How, in the chains of the Moor, Zion bound to the Cross, Can I do what I’ve vowed to and must?
Yet gladly I’d leave All the best of grand Spain For one glimpse of Jerusalem’s dust.Halkin regards these poems as “a romantic reformulation” of the place of Zion in Jewish tradition, endorsing Heine’s judgment that Halevi “was Judaizing the troubadour’s cult of devotion... by replacing its idealized woman with a divinely chosen holy land.” They reveal what would become the guiding passion of his later days, a journey to Jerusalem, at the time occupied by the Crusaders and mostly bereft of Jews.HALKIN DEVOTES an entire chapter to the Kuzari, Halevi’s theological masterpiece. Taking a cue from a historical incident and the form of a dialogue between the king of the Khazars and a Jewish sage, Halevi’s treatise appears to be a defense of Rabbinic Judaism against its Christian, Muslim and Jewish Karaite competitors. But Halkin argues that the real challenge to Judaism was not from the other faiths but from the cultural eminence of philosophy; the treatise is a call to his brethren who had let their Jewish commitments sag due to indulgence in the Andalusian courtier life or infatuation with “Greek wisdom” to a renewed allegiance and commitment to their native faith.Halkin provides a sensitive discussion of this influential and difficult work. Well aware of the issues regarding its composition and the philosophical and theological complexity of the book, he suggests the reader approach the book as “a work of autobiographical fiction in which the philosopher, the rabbi and the Khazar king represent different aspects of the author at different stages of his life.” At the end of the dialogue, the sage resolves to depart to the Land of Israel, presaging Halevi’s own decision.In the early fall of 1140, Halevi set out from Spain to Egypt, the first leg of his journey to the Land of Israel. From a variety of sources, Halevi’s letters and poems and the correspondence of his friends, Halkin has woven together a fascinating portrait of Halevi’s last months – his extended stays in Alexandria and Fustat (Old Cairo), his friendships with local Jewish leaders, a legal controversy with a Jewish convert to Islam and the breakdown of relations with his son-in-law. In May 1141, he set off from the port of Alexandria to Acre, never to be heard from again.Halkin considers the reception of Halevi’s work and the legend that surrounds his life and death, showing how his influence continued to reverberate; generations of Jews have been projecting their own needs and desires onto the bard. The Kuzari’s “use of reason to challenge an overreliance on reason” proved useful to Jews during the Renaissance and Haskala. In the 19th century, Halevi was celebrated as a romantic by Heine and as a national poet by Graetz.But it was his writing about the Land of Israel that Halkin sees bringing forth a “new Jewish discourse about the land of Israel,” in which “the Land of Israel was holy in itself, and the punishment of exile was as much self-inflicted as God’s,” and that raises the question of how we should regard his fateful decision to leave Córdoba for Eretz Yisrael. Was this the purely personal decision of a spiritual pilgrim or the public act of a proto-Zionist?In the 20th century, the image of Halevi was appropriated by Zionists, both secular and religious. His canonical status in the “national religious” movement in Israel has, in turn, spawned a counterreaction by thinkers such as Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who criticized the writer of the Kuzari for his “nationalist and racist chauvinism.” More recently, Yale scholar María Rosa Menocal has argued that Halevi’s assault on philosophy was a betrayal of the convivencia.The book concludes on a personal note, as Halkin meditates on his owndecision to leave the mid-century American convivencia to take part inthe Zionist project, and the role Yehuda Halevi has played in his ownlife and self-understanding.By making his life and his poetry accessible to new generations ofEnglish readers, Halkin has performed a great service, allowing us toexperience and to appreciate Yehuda Halevi’s unique and moving voice.The writer is assistant professor and director of the Judaic Studies Program at Goucher College.