Sepher HaKuzari [philosophy]. Translated from Arabic to Hebrew by Judah ibn Tibbon (With commentary “Kol Yehudah” by Judah Moscato)

HALEVI, JUDAH

Giovanni di Gara

Venice

1594

Third edition, FIRST EDITION with commentary

Vinograd, Venice 794; Habermann, di Gara 144

Written in the form of a Socratic dialogue, the Kuzari has been referred to as the “philosophy of anti-philosophy.” In it, Halevi develops a philosophy of history in an attempt to show the insufficiency of theological conclusions arrived at by Rationalistic means. His underlying principle is that God cannot be found or conceived by Reason, but rather by an intuition specific to Jews. It is this Divine intuition which may bring one to the highest spiritual level, i.e. prophecy. The work has a polemic and apologetic dimension as well, discussing the perceived inadequacies of Christian and Islamic theology and the superiority of Judaism. See M. Waxman, vol. I, pp. 333-39. In the past century, the study of the Kuzari was encouraged by R. Abraham Isaac Kook, Chief Rabbi of Israel; R. Ezekiel Sarna, dean of the Hebron Yeshivah; and R. Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz of Yeshivah Torah Voda’ath, Brooklyn. They valued its experiential approach over and against the rationalism of Maimonides. For a most insightful comparison of the philosophy of Judah Halevi and that of Maimonides, see H. A. Wolfson, The Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic Theories of Creation in Halevi and Maimonides, in: Essays Presented to J. H. Hertz Chief Rabbi (London, 1944) pp. 427-42. For a detailed analysis contrasting Judah Halevi and Maimonides’s attitudes to the problems of Jewish philosophy, see David Hartman, Israelis and the Jewish Tradition (2000); also Diane Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy (2000)