HALEVI, JUDAH

(Arabic, Abulhassan al Lavi, "little Halevi") (1075-1141)--The principle Hebrew chronicler of the Khazar polemic, one of the three leading Hebrew poets of Spain. Born is southern Castile in Tudela, and following the wishes of his father, Samuel Halevi, Judah received a comprehensive education in Moorish Spain. "There is only one wisdom," Halevi was later to write, "the wisdom spread through the sphere of the universe is no greater than the wisdom contained in the tinniest of animals. Except the former--composed of pure matter, which is constant and hence diverse in kind--can be destroyed by the Creator who made it, whereas animals are made of matter that is subject to various kinds of influence, and so the wisdom in them is subject to heat, cold, and everything else that effects their nature." Halevi studied medicine as Isaac Alphasy's Talmudic school in Lucena, and spoke both Castillian and Arabic. In Arabic he studied philosophy, which was under the influence of the ancient Greeks, and about which he wrote , "It has colors but no fruits, and while feeding the mind it gives nothing to the emotions." Hence, Halevi believed that no philosopher can ever become a prophet. Although medicine was his profession, Halevi devoted a great deal of attention to literature and the Hebrew tradition of magic, and he spent his life in various parts of Spain, keeping company with the poets, rabbis, and scholars of his time. He contended that female organs were inverted male organs, and that the Book says as much, only in a different way: "Man is aleph, mem, shin; woman is aleph, shin, mem. The wheel turns forward and backward; on the top nothing worse than injustice. . . ." An expert on the Talmud, Halevi traced the origin of the alliteration of God's name and offered to modern biblical exegesis outlines for sourcing the letters "J" and "E". His was the saying: "Vowels are the soul in the body of consonants." He warned that there are knots in time, the "hearts of the years," which beat to the rhythm of time, space, and human beings, and that corresponding with these knots are acts, works that are in tune with time. He believed that the difference in things stem from their essence. Somebody might ask: "Why did He not create me as an angel?" And with just as much right, a worm might ask: "Why did Thou not create me as a man?" Ever since he was thirteen, Halevi had known that the past is on the stern, the future on the bow, that the ship is swifter than the river, the heart faster than the ship, but that they do not move in the same direction. Some one thousand poems believed to be his have been preserved, along with some of his letters to friends, who told him, "He who takes a bite in his mouth will not be able to say his name; he who says his name will make the bite in his mouth bitter." From Castile, Halevi moved to Cordoba, which was held by the Arabs at the time, and where for centuries there had been an interest in the Khazars. He worked as a doctor, and it was there that he wrote many of his early poems. He wrote in Arabic versification and inscribed his name in acrostics. "I am the sea with its many stormy waves," he wrote to himself. The "collection" of his poems was discovered in Tunis, in a manuscript later completed from other sources. In the 18th century he was translated into German by Herder and Mendelssohn. In 1141 Halevi wrote his famous book on the Khazars (Kitab al Khazari). The first pages of the book describe the polemic at the court of the Khazar kaghan between the Islamic doctor, the Christian philosopher, and the Jewish rabbi on the meaning of a dream. Later chapters leave only two of the participants in the discussion--the rabbi and the Khazar kaghan--and the book becomes what its subtitle says: The Book of Arguments and Proofs in Defense of the Jewish Faith.

While writing this book, Halevi did the same at its protagonist--he decided to leave Spain and go to the East, for he wanted to see Jerusalem. "My heart yearns for the East," he wrote at the time, "but I am riveted to the distant West . . . . Adornments of the earth, joys of the world, oh, how I am drawn to you . . . through your empire be no more, though in place of your healing balsams only scorpions and snakes now swarm." He traveled via Granada, Alexandria, Tyre, Damascus, and , legend has it, snakes left their signatures in the sand of his journey. It was on this trip that he wrote his most mature poems, among them the famous Song of Zion, which is read in synagogues on the Day of the Holy Abba. He landed on the holy shores of his original homeland and dies within reach of his destination. According to one account, just as he laid eyes on Jerusalem he was trampled to death by Saracen horses. Writing about the clash between Christianity and Islam, he said: "There is no port in either East or West where we might find peace. . . . Whether Ismael winds or the Edomites"--Christians--"prevail, my fate remains the same--to suffer" There is a legend that Halevi's gravestone bore this inscription: Where have you flown, O faith, O nobility, modesty, and wisdom? We lie beneath this stone; we are inseparable from Judah even in the grave." Thus Halevi proved the saying "All roads lead to Palestine, none from it."

Halevi wrote the famous book about the Khazars in Arabic and it was not printed in Hebrew translation until 1506. It had seen several reprints in both the Arabic original and the Hebrew translations by ben Tibbon <tibbon.htm> (1167) and Judah ben Isaac the Cardinal. The Hebrew translation published in Venice in 1547 and 1594 was impaired by censorship (especially the second of these two editions), but it included a commentary by Judah Muscato and is therefore considered an important edition. In the 17th century, John Buxtorf translated Halevi's book on the Khazars into Latin. It was the censored version of Halevi's book that reached the broader European public through this Latin translation. This edition posits the arguments of Isaac Sangari <sangari.htm> , the Hebrew participant in the Khazar polemic, against the anonymous Islamic and Christian participants. However, the forward to this censored version claims that Halevi wrote: "I am often asked what arguments and answers I might give to philosophers whose views differ from ours, to people of other faiths (except the Christians) and to the heretics in our midst who deviate from the Jewish faith as it is generally accepted, and I remembered what I had heard about the views and proofs given by a certain scholar in the polemic with the Khazar king, the one who adopted Judaism four hundred years ago." Obviously, the parenthetical "except the Christians" was inserted at a later date, because of censors, for, contrary to this comment, Halevi did speak in his book about the Christian faith. That is, he spoke about three religions--Christianity, Judaism, and Islam--using the image of a tree to symbolize them. On that tree, he said, the branches with their leaves and flowers represent Christianity and Islam, while the root is Judaism. Moreover, despite the fact that the name of the Christian participant in the polemic is omitted, his title has been kept--Philosopher. The term Philosopher, as both Hebrew and Christian (Greek) sources call the Christian participant, is actually a Byzantine university title and should not be taken in the usual sense of the word.

However, the Basel edition of Halevi's book, in John Buxtorf's Latin translation, won great popularity, and the publisher received letters in connection with it's publication. In his 1691 Khazar Dictionary, Daubmannus notes that among those to comment on Halevi's book at the time was a Dubrovnik Jew by the name of Samuel Cohen <cohen.htm> . The Latin version of Halevi's book was followed by translations into Spanish, German, and English. A critical edition of the Arabic original with the comparative Hebrew translation came out in Leipzig in 1887. Hirschfeld remarked that, in discussing the nature of the soul, one of the sources Halevi used was a text by Ibn Sina (Avicenna).

Halevi soon became so popular that legends were told about him. Halevi is believed to have had no sons, just one daughter, whose own son carried his grandfather's name. This, according to the Russian Jewish encyclopedia, disproves the story that Halevi's daughter married the prominent scientist Abraham ben Ezra, because Ezra's son was not called Judah. This story can be found in Yiddish in Simon Akiba ben Joseph's book Maseh ha Shem, which says that the famous grammarian and poet of Toledo, Abraham ben Ezra (died 1167), wedded Halevi's daughter in Khazaria. Daubmannus cites the following legend about their wedding:

Abraham ben Ezra lived in a little house by the sea. Aromatic plants always grew around it, and since the winds could not disperse the scents they carried them like carpets from place to place. One day, Abraham ben Ezra noticed that the scents had changed. That was because he felt fear. As first the fear inside him was deep at his youngest soul; then it descended into Ezra's middle-aged, and then to his third, oldest soul. Finally, the fear ran deeper than the souls in ben Ezra, and he could no longer stand it in the house. He wanted to leave, but when he opened the door he found that a cobweb had been spun across the entryway during the night. It was like any other cobweb, except it was red. When he tried to remove it, he noticed that the beautifully spun web was made of hair. He begun to search for the owner. Although he found no clue, in town he noticed a foreign woman walking with her father. She had long red hair, but she paid no attention to Ezra. The next morning, ben Ezra again felt fear, and again he found a red cobweb spun across his door. When he met the girl that day, he offered her two bouquets of myrtle.

She smiled and asked: :How did you discover me?"

"I immediately noticed," he said, "that inside me where three fears, not one."

Bibliography:

John Buxtorf, "Praefacio" to the Basel edition of Halevi's book in Latin (Liber Corsi, Basilae, 1660);

Lexicon Corsi, contines colloquium seu dispautationem de religione, Regiemonti Borussiae excudebat typographus Ioannes Daubmannus, Anno 1691 (destroyed edition);

Evreiskaya enciklopedia, St. Petersburg, 1906-1913, vol. I, pp., 1-16, includes an extensive article and bibliography on Halevi;

a selected bibliography comes with the edition J. Halevi, The Kuzari (Kitab al Khazari), New York, 1968, pp. 311-313;

the latest bilingual edition of the poems has been put out by Arno Press, New York, 1973;

Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem, 1971