightforward, everyday, and accessible language that wouldbe (easily) understood.”

The wise reader would use this very same process in his or her ownsearch for spiritual excellence. After all, it would do us all well to clearly,simply, and succinctly break our spiritual goals down into categories; todefine our terms fully, in order to know what we’re actually addressing (andwhat not); to lay out the details of what we’re to do; and to consider the day-to-day implications of that in our lives.

12

Ibn Pakudah then explained that he used logic and common sense toexplicate and justify his original thoughts, but that he was sure to “back themup” with Biblical verses and citations from the Talmud that either saidoutright what he himself was pointing out or alluded to it. And he cited thewords of non-Jewish sages as well.

He began by addressing what he depicted as “the greatest and mostfundamental” duty of the heart: accepting God’s Oneness. So he called thefirst Gate “The Gate of the Wholehearted Acceptance of the Oneness ofGod”. As we’ll find, though, this Gate won’t just touch on accepting the factthat there’s only one God. It will go to great lengths to explain the wholenotion of God’s Oneness and Perfection.

He called the second Gate “The Gate of Reflection upon CreatedThings” because it concentrates upon catching sight of God’s Presence in theworld. The third one became “The Gate of Service to God“, and it explainsthe how and the wherefores of Divine Service. The fourth is “The Gate ofTrust”, which dwells upon trusting in God in our daily lives. The fifth is“The Gate of Directing Our Actions to God's Name”, which delves into thearea of complete and concentrated dedication to His Presence. Sixth is “TheGate of Surrender” and it offers details on surrendering one’s own wishesand self to the Divine Presence. Seventh is “The Gate of Repentance” and itdetails the process of returning to God when we’d turned our backs to Him.Eighth is “The Gate of Introspection” because it delves into the subject ofself-awareness. Ninth is “The Gate of Abstention” because it lays out theareas in which we’d do well to practice some form of abstention (though it’snot the Jewish way to be utterly ascetic, as we’ll see, no matter how muchone dedicates his life to God). And the tenth and last one is termed “TheGate of the Love of God” because it dwells upon the sublime idea of lovingGod Almighty.

Ibn Pakudah then turned to each one of us and said, “as you read mybook brother and abide by it, use it as a reminder; and assess your soulhonestly with it. Read it again and again, draw conclusions from it, and affixit to your heart and mind.” For after all, this book is a living text, one thatdemands that we take it to heart and incorporate it in our lives and in oursearch for spiritual excellence.

He then concluded this introduction with a prayer “that God teach ushow to serve Him”, which should be our heart’s underlying prayer, too.

13