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The Kuzari, full title Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised ReligionDianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought: Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera . Palgrave Macmillan 2019 p.73. (; : Kitâb al-ḥujja wa'l-dalîl fi naṣr al-dîn al-dhalîl), also known as the Book of the Khazar (: Sefer ha-Kuzari), is one of the most famous works of the medieval Spanish Jewish philosopher, physician, and poet Judah Halevi, completed in the Hebrew year 4900 (1139-40CE).
Originally written in Arabic, prompted by Halevi's contact with a Spanish Karaite Judaism,Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker, Princeton University Press 2011 p.40 it was then translated by numerous scholars, including Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon, into Hebrew and other languages, and is regarded as one of the most important Apologetics of Jewish philosophy. Divided into five parts ( ma'amarim "articles"), it takes the form of a dialogue between a rabbi and the king of the Khazars, who has invited the former to instruct him in the tenets of Judaism in comparison with those of the other two Abrahamic religions: Christianity and Islam.
Given what has been generally regarded as its pronounced anti-philosophical tendencies, a direct line has been drawn, prominently by Gershom Scholem, between it and the rise of the anti-rationalist Kabbalah movement.Jonathan Dauber, Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah, Brill Publishers 2012 p.128 :'In my opinion there is a direct connection between Jehudah Halevi, the most Jewish of Jewish philosophers, and the Kabbalists. For the legitimate trustees of his spiritual heritage have been mystics, and not the succeeding generations of Jewish philosophers.'.
The ideas and style of the work played an important role in debates within the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment movement.Adam Shear, 'Judah Halevi's Kuzari in the Haskalah: The reinterpretration and Reimaging of a Medieval Work,' in Ross Brann, Adam Sutcliffe, Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From al-Andalus to the Haskalah, University of Pennsylvania Press pp.71-91
Halevi claims that the knowledge of the Greeks and Romans had actually originated with Solomon and the ancient Hebrews and had then made their way via the Persians, Medians, and Chaldeans, their origin forgotten.
In 1887, the text was published in its original Arabic for the first time by Hartwig Hirschfeld; in 1977, an Arabic critical translation was published by David H. Baneth. Parallel to his Arabic edition, Hirschfeld also published a critical edition of the Ibn Tibbon translation of the text that was based upon six medieval manuscripts. In 1885, Hirschfeld published the first German translation, and in 1905 his English translation appeared. In 1972, the first modern translation, by Yehudah Even-Shemuel, into Modern Hebrew from the Arabic original was published. In 1994, a French translation by Charles Touati from the Arabic original was published. In 1997, a Hebrew translation by Rabbi Yosef Qafih from the Arabic original was published, which is now in its fourth edition (published in 2013). A 2009 English translation by Rabbi N. Daniel Korobkin is in print by Feldheim Publishers.
The king expresses his astonishment at this exordium, which seems to him incoherent; but the Jew replies that the existence of God, the creation myth of the world, etc., being taught by religion, do not need any speculative demonstrations. Further, he propounds the principle upon which his religious system is founded; namely, that revealed religion is far superior to natural religion. For the aim of ethics training, which is the object of religion, is not to create in man good intentions, but to cause him to perform good deeds. This aim cannot be attained by philosophy, which is undecided as to the nature of good, but can be secured by religious training, which teaches what is good. As science is the sum of all truth found by successive generations, so religious training is based upon a set of traditions; in other words, history is an important factor in the development of culture and science.
Still, relying upon tradition, the Jews believe in "creatio ex nihilo" which theory can be sustained by as powerful arguments as those advanced in favor of the belief in the eternity of matter. The objection that the Absolutely Infinite and Perfect could not have produced imperfect and finite beings, made by the to the theory of "creatio ex nihilo," is not removed by attributing the existence of all mundane things to the action of nature; for the latter is only a link in the chain of causes having its origin in the First Cause, which is God.
The question of attributes being closely connected with that of anthropomorphism, Judah enters into a lengthy discussion on this point. Although opposed to the conception of the corporeality of God, as being contrary to Scripture, he would consider it wrong to reject all the sensuous concepts of anthropomorphism, as there is something in these ideas which fills the human soul with the awe of God.
The remainder of the essay comprises dissertations on the following subjects: the excellence of Israel, the land of prophecy, which is to other countries what the Jews are to other nations; the sacrifices; the arrangement of the Tabernacle, which, according to Judah, symbolizes the human body; the prominent spiritual position occupied by Israel, whose relation to other nations is that of the heart to the limbs; the opposition evinced by Judaism toward asceticism, in virtue of the principle that the favor of God is to be won only by carrying out His precepts, and that these precepts do not command man to subdue the inclinations suggested by the faculties of the soul, but to use them in their due place and proportion; the excellence of the Hebrew language, which, although sharing now the fate of the Jews, is to other languages what the Jews are to other nations and what Israel is to other lands.
From the names of God and the essence of angels Judah passes to his favorite theme and shows that the views of the Prophets are a purer source for a knowledge of God than the teachings of the philosophers. Although he professes great reverence for the "Sefer Yetzirah," from which he quotes many passages, he hastens to add that the theories of Abraham elucidated therein had been held by the patriarch before God revealed Himself to him. The essay concludes with examples of the astronomy and medicine knowledge of the ancient Hebrews.
He argues against the theory of Aristotle that the soul of man is his thought and that only the soul of the philosopher will be united, after the death of the body, with the active intellect. "Is there," he asks, "any curriculum of the knowledge one has to acquire to win immortality? How is it that the soul of one man differs from that of another? How can one forget a thing once thought of?" and many other questions of the kind. He shows himself especially severe against the Motekallamin, whose arguments on the creation of the world, on God and His unity, he terms dialectic exercises and mere phrases.
However, Judah ha-Levi is against limiting philosophical speculation to matters concerning creation and God; he follows the Greek philosophers in examining the creation of the material world. Thus he admits that every being is made up of Hylomorphism. The movement of the spheres formed the sphere of the elements, from the fusion of which all beings were created. This fusion, which varied according to climate, gave to matter the potentiality to receive from God a variety of forms, from the mineral, which is the lowest in the scale of creation, to man, who is the highest because of his possessing, in addition to the qualities of the mineral, vegetable, and animal, a hylic intellect which is influenced by the active intellect. This hylic intellect, which forms the rational soul, is a spiritual substance and not an accident, and is therefore imperishable.
The discussion concerning the soul and its faculties leads naturally to the question of free will. Judah upholds the doctrine of free will against the and the , and endeavors to reconcile it with the belief in God's providence and omniscience.
And two commentaries of two students of Rabbi Shlomo Ben Menachem: Rabbi Yaakov Ben Parisol and Rabbi Netanel Ben Nechemya Hacaspi. (For more information, see the translation of Yehudah Even-Shemuel, preface, p. 53).
In the 20th century, several more commentaries were written, including:
All the above commentaries are in Hebrew.
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