God’s Chosen People

Volume 7

CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES

General EditorYitzhak Hen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Editorial BoardAngelo di Berardino, Augustinianum–Instituto Patristico, Rome

Nora Berend, University of CambridgeLeslie Brubaker, University of Birmingham

Christoph Cluse, Universität TrierRob Meens, Universiteit Utrecht

James Montgomery, University of CambridgeAlan V. Murray, University of Leeds

Thomas F. X. Noble, University of Notre DameMiri Rubin, University of London

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

God’s Chosen People

Judah Halevi’s Kuzari and the Shī‘ī Imām Doctrine

by

Ehud Krinis

translated by

Ann Brener and Tamar Liza Cohen

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Krinis, Ehud, author. God's Chosen People : Judah Halevi's 'Kuzari' and the Shii Imam doctrine.

-- (Cultural encounters in late antiquity and the Middle Ages ; 7) 1. Judah, ha-Levi, active 12th century Kitab al-hujjah. 2. Shiah--Doctrines. 3. Jews--Election, Doctrine of.

I. Title II. Series III. Brener, Ann, 1969- translator. IV. Cohen, Tamar translator. 296.3-dc23 ISBN-13: 9782503543963

© 2014, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,without the prior permission of the publisher.

D/2014/0095/37ISBN: 978-2-503-54396-3Printed on acid-free paper

Contents

Foreword vii

Part I. Background

Chapter 1. Introduction 3

Chapter 2 .The Shī‘ī Heritage 7

Chapter 3. Jewish Exposure to the Shī‘ī Heritage 23

Part II. Continuity

Chapter 4. The Unique Individuals (Afrād) Model in the Kuzari and its Shī‘ī Context 35

Chapter 5. Evidence for the Shī‘ī Doctrine of Primordial Chosenness in the Kuzari 83

Chapter 6. God’s Proof (Hujja) 105

Part III. Hierarchy and Mediation

Chapter 7. The Features of Hierarchism in the Kuzari and its Shī‘ī Context 117

vi Contents

Chapter 8. Superhuman Attributes of the Chosen  ‘Divine Humans’ on the Upper Level of the Hierarchy 141

Chapter 9. Mediation 163

Part IV. Exclusivity and Dependence

Chapter 10. Shī‘ī Aspects of the Concept of the Divine Order (al-amr al-ilāhī) in the Kuzari 189

Chapter 11. The God of Creation and the God of History 225

Part V. Legitimate Succession and Chosenness

Chapter 12. The Question of Legitimate Succession and its Background 243

Chapter 13. The Question of Legitimate Succession in the Kuzari 255

Part VI. Conclusion

Chapter 14. General Assessment of the Nature of the Shī‘ī Influence on the Kuzari 285

Chapter 15. Shī‘ī Trends and the Multifaceted Nature of the Kuzari 291

Appendix. The Linguistic and Literary Uniqueness  of Book I of the Kuzari 315

Bibliography 319

Index of Passages from the Kuzari 339

General Index 341

Foreword

Judah Halevi composed his theological polemical treatise best known as the Kuzari towards the end of his life, during the third and fourth decades of the twelfth century. At this stage, Halevi’s reputation as a praiseworthy

poet and one of the most notable leaders of the Jewish Diaspora in the Iberian Peninsula was already established throughout the Jewish world. The poetry of Judah Halevi maintained its popularity and continued to be esteemed after the death of its writer. A few of his liturgical poems were included in the Maḥzor (prayer book for Jewish High Holidays) of many Jewish communities.

Unlike his poetry, which he wrote in Hebrew, Judah Halevi composed the Kuzari, his only systematical theological work, in Judeo-Arabic, the language spoken by Jews living at that time in the Muslim Arab cultural region. This form of Arabic is written in Hebrew letters and incorporates registers from other languages used by the Jews, such as Hebrew and Aramaic. In 1167, one generation after the death of Judah Halevi in 1141, the Kuzari was translated into Hebrew by Judah Ibn-Tibbon. This translation received widespread inter-est among Jewish readers and gained a firm position in Jewish culture.

In the modern era, the writing of Judah Halevi continues to gain prestige. Today, he is considered the greatest Jewish poet of the Middle Ages and one of the greatest Jewish theologians of that era. Starting from the second half of the nineteenth century, the Kuzari has drawn increasing attention from scholars in the emerging discipline of Jewish thought. A considerable part of the work produced by these scholars is irrelevant for the scholarly work presented in this book. This irrelevancy stems from the tendency of many scholars in this field to base their work not on the original Judeo-Arabic version of the Kuzari, but on its translation into Hebrew, and on their tendency to ignore the main cultural context of Judah Halevi’s treatise, namely, the rich and varied Arabic culture of his time. The research presented in this book does not adhere to the well-estab-lished scholarly paradigm on the Kuzari. The followers of this paradigm take

viii Foreword

interest mainly in Judah Halevi’s relationship with and reaction to the ration-alization of the Jewish religion in general, and the efforts to present Judaism as a revealed religion, according to the premises of philosophy, in particular. By contrast, the new research presented here to the readers strives to pave the way for a new scholarly perceptive, one that will focus on another central axis of the Kuzari which has been heretofore neglected by scholars. This perspective focuses on the arguments typical of the rival revealed religions of Christianity and Islam and aiming to portray these religious groups as the legitimate succes-sors of the People of Israel as God’s chosen people.

Notwithstanding my wish to present a new perspective in this book, I am well aware of my debt to the scholars who have preceded me. I refer espe-cially to my great debt to the late Shlomo Pines, the outstanding scholar who laid the foundation for the study of the affiliation of the Kuzari with the Shī‘ī worldview.

* * *

The seed of this book was sowed in the academic year 1998–99, during my MA studies in the Department of Jewish Thought in Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. There, in a course by Prof. Daniel J. Laker dedicated to the Kuzari and the scholarship on the book, I had the opportunity to become acquainted with Judah Halevi’s treatise and the main articles written about it. Among them, I would like to mention Shlomo Pines’s ‘Shī‘ite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari’. The book I present here is based on my doctoral thesis, written in the years 2003–07 in the Department of Jewish Thought in Ben-Gurion University, under the supervision of Prof. Lasker. I am deeply grateful to Prof. Lasker for the instructive guidance and dedicated support he granted me from the beginning of my research until today. I would also like to thank my teachers and colleagues in the Department of Jewish Thought, and especially my colleague Mr Asher Binyamin, for the collegial and supportive atmosphere. To my teacher, Prof. Haviva Pedaya, from the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University, I owe special thanks for the advice and encouragement that set me on track in the beginning of my work on the doctoral research. As a fellow of the Kreitman Foundation during those years, I received essential finan-cial and social support from the Foundation. For this, I thank the foundation and its directors at that time, Prof. Ilan Troen and Mrs Caroline Gross-Baruch.

In the years 2008–11, I was a Mandel fellow in the Scholion Center at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During this period, I was busy, among other things, with adapting my doctoral thesis into a book. I also wrote two articles adding to and deepening the understanding of the Kuzari in the con-

Foreword ix

text of Arabic culture in general, and the Shī‘ī world view in particular. One article, ‘The Arabic Background of the Kuzari’, presents a panoramic review of the ambivalent and multi-faceted reaction of Judah Halevi to this culture. The second article, ‘Galut and Ghayba: The Exile of Israel and the Occultation of the Shī‘ī Imam-Messiah — a Comparative Study of Judah Halevi and Early Imāmī-Shī‘ī Writers’, focuses on analyzing several similarities and differences between the theological world of Judah Halevi and that of the Shi‘a, which have not been given comprehensive treatment in this book. I am grateful to the Mandel family for its financial support and to the team of the Scholion Center, Prof. Israel Yuval, the academic director of the center at that time, and the administrative team and its directors, Mrs  Zohar Markovitz and Mrs Maya Sherman. The Efraim E. Urbach scholarship, which I received from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in 2009–10, gave me the finan-cial support needed during different stages of producing this book. For this, I thank the Memorial Foundation and its director, Dr Jerry Hochbaum.

Many others have assisted me on the long journey from the beginning of my research until its publication as a book. I am greatly indebted to Prof. Etan Kohlberg of the Hebrew University, who accompanied and encouraged me all along. In the Hebrew University, I had the good fortune to attract the interest of and receive assistance from Prof. Sarah Stroumsa, Prof. Sara Sviri, Prof. Meir M. Bar-Asher, Dr Michael Ebstein, and Dr Ayala Eliyahu-Meir. I would also like to thank Dr Arzina Lalani and Dr Omar Ali De-Unzaga from the Institute of Ismā‘īlī Studies in London and Dr Alexander Treiger from Dalhousie University, for the assistance they provided me. Prof. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, was very kind and supportive in, among other things, reading and commenting on early versions of parts of this book. Prof. Barry Kogan, from the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, gave me permission to use parts of his English translation of the Kuzari, a translation due to be published in the Yale Judaica series of Yale University Press. I thank Prof. Kogan and Prof. Ivan Marcus, the former director of the Yale Judaica series, for granting me permission to use parts of this important translation before its publication. I thank Dr Ann Brener and Mrs Tamar Cohen for translating the book from Hebrew to English, and Dr Leigh Chipman, Mr Guy Ron-Gilboa, and Mrs Tomi Mager for their editing work.

While working on the book in Jerusalem, I became acquainted with Mr Nabih Bashir and the pioneering undertaking on which he was working at the time — producing an Arabic-Arabic edition of the Kuzari. Since then, Nabih completed this important task and it has been published as a book. I hope that the Nabih Bashir edition of the Kuzari receives the recognition it

x Foreword

deserves. This edition will now enable Arabic readers to become acquainted with Judah Halevi’s classic treatise. Originally, this treatise was written mostly in Arabic, but the use of Hebrew letters created a barrier between the book and Arabic readers. This obstacle has now been removed by Nabih Bashir. I am grateful to Nabih Bashir for choosing to include my essay ‘The Arabic Background of the Kuzari’ as an introductory chapter in his edition.

In Jerusalem, I also came to know Prof. Michael Schwarz at a time when he was working on a new Hebrew translation of the Kuzari. Prof. Schwarz passed away in December 2011, after completing the translation but before he could see it published in print. I am deeply grateful to Prof. Schwarz for the affec-tion and appreciation he bestowed upon me. I feel privileged to have known him, even a little. May his memory be blessed. Prof. Schwarz’s translation of the Kuzari is intended to serve as a basis for a comprehensive academic com-mentary of Judah Halevi’s treatise. The preparation of this commentary is a task that has been currently undertaken by a team of scholars, lead by Prof. Daniel J. Lasker and including myself and Nabih Bashir. I can therefore hope that my research on the Kuzari will be instrumental in the near future in the team work of preparing a comprehensive commentary of the Kuzari, the first of its kind, in the spirit of the modern comparative scholarship.

I would like to conclude by extending my thanks to the staff of the Brepols publishing house and to Prof. Yitzhak Hen, the editor of the Brepols series ‘Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, for accepting and preparing my book for publication.

Ehud Krinis,Kibbutz Shoval, August 2012