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The Kuzari is the most famous work by the medieval Spanish Jewish writer Yehuda Halevi. The work is divided into five essays ("ma'amarim"), and takes the form of a dialogue between the pagan king of the Khazars and a Jew who had been invited to instruct him in the tenets of the Jewish religion. Originally written in Arabic, the book was translated by numerous scholars (including ibn Tibbon) into Hebrew and other languages. Though the book is not considered a historical account of the Khazar conversion to Judaism, scholars such as D.M. Dunlop have postulated that Yehuda had access to Khazar documents upon which he loosely based his work. His contemporary, Avraham ibn Daud, reported meeting Khazar rabbinical students in Toledo, Spain in the mid-12th century. This article describes some ethnic, historic, and cultural aspects of the Jewish identity; for a consideration of the Jewish religion, refer to the article Judaism. ...
Judah Ha-Levi, also Yehudah Halevi, or Judah ben Samuel Halevi (Hebrew רבי יהודה הלוי) (c. ...
Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning a country dweller or civilian) is a blanket term which has come to connote a broad set of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices of natural or polytheistic religions, as opposed to the Abrahamic monotheistic religions. ...
Look up monarch in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
The Khazars were a Turkic semi-nomadic people from Central Asia who adopted Judaism. ...
This article describes the Jewish religion; for a consideration of ethnic, historic, and cultural aspects of the Jewish identity refer to the article Jew. ...
The Arabic language (Arabic: ‎ transliterated: ), or simply Arabic (Arabic: ‎ transliterated: ), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ...
Ibn Tibbon (or ibn Tibbon), is a family of Jewish rabbis and translators that lived principally in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. ...
Hebrew (עִבְרִית or עברית, ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. ...
Douglas Morton Dunlop, b. ...
You may be looking for Abraham ben David, the twelfth-century Franco-Jewish rabbi and critic of Maimonides. ...
Rabbi (Classical Hebrew רִבִּי ribbī;; modern Ashkenazi and Israeli רַבִּי rabbī) in Judaism, means teacher, or more literally great one. The word Rabbi is derived from the Hebrew root-word RaV, which in biblical Hebrew means great or distinguished, (in knowledge). In the ancient Judean schools (and among Sefaradim today) the sages...
[[ Image:Toledo, Spain Toledo is a city and municipality located in central Spain, about 70 kilometers south of Madrid. ...
Introduction After a short account of the incidents preceding the conversion of the king, and of the conversations of the latter with a philosopher, a Christian, and a Muslim concerning their respective beliefs, a Jew appears on the stage, and by his first statement startles the king; for, instead of giving him proofs of the existence of God, he asserts and explains the miracles performed by Him in favor of the Israelites. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (504x678, 83 KB)cover of a Hebrew language translation of the Kuzari. ...
Image File history File links Download high resolution version (504x678, 83 KB)cover of a Hebrew language translation of the Kuzari. ...
Hebrew (עִבְרִית or עברית, ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. ...
Warsaw (Polish: , (?), in full The Capital City of Warsaw, Polish: Miasto Stołeczne Warszawa) is the capital of Poland and its largest city. ...
According to medieval Jewish sources, the name of the rabbi who converted the Khazars to Judaism. ...
A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Christianity. ...
A Muslim (Arabic: مسلم, Turkish: Müslüman, Persian and Urdu: مسلمان) is an adherent of Islam. ...
God is the deity believed by monotheists to be the supreme reality. ...
The Twelve Tribes redirects here; for other uses, see The Twelve Tribes (disambiguation). ...
The king expresses his astonishment at this exordium, which seems to him incoherent; but the Jew replies that the existence of God, the creation 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 ethical 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 can not 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 human culture and science. Creation is a doctrinal position in many religions which maintains that one or a group of gods or deities is responsible for creating the universe. ...
Ethics (from Greek ἦθος meaning custom) is the branch of axiology, one of the four major branches of philosophy, which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to distinguish that which is right from that which is wrong. ...
For the periodical, see Science (journal) Science in the broadest sense refers to any knowledge or trained skill, especially (but not exclusively) when this is attained by verifiable means. ...
La Vérité by the French painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre Common dictionary definitions of truth mention some form of accord with fact or reality. ...
For other senses of this word, see history (disambiguation). ...
The word culture, from the Latin colo, -ere, with its root meaning to cultivate, generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. ...
"Creatio ex Nihilo" Halevi writes that as the Jews are the only depositaries of a written history of the development of the human race from the beginning of the world, the superiority of their traditions can not be denied. Halevi asserts that no comparison is possible between Jewish culture, which in his view is based upon religious truth, and Greek culture, which is based upon science only. He holds that the wisdom of Greek philosophers lacked that divine support with which the Israelite prophets were endowed. Had a trustworthy tradition that the world was created out of nothing been known to Aristotle, he would have supported it by at least as strong arguments as those advanced by him to prove the eternity of matter. Belief in the eternity of matter, however, is not absolutely contrary to Jewish religious ideas; for the Biblical narrative of the Creation refers only to the beginning of the human race, and does not preclude the possibility of preexistent matter. Secular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the culture of secular communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews, or even those of religious Jews working in cultural areas not generally considered to be connected...
Greece is often referred to as the cradle of Western civilisation and ancient Athens was considered to be its center. ...
Classical (or early) Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. ...
Aristotle (Ancient Greek: , Aristotélēs) (384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ...
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 Neoplatonists 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 word theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of knowledge, depending on the context and their methodologies. ...
Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is an ancient school of philosophy beginning in the 3rd century A.D. It was based on the teachings of Plato and Platonists; but it interpreted Plato in many new ways, such that Neoplatonism was quite different from what Plato taught, though not many Neoplatonists would...
The deepest visible-light image of the universe, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. ...
Categories: Wikipedia cleanup | Stub | Philosophy of science | Religious Philosophy | Theology ...
Superiority of his faith Halevi now attempts to demonstrate the superiority of his religion, Judaism. The preservation of the Israelites in Egypt and in the wilderness, the delivery to them of the Law on Mount Sinai, and their later history are to him so many evident proofs of their superiority. He impresses upon the king the fact that the favor of God can be won only by accomplishing the precepts in all their minutiæ, and that those precepts are binding only on the adherents of Judaism. The question why the Jews only were thus favored with God's instruction is as little worthy of consideration as would be the question why the animals had not been created men. The Jew then shows that the immortality of the soul, resurrection, reward, and punishment are all implied in Scripture and are referred to in Jewish writings. See also Portal:Law The stela of King Hammurabi depicts the god Shamash revealing a code of laws to the king. ...
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The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is a self aware ethereal substance particular to a unique living being. ...
Resurrection of the Flesh (1499-1502) Fresco by Luca Signorelli Chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto The term resurrection is used in the literal sense to mean either the religious concept of the reunion of the spirit and the body of a dead person, or the return to life of...
Many religions and spiritual movements hold certain written texts (or series of spoken legends not traditionally written down) to be sacred. ...
Question of attributes In the second essay Judah enters into a detailed discussion of some of the theological questions hinted at in the preceding one. To these belongs in the first place that of the divine attributes. Judah rejects entirely the doctrine of essential attributes which had been propounded by Saadia Gaon and Bahya ibn Paquda. For him there is no difference between essential and other attributes. Either the attribute affirms a quality in God, in which case essential attributes can not be applied to Him more than can any other, because it is impossible to predicate anything of Him, or the attribute expresses only the negation of the contrary quality, and in that case there is no harm in using any kind of attributes. 'Accordingly Judah divides all the attributes found in the Bible into three classes: active, relative, and negative, which last class comprises all the essential attributes expressing mere negations. See also: Divine simplicity; Negative theology Saadia Ben Joseph Gaon (892-942), the Hebrew name of Said al-Fayyumi, was a rabbi who was also a prominent Jewish exilarch, philosopher, and exegete. ...
Bahya ibn Paquda (also: Pakuda) Full name: Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda, known to Talmud scholars (in Hebrew) as the Rabbeinu Bechaya (Our Rabbi Behaya), was a Jewish philosopher and rabbi who lived at Saragossa, Spain, in the first half of the eleventh century. ...
In theology, the doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is without parts. ...
Negative theology - also known as the Via Negativa (Latin for Negative Way) and Apophatic theology - is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation, to speak of God only in terms of what may be said about God and to avoid what may not be said. ...
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 Palestine, 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 Palestine is to other lands. Map of the British Mandate of Palestine. ...
Prophecy, in a broad sense, is the prediction of future events. ...
Ascetic redirects here. ...
Hebrew (עִבְרִית or עברית, ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. ...
The third essay is devoted to the refutation of the teachings of Karaism and to the history of the development of the oral tradition, the Talmud. Judah ha-Levi shows that there is no means of carrying out the precepts without having recourse to oral tradition; and that such tradition has always existed may be inferred from many passages of the Bible, the very reading of which is dependent upon it, since there were no vowels and accents in the original text. Tractate Brachos, folio 2a The Talmud (תלמוד) is a record of rabbinic discussions of Jewish law, ethics, customs, and stories, which are authoritative in Jewish tradition. ...
The Gutenberg Bible owned by the United States Library of Congress The Bible (Hebrew: ×ª× ×´×š tanakh, Greek: η Βίβλος hÄ“ biblos, the book) (sometimes The Holy Bible, Scripture, is the name used by Jews and Christians for their differing (and overlapping) canons of sacred texts. ...
Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...
Names of God The fourth essay opens with an analysis of the various names of God found in the Bible. According to Judah, all these names, with the exception of the Tetragrammaton, are attributes expressing the various states of God's activity in the world. The multiplicity of names no more implies a multiplicity in His essence than do the multifarious influences of the rays of the sun on various bodies imply a multiplicity of suns. To the intuitive vision of the prophet the actions proceeding from God appear under the images of the corresponding human actions. Angels are God's messengers; and either they exist for a length of time, or they are created only for special purposes. The Annunciation - the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear Jesus (El Greco, 1575) An angel is a supernatural being found in many religions. ...
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 Yeẓrah," 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 astronomical and medical knowledge of the ancient Hebrews. Tomb of Abraham Abraham (between 2000 BC/BCE and 1500 BC/BCE) (Hebrew: ×ברה×, Standard Avraham Ashkenazi Avrohom or Avruhom Tiberian ; Arabic: ابراهيم, ; Geez: አብáˆáˆƒáˆ, ; Father/Leader of many) is regarded as the founding patriarch of the Israelites whom God chose to bless out of all the families of the earth. ...
Radio telescopes are among many different tools used by astronomers Astronomy (Greek: αστÏονομία = άστÏον + νόμος, astronomia = astron + nomos, literally, law of the stars) is the science of celestial objects (such as stars, planets, comets, and galaxies) and phenomena that originate outside the Earths atmosphere (such as auroras and cosmic background radiation). ...
This article is about the field of medical practice and health care. ...
Arguments against philosophy The fifth and last essay is devoted to a criticism of the various philosophical systems known at the time of the author. Judah attacks by turns the Aristotelian cosmology, psychology, and metaphysics. To the doctrine of emanation, based, according to him, upon the Aristotelian cosmological principle that no simple being can produce a compound being, he objects in the form of the following query: "Why did the emanation stop at the lunar sphere? Why should each intelligence think only of itself and of that from which it issued and thus give birth to one emanation, thinking not at all of the preceding intellgences, and thereby losing the power to give birth to many emanations?" Aristotle (Ancient Greek: , Aristotélēs) (384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ...
// Cosmology, from the Greek: κοσμολογία (cosmologia, κόσμος (cosmos) order + λογια (logia) discourse) is the study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanitys place in it. ...
Psychology (Gk: psyche, soul or mind + logos, speech) is an academic and applied field involving the study of the human mind, brain, and behavior. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
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 philosophical speculation only in matters concerning Creation, God, etc.; and he follows the Greek philosophers in treating of the creation of the material world. Thus he admits that every being is made up of matter and form. 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. It has been suggested that Combative dualism be merged into this article or section. ...
Minerals are natural compounds formed through geological processes. ...
Vegetables in a Market Venn diagram representing the relationship between (botanical) fruits and vegetables. ...
Phyla Subregnum Parazoa Porifera (sponges) Subregnum Agnotozoa Placozoa (trichoplax) Orthonectida (orthonectids) Rhombozoa (dicyemids) Subregnum Eumetazoa Radiata (unranked) (radial symmetry) Ctenophora (comb jellies) Cnidaria (coral, jellyfish, anemones) Bilateria (unranked) (bilateral symmetry) Acoelomorpha (basal) Orthonectida (parasitic to flatworms, echinoderms, etc. ...
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 Epicureans and the Fatalists, and endeavors to reconcile it with the belief in God's providence and omniscience. Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus (c340-c270 BC), founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. ...
Fatalism is the view that human deliberation and actions are pointless and ineffectual in determining events, because whatever will be will be. ...
Influence of the Kuzari Although the Kuzari failed to stem the philosophical flood which, at the time of the appearance of the work, was inundating Judaism, it exercised a great influence upon the theologians. It was much studied; and traces of it are to be found in all the theological and Kabbalistic writings of the Middle Ages, not excluding even the Zohar, which borrowed from it several passages, amongthem the saying, "Israel is among the nations as the heart among the limbs" (Zohar, iii. 221b.) The Zohar (Hebrew זהר Splendor, radiance) is widely considered the most important work of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. ...
Besides the Hebrew translation of Judah ibn Tibbon, which passed through eleven editions (1st ed. Fano, 1506), another rendering into Hebrew was made by Judah ben Isaac Cardinal, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The study of the Kuzari seems to have become very popular in the fifteenth century. No less than six commentaries on it appeared in the first half of that century. Many translations and commentaries on this work, both religious and critical, have been written since then. It has had a resurgence of popularity in the Orthodox Jewish community in the modern era. Image File history File links 1660_Buxtorf_Kuzari. ...
Image File history File links 1660_Buxtorf_Kuzari. ...
Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...
Johannes Buxtorf (1564-1629) was a celebrated Hebraist, born in Westphalia, member of a family of Orientalists; professor of Hebrew for 39 years at Basel and was known by the title, Master of the Rabbis. This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopaedia. ...
Hebrew (עִבְרִית or עברית, ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. ...
Ibn Tibbon (or ibn Tibbon), is a family of Jewish rabbis and translators that lived principally in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. ...
See also: Yehuda Halevi Judah Ha-Levi, also Yehudah Halevi, or Judah ben Samuel Halevi (Hebrew רבי יהודה הלוי) (c. ...
The "Kuzari Principle" The Kuzari has given its name to a "principle" of reasoning which is derived from the book. This principle claims to logically prove the historicity of major events recorded in the Bible from the nature of the belief in them. More specifically, it is argued that one can prove that some three million Israelites personally were led out of Egypt in an Exodus, and witnessed God's revelation to them at Mount Sinai, thus establishing the proof of the events discussed in the Torah, the five books of Moses.
A modern statement of the Kuzari Principle is as follows: Let E be a possible event which, had it really occurred, would have left behind enormous, easily available evidence of its occurrence. If the evidence does not exist, people will not believe that E occurred. (Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb, Living up to the Truth, Chapter 6.)
Gottlieb then goes on to argue that events such as the revelation at Sinai fit the requirements of the Kuzari Principle and so their truth can be deduced merely from the fact that the Jewish people believed they were true. He also argues that other mass beliefs, such as those of other religions, do not fit the requirements.
The basic logic of the Kuzari argument is that a story such as that of the Sinai revelation must have originated with a real event or have been introduced at some later moment. In the latter case, the population will have been able to infer its falsehood merely from their lack of prior knowledge of the claim. Therefore, according to this logic, the story can only have been introduced at a time when the population knew it to be true from their own observation.
Many circles have trouble accepting the Kuzari principle as logically or historically valid. Amongst the arguments against the principle are:
- This argument assumes that how the Torah is understood has always been the same. Perhaps over a period of many generations the story of 'strange events at a mountain' evolved very slowly to the current version. Or perhaps the original was a partial fiction which slowly began to be accepted as a factual.
-The proponents of the principle view this argument as irrelevant. The Kuzari principle states that as long as a nation believes it had a national experience at any point in time that national experience happened (e.g. natinal revelation). -The proponents of the principle argue that this idea, while sounding plausible lacks any concrete details of how it could have happened and therefore is impossible to assess. Also even if someday a plausable sounding transformation is thought up, that doesn't mean it is actually possible. The very minimum indirect evidence would be for the critic to find some cases in which we know that this type of transformation did in fact happen. see [1] - This argument assumes that when a text is first written, its precise text became widely known among nearly the entire community, and that most people would know if the text changed. However, this is often not the case. The assumption is that if they are given a new story, they will know that it is new. However, in many times and places people had little accurate knowledge of their history.
-The proponents of the principle argue that this argument suffers from the same flaws as the previous one. - The argument assumes that widespread cultural acceptance of an event as miraculous as proof of the miracle in that the former is impossible to fake. The argument ignores the fact that using this line of reasoning, the arguer would be forced by symmetry to accept the public miracle claims of other conflicting religions. Thus by asymmetrical rejection of public miracle claims of other religions, the argument fails.
-The proponents of the principle argue that indeed we are forced to accept any public miracle claim of other religions, provided they do fit the same criteria. But the criteria of the kuzari principle is not simply that the miracle is public (happening to a group of people). For example one could claim that 500 years ago 1000 people in a village in Australia had a shared prophetic experience, in which the creator of the Universe came to them and gave them a book of rules to live by. One could conceivably go to Australia today and convince people of this story (if one was charimatic and convincing enough) even though it is false. However if one tries to convince them that ALL the population of Australia had this vision together then (according to Kuzari princple) people will reject the claim. The reason they will reject it is they are able to check to see if it is true. When they see that no one in their family, nor anyone they know has ever heard of this event, an event which if it had occurred would have had massive and lasting reprecussions. Since no one has heard of it, it must not have occurred. No religious group claims that a miracle took that fulfills the Kuzari Principles criteria that Judaism does not believe took place as well. - This argument assumes that the text has always existed in one set form. However, research has shown that early versions of the Bible and other ancient near-eastern literature differed in a number of ways. Texts often existed in multiple forms for many centuries, and later forms were the result of an evolutionary editing process. Most Orthodox Jewish writers dispute the validity of this counter-argument, insisting that the Torah's transmission process ensures that it is little changed from its original form. [2]
-Proponents of the Kuzari principle note that this argument is irrelevant (see previous notes about the proponents' view) Torah () is a Hebrew word meaning teaching, instruction, or law. It is the central and most important document of Judaism revered by Jews through the ages. ...
Bibliography - D. M. Dunlop. History of the Jewish Khazars. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1954.
- Yehuda ha-Levi. Kuzari. Translated by N. D. Korobkin as The Kuzari: In Defense of the Despised Faith. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1998.
- Yechezkel Sarna. Rearrangement of the Kuzari., Transl. Rabbi Avraham Davis. New York: Metsudah, 1986
R Yechezkel Sarna Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna (1890 - 1969) was the successor to Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the Alter of Slabodka, as the spiritual mentor of the Yeshiva. ...
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