Judah Halevi
The God of the philosophers is an abstraction; the living God is known through history and the experience of a people.
Placement
Poet and philosopher of al-Andalus: his “Kuzari” sets historical revelation and the experience of a people above the abstract God of the philosophers.
Key ideas
- Critique of philosophical religion
- Historical revelation
- The divine order (al-amr al-ilahi)
Influence
Influenced by 2
Saadia Gaon
influenced by
Like Saadia, Halevi grounded faith in the reliable tradition of the public revelation at Sinai, and the Kuzari (c. 1140) summarises kalam proofs Saadia had used. Judah Halevi, Kuzari (c. 1140); SEP “Saadya [Saadiah] Gaon”; SEP “Judah Halevi”
Evidence: AI draft
Saadia Gaon › 882–942
al-Ghazali
influenced by disputed
Halevi’s critique of the philosophers in the Kuzari (c. 1140) resembles al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers; whether he knew al-Ghazali’s works directly is disputed. Judah Halevi, Kuzari (c. 1140); D. H. Baneth, “Jehuda Hallewi und Gazali” (1924); SEP “Judah Halevi”
Evidence: AI draft
al-Ghazali › 1058–1111
Criticism
Criticizes 1
Aristotle
criticised
Judah Halevi’s Kuzari sets the Aristotelian philosopher’s God, who knows nothing of individuals, against the God of revelation and history (Kuzari I.1–25, V.14). Judah Halevi, Kuzari (c. 1140) I.1–25, V.14; Y. Silman, Philosopher and Prophet, 1995
Evidence: AI draft
Aristotle › 384–322 BCE
Works
- c. 1140The Kuzari
The king of the Khazars questions a philosopher, a Christian, a Muslim and a rabbi – and is won over by the rabbi’s appeal to historical revelation.
Position
The Kuzari turns the conversion of the Khazar king to Judaism into a debate. The philosopher’s God, a first cause indifferent to humans, cannot satisfy the king; Christian and Muslim point back to Judaism; the rabbi convinces him not with proofs but with history – the revelation at Sinai, witnessed by a whole people and faithfully handed down. Reason has its place but cannot reach the living God of Abraham. Israel, he holds, has a special capacity for the “divine order” (al-amr al-ilahi), bound to the Land of Israel and the Hebrew language – a thesis often criticized as particularist. His critique of philosophy recalls al-Ghazali’s.
Life & context
Judah Halevi was born around 1075, probably in Tudela in northern Spain. Welcomed in Granada by the poet Moses ibn Ezra, he became the most celebrated Hebrew poet of his age while working as a physician, among other places in Toledo and Córdoba. In 1140 he set out for the Land of Israel and died in 1141, probably in Egypt; the legend of his death at Jerusalem’s gates is unhistorical.
Further main works
- Songs of Zion (poems, early 12th century)
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