Journals / İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi / 2019 / Sayı: 41
Judah Halevi’s Defense of Judaism and Critique of Islam As Put Forth in His Kuzari
- Journal
- İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi
- Issue
- 2019 · Sayı: 41
- Pages
- 1–44
- DOI
- —
Abstract
Moses Maimonides, a famous medieval Jewish thinker, is perhaps the most recognizedJewish scholar in the western world as well as in Turkish academia. This isdue primarily to his famous philosophical work entitled Dalālat al-ģā’irīn (knownas Guide for the Perplexed to English speaking people), which is a classic of religiousrationalism. Judah Halevi, on the other hand, is another important medievalJewish thinker and poet, who, known as the most fervent defender of traditionalJudaism 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, hehas not gained much recognition in Turkish academia. This paper aims to drawattention to Halevi’s al-Kitāb al-Khazarī, widely known as Sefer ha-Kuzari, by analyzingits background and content. In this way, this paper presents an evaluationof the main points of Halevi’s defense of the Jewish religion and critique of Islamas he put forth in his Kuzari.Halevi, through his religious-nationalist poems as well as his polemical book, theKuzari, had a significant impact on the Jews of his time and of later periods. Inhis Kuzari, which is written as a dialogue between a Khazar king (Khazari) and aJewish scholar (haver), Halevi defends the Jewish religion and criticizes, directlyor indirectly, the main beliefs and opinions of certain groups that he considers tobe either external (philosophers, Muslims and Christians) or internal (Karaites)adversaries of Rabbinic Judaism. The Kuzari is also regarded as the first Jewishpolemical book written against Islam. Even more important is the fact that sinceHalevi lived in a time and place that was dominated by Muslim Arab culture, hemakes use of Islamic terminology to a great extent in the Kuzari. As demonstratedby a long chain of scholars including David Kaufmann, Ignaz Goldziher, JuliusGuttman, David Baneth, Israel Efros, Harry Wolfson, Shlomo Pines, Diana Lobeland Ehud Krinis, Halevi borrows Arabic words and concepts not only from theIslamic (both Sunni and Shiite) literature of philosophy, kalām and taŝawwuf,but also directly from the Qur’an and the ģadīth, integrating them into his ownsystem of thought, i.e., into a Jewish context. The most important of these Islamicwords 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 critiquesin his Kuzari –namely, the philosophers (especially the Aristotelians), the kalāmscholars and the Karaites– have one point in common: they all flourished in aMuslim culture and, in the case of the first two groups, consisted mostly of Muslimscholars. Accordingly, Greek philosophy, which was criticized by Halevi, hadgained ascendency through the writings of Muslim philosophers and influencedJewish scholars as well. As for Karaite Judaism, which emerged in Muslim Iraq, itwas also influenced by the Muslim kalām tradition. Thus, for some scholars, theKuzari 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, aswell 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 ofJudaism in parallel to his critique of Islam. In dealing with different topics, Halevioften makes a comparison between the two religions and most of the timethe main point of this comparison is the contrast made between particularismand universalism. According to Halevi, what is special about Judaism is that it isbased upon the reality and experience of one people, i.e., the Jews, and thereforeis particularistic and exclusivist in nature; Islam, on the contrary, has a universalisticand inclusivist orientation. From the Islamic point of view, the dependenceof Jewish religion on ethnicity makes it a limited one, to say the least, whereasfor Halevi this element of ethnicity or peoplehood, which is an inherent featureof Jewish religion, becomes the indicator of its authenticity. The reason for thisis that Judaism, according to Halevi, is the only religion that depends on the religiousexperience of a whole people and not only of certain individuals. This elementof peoplehood, namely the public experience of divine revelation (i.e., Sinairevelation) and its transmission by chosen individuals (i.e., prophets and sages)throughout the following generations, makes it a reliable and genuine revelationand tradition at one and the same time. Islam, on the other hand, is depicted byHalevi as a feeble and failed religion of universalism. However, this paper arguesthat 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 theother.
Özet
Ortaçağ Yahudi düşüncesinde akılcı çizgiye karşı gelenekçi çizginin en önemli savunucularından olan Endülüslü Yahudi şair ve düşünür Yehuda Halevi (ö. 1141), Siyon üzerine yazdığı dinî-milliyetçi mahiyetteki şiirlerinin yanı sıra el-Kitâbü’l-Hazerî ya da Sefer ha-Kuzari adlı polemik kitabıyla, hem kendi döneminde hem de sonraki dönemlerde Yahudiler üzerinde etkili olmuş bir şahsiyettir. Halevi, Türk akademyasında fazla tanınmasa da, gerek şiirleri gerekse Kuzari’de ortaya koyduğu görüşleri üzerine Batı’da önemli çalışmalar yapılmıştır. Bu makale, konu üzerine oluşturulmuş zengin ikincil literatürü dikkate alacak şekilde, Halevi’yi ve Kuzari’sini tanıtmayı ve Kuzari’de ortaya konan Yahudilik savunusu ve İslâm eleştirisini temel noktalar üzerinden değerlendirmeyi amaçlamaktadır.