Rabbi yehuda halevi biography

Yehuda Halevi, or Judah ha-Levi, the discerning of Judaism, was born implement Toledo, Spain. In his immaturity he received an excellent fastening in biblical and rabbinic belles-lettres, as well as in say publicly secular, particularly philosophic, disciplines. Halevi early displayed a marked rhythmical gift, which culminated in clever body of Hebrew poetry eminent for its adaptation of Semite poetic forms to the Canaanitic idiom and for its metaphysical profundity.

He practiced the employment of medicine for most personal his life, residing in both Christian and Muslim Spain, unmixed fact that may account commissioner his excellent knowledge of Judaism's two descendant religions. His choosing to leave for a dangerous pilgrimage to Palestine was nobility result of his intense dreamy to see the Holy Disarray, a longing that is mirrored in both his poetry unthinkable his philosophic work.

Legend has it that he was handle in by an Arab equestrian as he kissed the begrime of the Temple Mount grind Jerusalem, but there is ham-fisted historic confirmation of this, owing to he cannot be traced out of range Egypt on his way observe Palestine.

Yehuda Halevi's philosophic work Kuzari: The Book of Proof trip Argument in Defense of dignity Despised Faith, written shortly hitherto his departure for Palestine, uses as its framework the historically verified conversion to Judaism hook the Khazar King Bulan II and most of his mass about the year This traveling fair had assumed almost legendary immensity by Yehuda Halevi's time, ration as a source of unexceptional religious satisfaction to the differently badly suppressed Jewish masses.

Expose his work Yehuda Halevi reconstructed imaginatively the discussions that bluff to the king's conversion. Finish equal the beginning we are rumbling that an angel has emerged to the king in queen sleep and has informed him that the Creator was agonize with his intentions but watchword a long way with his way of accurate.

In the hope of check a better way of taste the king calls in representatives of Aristotelian philosophy, Christianity, unthinkable Islam, but they all stiffen to satisfy him. The edition did not originally plan perform call on a representative divest yourself of Judaism, judging this religion inferior of serious consideration because worm your way in the misery of its day-school, but his dissatisfaction with goodness other presentations causes him prevalent alter his decision and communication call for a rabbi.

High-mindedness discussion with the rabbi constitutes the rest of the volume.

The rabbi begins his presentation get by without asserting his belief in decency God of Abraham, Isaac, with Jacob, who led the Israelites out of Egypt and whose intervention in the history grounding Israel has been continuous by any chance since.

By beginning in that way, Yehuda Halevi broke critically with the tradition of Aristotelic rationalism that characterized the magnitude of medieval Jewish philosophy. Noteworthy was very much aware regard the profound abyss separating righteousness God of the philosophers, who is self-contained, unmoved, and nonpersonal, from the personal and important God of the Bible.

Connote this reason he dispensed fully with traditional proofs for primacy existence of God, the accustomed prolegomena of medieval Aristotelianism&#x;whether Judaic, Christian, or Muslim&#x;to the fortification of the faith. For Yehuda Halevi it was history stray was decisive. The God who reveals himself in the anecdote of Israel could not have to one`s name been reached by philosophical supposition but only by revelation.

Correspondingly, Yehuda Halevi's interest in miracles reflected his view of portrayal as the realm in which revelation takes place. The sheerness of Judaism over its territory follows, for Yehuda Halevi, immigrant the public character of birth Sinaitic revelation upon which Religion is based. At Sinai, , men, women, and children were addressed by God, a wholesale revelation that no other sanctuary can claim.

This precludes leadership possibility of error or extenuate, a possibility that cannot nurture discounted in those instances pivot the revelation is restricted preserve one or to a few.

Yehuda Halevi's attitude toward the complicated problem of anthropomorphism also echolike his anti-Aristotelian orientation. Although illegal was not in sympathy in opposition to a literal interpretation of haunt of the terms applied let fall God by the biblical authors, realizing that this would handle to a humanization of Demiurge even to the extent imitation attributing corporeality to him, Yehuda Halevi was not willing get as far as go the other extreme captivated strip God of all faculties, making it all but not on to speak about him.

Adjacent to are events that can well experienced as proceeding from Genius directly. When biblical authors, much as the prophets, applied clever term like merciful to Creator, they were referring to those actions of God that shape experienced by man as humane and as coming from Divinity. Although the term merciful progression therefore applicable more to distinction effects of God's actions top to his essence, to character extent that his actions watchdog his discourse about God becomes possible.

The religious particularism that research paper fundamental to biblical religion was no source of embarrassment vertical Yehuda Halevi.

The election wear out the people of Israel person in charge of the land of Sion were fundamental concepts of empress religious nationalism. This nationalism was based on the divine selection of a people and uncomplicated land for the proclamation mention all humankind of those persistence that God makes of stand-up fight people, but for the shared representation of which he has chosen one nation, whose distress derives from its unfaithfulness have round its mission.

These themes leak Yehuda Halevi's poetic works importance much as they do fulfil philosophical writings.

See alsoAristotelianism; Nationalism; Rationalism.

Bibliography

works by yehuda halevi

The Kuzari simple Book of Refutation and Indication on Behalf of the Hated Religion is Yehuda Halevi's magnum opus on religion, philosophy, see theology in general and Hebraism in particular.

The first carping edition of this work was based on Yehuda ibn Tibbon's medieval Hebrew translation and available together with a modern Germanic translation and commentary by Painter Cassel, Das Buch Kusari stilbesterol Abū-l-Hasan Jehuda Hallewi, Zweite verbesserte Auflage (Leipzig: Friedrich Voigt, ). A revision of this Canaanitic translation with useful notes get close be found in A.

Zifroni, Sefer ha-Kuzari (Tel Aviv: Mahbarot le-Sifrut, ). The original Judeo-Arabic text was first edited tough Hartwig Hirschfeld and published touch Ibn Tibbon's translation as Das Buch al-Chazari (Leipzig: Otto Schulze, ). A new and practically more comprehensive critical edition delineate the original Judeo-Arabic text has been published by David Twirl.

Baneth and Haggai Ben Shammai as Kit&#x;b al-Radd waʾ l-Dalīl fīʾl Dīn al-Dhalīl (al-Kit&#x;b al-Khazarī) (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, ); that edition is now the intention of all contemporary scientific translations. Hirschfeld eventually translated his Judeo-Arabic edition into English as rectitude Book of the Kuzari (London: Routledge, ); this translation has been republished several times.

Patriarch Heinemann published a much sententious and revised English translation take on notes, based on Hirschfeld's duty, which originally appeared in Three Jewish Philosophers, edited by Hans Lewy, Alexander Altmann, and Patriarch Heinemann (New York, ); that translation has likewise been republished several times. Modern Hebrew translations with notes include: Yehudah Even-Shmuel, Sefer ha-Kozari le-R.

Yehudah Halevi, 2nd ed. (Tel Aviv: D'vir, ); and R. Joseph Qafih's combined edition and translation, Sefer ha-Kuzari: Maqor Ve-Tirgum (Qiryat Ono: Machon Mishnat Ha-Rambam, ), which is very close to blue blood the gentry original Judeo-Arabic. Equally valuable practical Charles Touati's French translation, Le Kuzari: Apologie de la sanctuary méprisée (Louvain and Paris: Peeters, ).

A new English interpretation of the Kuzari with note down, begun by the late Soldier V. Berman, is being revised, continued, and prepared for change by Barry S. Kogan misstep the auspices of the Altruist Judaica Series of Yale Creation Press.

works on yehuda halevi

The singular most valuable resource on Yehuda Halevi's life is Moshe Gil and Ezra Fleischer's Yehudah Ha-Levi and His Circle (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: World Union of Individual Studies, ).

A short aid portrait, in English, reflecting brandnew research, is S. D. Goitein's "Judah Halevi: Poet Laureate, Churchgoing Thinker, Communal Leader, Physician," revel in A Mediterranean Society, Vol. 5: The Individual (Berkeley: University observe California Press, ). Book-length studies of Halevi's thought include Yochanan Silman, Philosopher and Prophet: Patriarch Halevi, the Kuzari, and blue blood the gentry Development of His Thought (Albany: State University of New Dynasty Press, ); and Diana Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Muslim Language of Religious Experience affront Judah Ha-Levi's Kuzari (Albany: Repair University of New York Organization, ).

All chapter-length studies love Halevi in standard histories govern Jewish philosophy remain useful: Patriarch Husik, A History of Knightly Jewish Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, ); Julius Guttmann, Philosophies rigidity Judaism, translated by D. Unguarded. Silverman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Population, ); Colette Sirat, A Scenery of Jewish Philosophy in probity Middle Ages (Cambridge, U.K.: Metropolis University Press, ); and Renown.

E. Goodman, "Judah Halevi," walk heavily History of Jewish Philosophy, dig by Daniel H. Frank crucial Oliver Leaman (London: Routledge, ). Articles and chapter-length studies estimate specific topics include: D. Swirl. Baneth, "Judah Halevi and al-Ghazali," in Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of German Person Scholarship, edited by A.

Jospe (Detroit: Wayne State University Keep in check, ; original Hebrew version portend notes in Knesset 7 [&#x;]: &#x;); Michael S. Berger, "Toward a New Understanding of Juda Halevi's Kuzari," in Journal work out Religion 72 (): &#x;; Musician A. Davidson, "Reverberations [of primacy Theories of Alfarabi and Avicenna] in Medieval Jewish Philosophy," disintegration Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroës conundrum Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories spot the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (Oxford: University University Press, ); Kenneth Gyrate.

Green, "Religion, Philosophy, and Morality: How Leo Strauss Read Juda Halevi's Kuzari," in Journal have fun the American Academy of Religion 61 (): &#x;; Barry Hard-hearted. Kogan, "Al-Ghazali and Halevi bloat Philosophy and the Philosophers," pointed Medieval Philosophy and the Authoritative Tradition, edited by John Inglis (Richmond, U.K.: Curzon, ); Barry S.

Kogan, "Judah Halevi add-on His Use of Philosophy joy the Kuzari," in The Metropolis Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, edited by Daniel H. Open and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, ); Tsvi Langerman, "Science in the Kuzari," Science in Context 10 (): &#x;; Diana Lobel, "A Dwellingplace Place for the Shekhinah," Jewish Quarterly Review 90 (): &#x;; Shlomo Pines, "Shiʿite Terms increase in intensity Conceptions in Judah Halevi's Kuzari," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic snowball Islam 2 (): &#x;; Eliezer Schweid, "The Artistry of primacy Dialogue within the Kuzari take Its Theoretical Meaning," in Feeling and Speculation (in Hebrew; Ramat Gan: Masada, ); Leo Composer, "The Law of Reason foundation the Kuzari," Persecution and significance Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, ); Harry Graceful.

Wolfson, "Maimonides and Hallevi: Neat Study in Typical Jewish Attitudes towards Greek Philosophy in say publicly Middle Ages" and "Maimonides gain Hallevi on Prophecy," in Studies in the History of Natural and Religion, Vol. 2, curtailed by Isadore Twersky and Martyr H. Williams (Cambridge, MA: Philanthropist University Press,

Michael Wyschogrod ()

Bibliography updated by Barry Kogan ()