Moses Maimonides, a famous medieval Jewish thinker, is perhaps the most recognized
Jewish scholar in the western world as well as in Turkish academia. This is
due primarily to his famous philosophical work entitled Dalālat al-ģā’irīn (known
as Guide for the Perplexed to English speaking people), which is a classic of religious
rationalism. Judah Halevi, on the other hand, is another important medieval
Jewish thinker and poet, who, known as the most fervent defender of traditional
Judaism and a fierce critic of religious rationalism, belongs to the opposite camp.
Despite the fact that a huge body of scholarly work exists on Halevi in the West,
including those that deal with the Arabic-Islamic background of his thought, he
has not gained much recognition in Turkish academia. This paper aims to draw
attention to Halevi’s al-Kitāb al-Khazarī, widely known as Sefer ha-Kuzari, by analyzing
its background and content. In this way, this paper presents an evaluation
of the main points of Halevi’s defense of the Jewish religion and critique of Islam
as he put forth in his Kuzari.
Halevi, through his religious-nationalist poems as well as his polemical book, the
Kuzari, had a significant impact on the Jews of his time and of later periods. In
his Kuzari, which is written as a dialogue between a Khazar king (Khazari) and a
Jewish scholar (haver), Halevi defends the Jewish religion and criticizes, directly
or indirectly, the main beliefs and opinions of certain groups that he considers to
be either external (philosophers, Muslims and Christians) or internal (Karaites)
adversaries of Rabbinic Judaism. The Kuzari is also regarded as the first Jewish
polemical book written against Islam. Even more important is the fact that since
Halevi lived in a time and place that was dominated by Muslim Arab culture, he
makes use of Islamic terminology to a great extent in the Kuzari. As demonstrated
by a long chain of scholars including David Kaufmann, Ignaz Goldziher, Julius
Guttman, David Baneth, Israel Efros, Harry Wolfson, Shlomo Pines, Diana Lobel
and Ehud Krinis, Halevi borrows Arabic words and concepts not only from the
Islamic (both Sunni and Shiite) literature of philosophy, kalām and taŝawwuf,
but also directly from the Qur’an and the ģadīth, integrating them into his own
system of thought, i.e., into a Jewish context. The most important of these Islamic
words or concepts are amr/amr Allāh, ittiŝāl, ŝafwa, qiyās, ijtihād, sanad, taqlīd, etc.
It is also important to note that the main adversary groups that Halevi critiques
in his Kuzari –namely, the philosophers (especially the Aristotelians), the kalām
scholars and the Karaites– have one point in common: they all flourished in a
Muslim culture and, in the case of the first two groups, consisted mostly of Muslim
scholars. Accordingly, Greek philosophy, which was criticized by Halevi, had
gained ascendency through the writings of Muslim philosophers and influenced
Jewish scholars as well. As for Karaite Judaism, which emerged in Muslim Iraq, it
was also influenced by the Muslim kalām tradition. Thus, for some scholars, the
Kuzari should be seen as a clarion call made to persuade the Jewish elite of Spain,
who came under the influence of Muslim culture with its emphasis on philosophy
(i.e., Athens), to return to an authentic Jewish tradition (i.e., Jerusalem). This helpsto explain the eventual decision of the haver, the main character of the Kuzari, as
well as of Halevi himself to travel to the holy land to live and die there.
In light of this background knowledge, it is fair to consider Halevi’s defense of
Judaism in parallel to his critique of Islam. In dealing with different topics, Halevi
often makes a comparison between the two religions and most of the time
the main point of this comparison is the contrast made between particularism
and universalism. According to Halevi, what is special about Judaism is that it is
based upon the reality and experience of one people, i.e., the Jews, and therefore
is particularistic and exclusivist in nature; Islam, on the contrary, has a universalistic
and inclusivist orientation. From the Islamic point of view, the dependence
of Jewish religion on ethnicity makes it a limited one, to say the least, whereas
for Halevi this element of ethnicity or peoplehood, which is an inherent feature
of Jewish religion, becomes the indicator of its authenticity. The reason for this
is that Judaism, according to Halevi, is the only religion that depends on the religious
experience of a whole people and not only of certain individuals. This element
of peoplehood, namely the public experience of divine revelation (i.e., Sinai
revelation) and its transmission by chosen individuals (i.e., prophets and sages)
throughout the following generations, makes it a reliable and genuine revelation
and tradition at one and the same time. Islam, on the other hand, is depicted by
Halevi as a feeble and failed religion of universalism. However, this paper argues
that this picture presented by Halevi does not go beyond a caricature of Islam,
on the one hand, and a romantic and idealistic embellishment of Judaism, on the
other.
