Why a Jew Would Write About Sufi Therapeutic Sound
It's not as strange as modern religious narratives would have us believe
Why would a Jewish convert spend her time researching and writing about historical music traditions that are often considered ‘Islamic’?
It’s a question I’ve been asked more than once — and it’s a reasonable one.
Since launching this Substack,
I’ve received some very understandable responses from readers. Namely: “Why would someone like you write about topics related to Sufism — and specifically the music therapy work of a Mevlevi sheikh?”
The phrase “someone like you” seems to be a polite euphemism for my Jewish identity.
It’s a reasonable question, given the way modern religio-civilizational identities have come to be constructed rather rigidly, often in response to each tradition’s past traumatic encounters with The Other.
But to be honest, the question is only really relevant within the framework of the last few centuries.
For much of history, Jews, Christians, and Muslims encountered one another in daily life as neighbors, business associates, friends, and sometimes even co-participants in mystical orders. Not to mention lovers, marital partners, and extended family.
This is not to suggest that relations between these communities existed within any kind of utopia. The memory of dhimmi status in Islamic societies and the ghettos of Christian Europe still lingers in the consciousness of all three desert traditions. But the curiosity that moves thoughtful people of one tradition to engage deeply with another — a curiosity that can seem suspect in certain places today — has always been more common than religious polemics would have us believe.
Quite simply, for me as a Jew, the explanation is straightforward: I encountered the teachings of a Sufi sheikh on my travels, and those teachings struck a deep chord in me (pun intended). They also answered questions I had been carrying about the use of makams — traditional musical modes — as a therapeutic modality.
Already having a relationship with medieval Kabbalistic traditions that explored the vocal dimensions of sacred sound, it felt entirely natural to engage with the teachings of this sheikh, Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç. Perhaps even more so because Oruç Baba himself was something of a “walker between worlds,” serving simultaneously as a Mevlevi sheikh and an initiated Central Asian shaman.
Journeying as a way of life
I am currently preparing the first episode of The Jewish Sufi Pilgrim Podcast, which explores life at the intersection of the shul, the shrine, and the shaman — with the worlds of sound, both musical and spoken, as the primary place where these intersections live.
In that episode I discuss the different ways Judaism and Islam speak about journeying as a spiritual path in its own right.
In Judaism, journeying often occurs in response to rupture: exile, divine command, or displacement from the public sphere. In Islam, by contrast, the journey can become a kind of home in itself — something undertaken deliberately for spiritual growth rather than as the result of exile or rejection.
In that sense, Islam shares its understanding of journey with nomadic peoples. This is perhaps not surprising, given how deeply Islamic civilization is intertwined with the cultures of desert tribes and other circulating peoples such as the Ottomans and the Central Asian societies from which they emerged.
Within such a framework of movement — whether forced or chosen — it would make little sense to root oneself permanently in a single place and refuse engagement with the other.
From that perspective, my engagement as a Jew with Oruç Baba’s Islamic sound worlds — both through his spoken teachings (sohbetler) and through his music — becomes much less unusual.
And I am in good company.
Today’s musical sample comes from the Bukharan Jewish community. While not performed by Oruç Baba or TÜMATA, a similar musical DNA is present to those from the Central Asian lineages Baba’s work highlights.
A few examples illustrate this broader pattern
Modern examples
In my own lifetime, I know Jewish musicians who were initiated into the Chishti Sufi lineage of Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé, a pioneer of modern multi-religious spirituality whose students continue to carry forward his legacy.
Shared mystical language
Many Jews around the world have long venerated Rumi. Prior to the Israel–Gaza war, Jewish visitors regularly traveled to Konya to visit Rumi’s shrine. Some even say that Rumi’s writings transformed their understanding of ahava — divine love — in Jewish scripture and liturgy, including prayers such as Ahava Rabbah Ahavtanu.
While contemporary Jewish life in the West often emphasizes justice as its primary ethical language, many rabbis (including popular writers like Rami Shapiro) have argued that love is equally central to Judaism. In that sense, encountering Sufi teachings on divine love can feel radical or fresh to modern Jews, even though the theme itself is deeply rooted in Jewish tradition.
Medieval devotional crossovers
Looking further back, medieval Jewish pietists in Cairo, led by Maimonides’ own son Abraham, studied Sufi devotional practices and incorporated certain Sufi-influenced elements into their own spiritual life where they believed these practices resonated with Jewish tradition.
Central Asian musical traditions
Jewish participation in musical cultures across Central Asia also provides striking examples. In regions such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, Jewish musicians were central figures in the development and transmission of the shashmaqam musical system, long respected for their extraordinary musical skill until political upheavals forced many of them to leave.
Music theory
In places such as medieval or early modern Khurasan, Jews often served as custodians of secular and court music — a role that has sometimes been overlooked in historical narratives that center Islamic contributions alone. Many Jewish musicians also contributed original thinking about music theory while engaging deeply with Islamic musical forms. One example is Khājeh Kalān of Khorasan, a seventeenth-century musician who associated the twelve principal makams with the twelve springs described in the Book of Exodus.
These examples represent only a small selection of the many ways Jews have participated in, shaped, and transmitted musical traditions embedded within Islamic societies.
Seen against this broader historical backdrop, it perhaps becomes less “odd” that someone like me would engage deeply with Sufi traditions of therapeutic sound.
A door into the traditions
For me, this engagement is both a way of honoring the work of Rahmi Oruç Güvenç and of respectfully extending it into new areas of inquiry.
Baba himself was not concerned with mapping Jewish contributions to the Central Asian musical traditions he transmitted, and I make no claim that such intersections were of interest to him. But he clearly served as a portal through which many people could encounter these lineages of sound.
As I step through the door Baba opened, I naturally find myself drawn to explore the Jewish voices — and the voices of women — who also contributed to these traditions.
Accordingly, while this Substack will explore Turkish makams, Ottoman art music as medicine, the healing effects of pentatonic scales, and Baba’s spiritual and musical teachings, it will also occasionally venture into Jewish perspectives on medieval Central Asian music and therapeutic sound.
Readers may already have noticed the recent release of the trailer for The Jewish Sufi Pilgrim Podcast. Next week the first episode will be released, exploring more fully why the intersections of Judaism, Islam, and Central Asian shamanism matter to me personally — and why their mystical and musical lineages continue to reveal convergences that standard religious narratives often struggle to acknowledge.
For now, I will return to being what Jews have often been throughout history: a person living in the heart of the Islamic world, whose spiritual life exists in constant conversation with both Jewish and Islamic ideas.
I will remain that Jew who delights in Kabbalistic discussions of the spiritual and medicinal properties of Hebrew vowels, and who also finds joy in translating the teachings of a Sufi sheikh who drew healing from the sound of ancient instruments.
Ironically, what some might see as modern or even “syncretic” feels to me simply like participation in an older pattern — one that popular religious histories rarely allow us to see clearly.
It is all part of the journey: the one that emerged after seasons of rupture in my own life, and the one I have chosen as a home.
Inhabiting journey as a spiritual path may be the most Jewish-Sufi choice of all.
And I’m glad to say that path is fully mine.
Until next time,
Yolun açık olsun.
May your path be open.
For those who wish to continue, here is a little manifesto I use to guide my scholarship and practice:
דְּרָכֶ֥יהָ דַרְכֵי־נֹ֑עַם וְכׇל־נְתִיבוֹתֶ֣יהָ שָׁלֽוֹם׃
Her ways are pleasant ways,
And all her paths, peaceful.
— Proverbs 3:17
Judaism is the tradition that most resonates with my heart and my embodied journey so far. It is my primary anchor and reference point.
I find classical, mystical, and historical Judaism to be a precious resource for crafting a meaningful life. For many years now, it has served as my gateway into transformative spiritual practice.
My Judaism is non-Zionist, contemplative, pluralistic, and connective — a way of life and a journey, rather than a boundary.
My choice to open outward and engage with other traditions, especially Islamic Sufism and Central Asian shamanic lineages, is not a sign of confusion. It is an intentional choice of liminal geography.
It is also my personal act of remembrance for the Jewish bodies, hearts, and voices who once occupied the same musical spaces as practitioners of many medieval Silk Road traditions — and my way of inviting those spiritual ancestors back into the therapeutic soundscape.
I share the conviction expressed by Rabbi Jay Michaelson that “Jewish forms [of theology, devotion, and praxis] are neither superior nor necessary. But they are superior and necessary for me because they are the vocabulary of my heart, and the technology of my body.”
From this stance, cross-traditional encounters become a kind of Divine welcome — possible, perhaps, because I choose to sit at the crossroads of Netivoteha Shalom and Allah’ın yolu.
In the face of the Other, I behold the radiance of God.
SELAH.
ABOUT THE MUSICAL SAMPLE
This essay is accompanied by an example of the music. These traditions cannot be understood apart from direct encounter with sound. Please take listen to play the video sample, above.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa England a writer, musician, and independent scholar of Desert Devotion who follows migratory lineages of mysticism and music across the Middle East and Silk Road. Her work explores intersections where the region’s many spiritual traditions meet through voice and instrument, influence one another, and reveal deeper continuities beneath their distinctions.
Currently, she is focused on music as medicine across medieval Central Asia and the Ottoman world, with particular attention to voices and therapeutic sound practices often overlooked in modern transmission — such of those of Jews and women. She honors the legacy of Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç as a spiritual guide in this work, and a steward of medicinal music traditions from Türkiye and the Silk Road.
She is also the host of The Jewish Sufi Pilgrim Podcast, available on most major listening platforms.