The Kuzari (Kitab al Khazari). An Argument for the Faith of Israel

157 Pages·1964·67.23 MB·English

by  Judah Halevi

THE KUZARI
(l{l'PAB AL KHAZARI)
An Argument for
the Faith of Israel
Introduction by Henry Slonimsky
Schocken Books • New York
TABLOEF C ONTENTS
INTRODUCTBIYHO ENN,RY S LONJMSKY 17
PAR'ÜrN E 35
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Contents Contents
of the divine law, 111. No asceticism, 113. 'The 211. Philosopher versus prophet, 213. Astrol
divine love, 115. 'I'orah, 117. Priesthood, 119. ogy versus Torah, 215. "They saw the God of
The divine presence, 121. Astronomy and mu Israel," 217. Socrates' human wisdom, 218.
sic, 123. 'I'he Hebrew language, 125. The fac The term Elohim, 221. Adonai and Elohim,
ulty of speech, 127. Grammatical forms, 129- 223. Christianity and Islam, 225. Israel: 'I'he
133. parable of the seed, 227. The Book of Creation,
228. Mystic cosmogony, 231. Plato's Timaeus,
PART THREE 135 233. The allegory of the human organs, 235.
The servant of God, 137. His conduct of life, The physical world, 237. Aristotle's Prime
139--141. The preservation of Israel, 143, Ethi- Cause, 239. The revelation to Abraham, 241.
cal and religious laws, 145. The "divine infiu Knowledge of natural history, 243. Dietary
ence" on mankind, 147, The justice of the Cre- laws, 245-247.
ator, 149, "Can these bones live?" 151. The
community of Israel, 153. Prayer, 155. Com P AR'l' FIVE 248
munity worship, 157. The parable of the king, Knowledge and tradition, 248. The Jour ele
159. The land of the divine presence, 161. The ments, 251. Psalm 104, 253--255. Growth and
commandments--a way to God, 163. Authority propagation, 257. The human soul, 259. Per
of tradition, 165. The Karaite sect, 167-169. ception and memory, 261. Imagination and
The Karaites and the Rabbanites, 171-173. judgment, 263. The power of intellqct, 265.
"Eye for eye?" 175. Religious purity, 177. Le The rational soul, 267. Criiicism of the philo
galism and religious feeling, 178. Ceremonials, sophic view, 269. The postulate of Creation,
181. Commandment and tradition, 183. "'l'hey 271. The disagreement among philosophers,
found written," 185. The period of the Second
273. The theories of the Kalam, 275. The
Temple, 187. Hillel and Johanan ben Zakkai, Kalam view of God, 277. The rabbi's view,
188. Akiba; the Mishnah, 1B1. Bules of in 279. Preedom of will, 281. Pree will and di-
terpretation, 183. Babbinic parables, 185. The vine providence, 288-285. The Creator and the
Talmud, 187. intermediary causes, 287. The realm of man,
288. The prophetic vision, 291. Journey to the
PART Foun 198
Holy Land, 293. "Have mercy upon Zion," 295.
The names of God, 199. The Lord, 201. "I
will be with thee," 203. The use of attributes, ANNOTA T IONS 299
205. The senses and the essence of things, 207. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 311
Man a microcosmos, 208. The Glory of God,
INDICES 315
INTRODUCTION
JUDAHHA LEVAIN:I NTRODUCTION
byH enSrlyo nimsky
I. TMHAEN A NDH ISP OETRY
JudHaahl e(vbci.a 1 .0 8i0st) h ger eaptoeeastnt d
onoeft hper ofoutnhdienJsku ted rasih sahmsa sdi nce
th.ce losoiftn hgce a noHnep. l umdbeepdt ihnrs e ­
ligainordne flecotnhi iosnt aonrhdye m, a dcel aims
foIrs rsaose tlr aanngiden ordtihnahatetw eo,ub led
merealnay n orunnallpyer sosf oruenldalttyoh e ids
timaenv di ewceedn tfrraoltmlhy ah ti staonrddye s­
tiinnyw hihcewh a rso oatneoddfw hihceih cs l early
thdee epest aenxidpn rteesrspiroTenht eoa vteiro­n.
shadoewvienongfht i tsi mweat sh set ruogfCg hlrei s­
tiaann dM oslfeomSr p aiann;df ,a rtahfieerfl odr,
thmea stoefrt eyhH olLya nIdn.S paitnhc,eo m­
muniotfIy s rwaaegslr oubnedt wuepepnae nrnd e ther
millsatnodin neP sa;l estthilena ess,pt a orfkh ope
seemfienda lelxyt ingwuiitsthhh aeedd v eonftt h e
CrusaIdserraaspe.pl e atrobe edd o omJeudd.Ha ah­
levpio'esta rnydp roasrete h ree speovnoskebe yd
thawto rslidt uation.
Thgee nesreatltw iatnshg re e conqthugeir satdau,a l
reconoqfSu peasbitynt hCeh risftriotamhnn eso rth,
whetrheeh yab de epnu shientd hfi er gsrte Maots lem
irrupitnitEooun r ofpoeuc re nturieAsn de,a rlier.
Thpeu bligsrhaetrea fcuklnloyw pleerdmgiess­
sioon.fT hJee wiFsrho nftoiuersr oe fm ateirni al thouJguhd aHha lelviisf'pesa wna sm arkaetid t, s-·
beginanniednn gbd y t wfioe rccoeu nterfartotma cks
tehi ntrioodbnuyH c etnrSyl onifmisrpksuytb, ­
listheehrde in. l i
17
18 l ntroduction Jntroduction
the south-the Almoravides in the 1080's and the revival of a Messianic mood and apocalyptic hopes.
Almohades in the 1140's--the victorious advance from As an aftermath of the great struggle of which the
the north remained unchecked. Jewish masses were witnesses and victims caught be
The reconquista was a curious fusion of crusading tween two fires, minor Messiahs began to appear
religious fanaticism with astute political realism. among them, old apocalypses dealing with the "end"
While the Arab ruling classes were ruthlessly elimi once again emerged, and calculations as to the exact
nated and the peasantry allowed to remain, the Jews, date of that "end"-as the coming of the Messiah is
as politically innocuous imd economically valuable, usually designated among .Jews-were made by con
were treated with indulgence at the instance and spe sulting signs and stars. And, while Judah Halevi
cial pleading of the J ewish court grandees and per shared to the full these moods and hopes, he knew
mitted to take refuge in the north. But their condition better than any of them, better than the practical
remained forever precarious, and that is the crux of politicians whose principle was opportunism, better
the matter. The court Jews who dominated Jewish than the eschatological astrologers who calculated
policy, the gevfrim and nesiim to whom Judah Halevi ends, better than the vague votaries of Messianic en
as Moses ibn Ezra and others before him tirelessly ad thusiasm, how truly to interpret the great events of
dressed poems and hymns of praise, and who were the times.
hailed each in turn by the trusting masses as the final Born in Toledo while it was still Mohammedan, he
savior of Israel, were capable of nothing better than went south for his education to the old seats of learn
parleying and manoeuvering for position with the ing. Those were his happy Wanderjahre, and they
powers that be. were spent, according to the fine civilization of the
J udah Halevi belonged by birth and tradition to age, not merely in absorbing Jewish learning in the
this upper stratum of court Jewry, and his material regular Talmudical schools, but in assimilating every
existence may have been linked up with this group. thing he could of the science and philosophy which
Its attitude toward life-its views on fove, religion, Arabic culture had to offer; cultivating the poetic
philosophy, politics, and the future of Israel-.Judah arts in both Arabic and Hebrew; fraternizing with
Halevi undoubtedly shared for the first half of his life. young men of like gifts and inclinations; and frankly
And the radical break with this outlook on life con enjoying life. The love poems of his youth, it may be
stitutes the secret of his power, clears the way for said in passing, are certainly not academic exercises
that efflorescence in poetry and thinking which makes in imagined passion. Love was in the mores of bis time
of him the unique figure he is. for the members of his class, and, while native fastidi
The shock which brought about this complete inner ousness may have led him to avoid the profligacy
change in him, this reversal of all the values he and characteristic of the rieb of his class, the tenderness
his class had lived by, led, among the masses, to the and sensuousness of his love poems are too authentic
20 lntroduction lntroduction 21
to allow any doubt of the realness of the experience. nessed, our poct sums up its final meaning for him.
He returned to Toledo, then in Christian hands, to "Between the armies of Seir and Kedar (i.e., Christian
practice medicine, but he speaks ironically of his pa and Moslem), my army is lost. Whenever they fight
ticnts and his profcssion. "Tlms we heal Babylon, but their fight, it is we who fall, and thus it has been
it cannot be hcaled." H.is work as a physician did not in former times in Israel." And so again in ·another
fill his life. His contacts with the south continued un poem of this period · "The enemies battle like wild
abatcd, despite the fluctuation of arms, and his liter beasts, the princes of II:liphas with the rams of
ary activity increasecl. Besides his love songs, this Nevayot (i.e., Christians with Moslems), but between
period of poetic production was marked by poems ad the two the young sheep (of Israel) are undone."
dressed to friends and court functionaries, poems of The new poems dealing with the destiny of Israel
praise and homage to court .J ews in either Christian or begin to follow a definite pattern: they are marked by
Mohammedan service, possibly patrons of the poet, grief over the loss of God's proximity which was Is
certainly men whom he regarded as the leaders of his rael's distinction of old; they depict conditions in
class and of Jewry. Spain; they lament the loss of .Jerusalem to the Cru
As the years went by, however, and he witnessed saders; they raise questions as to the future. And,
one Jewish community after another going down in while the older poets dealing with the same thernes
destruction as it was caught between two fires in the had followed a similar pattern, namely, the triadic
advance of the Christian armics, a new light dawned scheme of the lost ideal of the past, the hopeless pres
on him to which he gave expression in a new type of ent, and the prospect of salvation in some future,
poetry--an insight which founcl mature and conscious .Judah Halevi differs from them in his definiteness and
formulation in his later and most powerful poems and concreteness, in his realistic treatment of the present,
the great prose work of his closing years. This insight and in bis interpretation of the struggles of the time
-that whoever won in the struggles of the recon as the actual birtl-i-pangs of the imminent Messiah.
quista, Israel was bound to lose, that, although some His poems do not end on a vague note of hope, but are
powerful court J ew might find protection for his peo charged with new resolution and conviction. His
ple in the north as they fled their burning homes in espousal of the Messianic hopcs current in bis day
the south, such asylum would be merely a refuge built assumes an almost political character, and the belief
on quicksand-slowly ripened into conviction. itself is merely the index of an entire change of view
There came a point where ,Judah Halevi's poems of point.
homage to J ewish grandees ceased, and another type What is this change of heart? lt is the rejection of
of writing, another way of thinking, came into pre the entire basis on which the existence of Spanish
dominance. In a poem which still trembles with the ,J ewry rested: culture of the senses and the mind,
concrete detail of dcath and murdcr reccntly wit- love-making and philosophy, economic dependence on
22 l ntroduction I ntroduction 23
the princely courts and political security that hinged he enacted, on a kind of ideal stage, the deepest
upon the favor of the princes, the building up of this drama of Israel.
life in the north as rapidly as it was being destroyed in
the south. Judah Halevi saw that it could not go on.
II. THE MAN AND HIS THOUGHT
lt was not merely the eternal political opportunism
which he rejected as inadequate and which he realized The Kuzari, Judah Halevi's philosophical master
must be replaced by a far more radical eure, but all piece, written between 1130-1140, is a book of defense,
the things that went with it and were part and parcel as the full Arabic title expressly states, and as that
of the same scheme, above all, the evaporation of re title goes on to say, a defense of a despised religion;
ligion in the intelligentsia. The enlightenment which despiscd, we may add, not mercly by the world, by
came in the train of philosophical studies had led not thc two great religious powers who between them
to a higher and freer faith on the basis of pure reason, divide the inhabited globe, but secretly also by the
but merely to a decay of the inner sanctions of the educated and powerful among its own adherents. So
old religion, and even to a rcadiness on occasion to that with hardly a place to stand, pushed so to speak
forsake Judaism-as if Christianity were any the less to the edge of things by enemies from without and by
subject to the same rationalistic critique. doubt within, Judah Halevi still opposes to that world
Judah Halevi saw that, if the return to Zion must a philosophy of history (as we should say today) or
be the political remedy at a time when all seemed lost, more strictly a theology of history, whereby a supreme
the return to God must go along with it, the return to place is vindicated for his people and for its religion
traditional .J udaism with all its transcendent claims, in the economy of world events. Everything of "pure"
as a means of renewing power; the return, therefore, philosophy which the book contains is entirely sub
to Revelation and Election. He realized that the Jew servient to this main purpose and is invented ad hoc.
ish religion shares the fate of the J ewish people, that That purpose is the eminently practical and life-giving
when both seem doomed, the moment has eome for one of asserting a primary place in history for his
supreme re-assertion, that the political and the re people chronically threatened with external annihila
ligious go hand in hand for the Jews. tion and internal disruption. The time and the scene
However, such changes of heart are never easy, and could hardly have appeared more fraught with doom
again and again he falters. In poems of intense per and disaster: Judah Halevi picked that moment as
sonal pathos he records these trepidations and fluctua precisely the time for grandiose self-assertion.
tions of his l10art. The process means uproot.ing, from The anti-rationalist tone of the book which makes it
country, language, home-therefore, a kind of death; unique among all the products of J ewish mediaeval
and in his case it did lead to death, but to death and thinking is not just a new fashion in philosophy but
transfiguration. For, in the drama of his personal life, is to bc understood from an entirely different motiva-
24 I ntroduction I ntroduction 25
tion. lt is directed against the cnemy within the gates. feeling. The two world-religions perform a function
All the J ewish magnates and intcllectuals of the day in their place and time, and in the end will be con
had gone through the school of Arabic philosophy. verted to the truth. The seed in the ground, Israel
The educated, enlightened and superior people of that among the nations, though apparently disrupted and
generation had insensibly substituted a set of mcta dying, transrnutes the surrounding earth and loam by
physical propositions for thc anccstral religion. In a rnagic alchemy into its own higher life. And towards
any casc its old vigor had slackcned and relaxed; its bis own people there is a polarity of attitude manifest
great texts and imagcs allegorizccl and symbolized . throughout-the polarity furnished by its high promise
.J udah Halevi's idea of defending the J ewish religion ancl its miserable present. His book is an elaborate
was not by showing its identity with rational truth, theory of an innate superhurnan distinctiveness in
as all bis prncleccssors and his successors after him hering in the J ewish people and arnounting to a special
tried to do. He clid not have that arnbition. He seeR soul-form; but the actual fact which confronts him,
that thc .J ewish religion is not reducible to a surn of and which his poet's eye made him perceive all the
abstract propositions. Propositions in philosophy can more unflinchingly, was a condition of shabby dilapi
always be debated both ways; and even at their best dation, an outer and inner disarray. What helps him
they never pierce deeper than the plane of argument. to overcome the discrepancy is unbounded love and
He tries to vindicate for it a securer place, a placc faith. Judah Halevi's steadfast belief in the meaning
beyond all reason. As against the influences of Arabic of J ewish history enables him to overarch the present
philosophy he re-asserts thc original historical char by spanning Sinai with Messiah.
acter of the .J ewish religion, constituted by historic Two great themes dominate the book, the one cul
fate and historic election. The great scene at Sinai rninating in the othcr; the first deals with the differ
puts it in possession of the truth. And as the doctrine ence between an historical religion and a religion of
therc imparted is the sole source of religious truth, so reason, and the second gives a theory of the .Jewish
the people chosen t.o be its bearcr is alone capable of people. As for the first, he is not opposed to philoso
realizing the rcligious life, and is thcrefore the core phy as such; he merely contests its claim to supplant
and heart of rnankind. Sinai being the one authentic religion, to be a religion in its own right. And he
event in religious history, Christianity ancl Islam are makes his point by an amazingly modern and valid
incvitably derivative and imitative. But with all that analysis of the God-idea offered by each. But the
they are assigned a high place. Israel has indeed a clirnax towards which everything converges is the
centrnl position in history, but Judah Halevi robs the notion of Election, and of the unique ancl supernatural
idea of chosenncss of all hate and intolerance, and in character of the Jewish people anJ its history. There
the broacl humanism of his Messianic conception he is of course a toucb of irony, doliberate or implicit, in
leavcs far behind him the limitatione of Mediaeval every elaborately maintained extreme, in every soberly
26 Introduction Jntroduction 27
defended audacity of thought. But .Judah Halevi is establish communion with God. For oue thing the
dealing with extremes; he 'is dealing with a people actual historic fact refutes the claim made for phi
living in a chronically desperate situation, a people losophers: they do not figure in any special way
every element of whose life and history is so extreme among great religious leaders or prophets. On the con
that living for it becomes plausible and tolerable only trary, and unreasc.lnable as it may appear, prophets
on the basis of transcendental assumptions. In any and men of religious power seem to be cbosen from
case this is .Judah Halevi's thesis and he adheres to it ranks outside the class of philosophers.
throughout . Moreover communion with God seems to be a gift
.Judah Halevi's apology for .Judaism arises out of of God, not a product of the efforts of men. And here
a polemic with the prevailing power of the day; that precisely is the difference between real and apparent
power was philosophy-the educated beliefs of his religion. Attainment of God, living contact with him,
contemporaries. He insists that metaphysics does not cannot be achieved by man's reason out of its own
yield truth in the higher reaches. There may be a resources. The point of departure is always with God;
preliminary area in which the light of reason gives us the genuine religious experience or event is always
sure guidance both in questions of God and in the due to the spontaneity, the free grace, the self-revela
field of ethics, but for ultimates the real source of tion of God. lt is he who reaches out and seeks man.
religious truth is Revelation. Revelation alone then establishes the true, the real
Philosophy indeed appears as a Promethean under religion. This real or historieal religion is basically
taking. lt is an attempt to reach God through man'e different from the intellectual religion of the philoso
unaided efforts, through his will to know. Man's in phers and God is a radically different being in both.
tellect, by appropriating the great truths of meta The God of philosophy remains the far-off unmoved
physics, fuses (so we are told) with the "Active In goal towards wbich man aspires and towards which he
tellect" which presides over this earth from its seat in raises himself by bis own cognitive efforts. Tbe God
the lunar sphere and, through the Active Intellect, of religion does not remain at rest in self-sufficiency
with God. The human mind becomes as eternal as the but reaches out actively and with solicitude to call
truths which it assimilates, as the objects which it and raise man to himself.
comprehends, chief among them being God. And there The opposition between tbe two may be expressed
is a point where knowledge and understanding become in a somewhat different way. For philosophy God is
contemplation and emotion, and philosophy takes on an object of knowledge, standing in exactly the same
the cbaracter of religion for the higher man, and the relation to the theoretic faculty as any other object
philosopher at tbe peak of vision is the true prophet, we set out to know. God is indeed a supreme object
the seer of God. in the sense of being the first cause, but that is merely
Judab Halevi denies this power of tbe intellect to a logical pre-eminence, not a supremacy of concern