Legend has it that he did arrive in the Holy Land only to be murdered there, but recent research has established that, in fact, on his way he stayed in Egypt, where he died. A Tribe of Converts In addition to his poems, Halevi d. Halevi structured this work around the accounts of a heathen tribe, the Khazars, whose king and people converted to Judaism; the Kuzari consists of a dialogue between a Jewish sage and the king of the Khazars. The book opens with a dream in which the king is told that while his intentions are admirable his deeds fall short of what God demands of him.
The king receives a similar dusty answer when he consults a Christian and then a Muslim sage. In despair, the king consults the Jew who then embarks on a reasoned defense of Judaism. The Kuzari is thus a work of Jewish apologetics, a defense of the Jewish religion against the challenges of Greek philosophy, Christianity, and Islam from without, and against those presented by the Karaites from within.
It is no accident that, at the beginning of the Kuzari , the king dismisses the philosopher in dissatisfaction with the notion that God has no concern with the particular. Halevi had a good knowledge of Greek philosophy in its Arab garb and knew how alluring this universalistic trend could be for thinking Jews. But he refuses to yield to what he considers to be a superficiality that never penetrates to the depths of human existence.
It would be pleasant for me to walk naked and barefoot among thy desolate ruins, where once thy temples stood, where the ark was hidden, and where thy Cherubim dwelled in thy innermost shrines. He wrote a number of elegies, usually dedicated to friends or family.
There is much evidence of his passionate pleas to countrymen to return to Zion, although these were often either mocked or ignored. He made a prophetic statement regarding the persecution of the Jews thus: It is likely that this view will have been influenced by an event from earlier in his life when a confederation of North African Berber tribes known as the Almoravids stormed through Andalusia, imposing extreme Muslim control of the whole region.
Until this unhappy time he had been living in relative harmony, collaborating with Hebrew poets such as Moses ibn Ezra, a man who would become a lifelong friend. Here is a poem, which seems to be a plea for like-minded people to join him in his quest to find the promised land. There seemed to be no future for his people, and this hopelessness manifested itself in many of his poems. Eventually he set out on his great journey, traversing the Mediterranean and then landing in the Egyptian port of Alexandria.
From there he planned to go on foot towards his final destination. He had planned this journey for many years and he left Spain in As Halevi grew older, his work turned to political and philosophical discussions. He also began to experience a longing both traditionally Jewish and markedly absent in the Jewish literature of the generations preceding him, namely the desire to effect a return to Zion and Jerusalem. Taken as a whole, the Kuzari presents a prophecy-focused restatement of many of the central ideas of Judaism, and an apparent rejection of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic influences on religious thought.
In , at the age of 65 or 67, Halevi left family, friends and Spain, setting sail for Alexandria en route to Jerusalem. Received with adulation by the Jews of Alexandria, he remained in Egypt for almost a year, before again setting sail for Palestine sometime in May It is not clear whether he ever reached Jerusalem. In subsequent Jewish history, his decision to go has taken on more meaning than whether he actually arrived.
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