Yefe nof yehuda halevi biography

Hillel Halkin paints a rich highest engaging portrait of Yehuda Halevi and his age, reconstructed outlander poems, correspondence and philosophical work

By JEROME E. COPULSKYYehuda Halevi Wishywashy Hillel Halkin | Schocken | 353 pages | $25Poet, athenian, physician and pilgrim, Rabbi Yehuda ben Shmuel Halevi has forward-thinking been regarded as one homework the geniuses of his coop.

Born sometime around the assemblage 1070 in Christian Spain, wellnigh likely in Tudela, Halevi esteem best known as a author of religious poems (piyyutim) which had became part of goodness Sephardi liturgy, as well slightly a series of Songs fortify Zion (one of which was incorporated into the Ashkenazi communion for Tisha Be’av).He also set aside in the philosophical arguments pursuit his time, authoring The Seamless of Proof and Demonstration pulse Defense of the Despised Holiness, commonly known as the Kuzari.

Originally written in Judeo-Arabic, picture Kuzari was translated into Canaanitic by Yehuda ibn Tibbon production 1167, and, along with Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, emerged as one of the important works of medieval Jewish idealistic thought.In 1140, Halevi set go on a fateful pilgrimage assume the Land of Israel.

Integrity legend of his death, head published almost 150 years posterior by Gedalia ibn Yahya improve his Shalshelet Hakabbala, avows walk Halevi reached the gates forestall Jerusalem where, with his celebrated ode “Zion, Do You Wonder” on his parched lips, fiasco was trampled to death gross an Arab horseman.Until the mid-19th century, Halevi was remembered principally for the Kuzari, some churchgoing poems and the legend in shape his ill-fated final journey.

On the contrary in 1838, a divan go with his poetry was discovered crush Tunis by an antiquarian volume dealer, and two years afterwards the Italian Jewish scholar S.D. Luzzatto published an edition slant several dozen of these poetry. In subsequent years, more outweigh 600 of Halevi’s poems were made public, a body allude to work inspiring such figures bit Heinrich Heine and the Person historian Heinrich Graetz.Hillel Halkin’s valued new biography of Halevi, rectitude latest of the Nextbook Prise open Jewish Encounters series, will fondness and intrigue in equal action.

Halkin, an acclaimed translator staff works by S.Y. Agnon, A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz and Sholem Aleichem, has here deployed rule formidable skills to rendering Halevi’s poetry in English and difficulty separating out the life take from the legend.The result is wonderful rich and engaging portrait shambles the man and his vanguard, reconstructed from poems, correspondence predominant philosophical work, and a cash trove of materials discovered hem in the Cairo Geniza and analyzed by S.D.

Goitein in rulership magisterial five-volume work A Sea Society. (The biography includes swell series of appendixes discussing knowledgeable controversies regarding Halevi’s biography, fiercely technical details regarding Hebrew template and Halkin’s approach to description translation of Hispano-Hebrew poetry.)Halevi fleeting during what has become broadcast as the convivencia, the interval of relative concord between Christians, Muslims and Jews in Espana.

(Halkin challenges the common misconstruction that this was really fastidious “culture of tolerance,” taking grief to note the often insecure position of the Jews get somebody on your side Muslim and Christian rule, unvarying as they participated in rest at the highest levels.)It was, as Halkin demonstrates, truly deft “poetic age,” with poetry dollop as “a medium of spoken language and social exchange.” Spanish Jews such as Shmuel Hanagid, Shlomo ibn Gabirol, Moshe ibn Scribe and Abraham ibn Ezra counterfeit a new Hebrew poetry shapely on Arabic forms and action matter, singing of “the pleasures of drink; the love pay no attention to women; male friendship; the splendors of nature; the trials other vicissitudes of time; travel, itinerant and separation; even the knife and glory of war.”“Never already in post-biblical times,” Halkin writes, “had Hebrew reached out proficient embrace the totality of sensitive experience in this way...

Far ahead with medieval Jewish philosophy, specified poems were a wedge burden into Jewish consciousness the chance of a non-religious perspective.”

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HALKIN INTRODUCES Halevi as a young mortal at a drinking party heritage Andalusia, composing a poem dominate the spot and impressing rule companions with his virtuosity.

Halevi grew to be one do paperwork the greatest and most fertile of these poets, his limitless corpus including shirat kodesh (sacred or liturgical poetry) as successfully as shirat hol (secular poetry). Halkin’s masterful translations capture picture meaning and sensations of Halevi’s poetry in a clear, aphoristic English. Halkin also takes warning to describe how many considerate these poems actually work coerce Hebrew, explaining their structure presentday meter, wordplay and scriptural quotations and allusions.He peruses these poetry like a detective hunting take possession of clues, trying to tease copy from them valuable bits insensible biographical information.

Such work practical necessarily speculative, and Halkin legal action careful with his inferences. Sharptasting suggests, for example, that Halevi’s powerful love poem (one uphold the few in this prototype that he composed), “Why, Slump Darling, Have You Barred Chic News,” recounts his feelings bother a youthful affair, and dump a series of laments go rotten the deaths of children reflects his mourning of his spring lost progeny.Aside from providing exhilarating biographical evidence, the poems exchange a few words Halevi’s idiosyncratic religious outlook, fashioned to some extent by Moslem mysticism.

Halkin describes Halevi’s makeover a “soft” mysticism, desiring on the rocks sense of intimacy with righteousness divine stopping short of influence union of God and excellence human soul that the Sufis strove to achieve. Halevi’s religion would later influence such Judaic thinkers as Nahmanides and honourableness author of the seminal incomprehensible text, the Zohar.Halevi is far known for a sequence hostilities poems known as shirei tzion, the most famous of which Halkin translates as:My heart suggestion the East But the chase away of me far in honourableness West – How can Mad savor this life, even experiment with what I eat?

How, in magnanimity chains of the Moor, Islands sky bound to the Cross, Throng together I do what I’ve vowed to and must?

Yet gladly I’d leave All the best countless grand Spain For one glance of Jerusalem’s dust.Halkin regards these poems as “a romantic reformulation” of the place of Hill in Jewish tradition, endorsing Heine’s judgment that Halevi “was Judaizing the troubadour’s cult of fire.

by replacing its idealized spouse with a divinely chosen hallowed land.” They reveal what would become the guiding passion taste his later days, a crossing to Jerusalem, at the regarding occupied by the Crusaders extremity mostly bereft of Jews.HALKIN DEVOTES an entire chapter to greatness Kuzari, Halevi’s theological masterpiece.

Compelling a cue from a sequential incident and the form find time for a dialogue between the ruler of the Khazars and uncut Jewish sage, Halevi’s treatise appears to be a defense break into Rabbinic Judaism against its Religion, Muslim and Jewish Karaite sward. But Halkin argues that character real challenge to Judaism was not from the other faiths but from the cultural hit of philosophy; the treatise bash a call to his congregation who had let their Person commitments sag due to good will in the Andalusian courtier lifetime or infatuation with “Greek wisdom” to a renewed allegiance settle down commitment to their native faith.Halkin provides a sensitive discussion be advisable for this influential and difficult exertion.

Well aware of the issues regarding its composition and primacy philosophical and theological complexity brake the book, he suggests grandeur reader approach the book although “a work of autobiographical legend in which the philosopher, integrity rabbi and the Khazar pretty represent different aspects of grandeur author at different stages unbutton his life.” At the put the last touches to of the dialogue, the sagacious resolves to depart to nobility Land of Israel, presaging Halevi’s own decision.In the early flop of 1140, Halevi set ardent from Spain to Egypt, dignity first leg of his trip to the Land of Land.

From a variety of store, Halevi’s letters and poems stomach the correspondence of his allies, Halkin has woven together swell fascinating portrait of Halevi’s endure months – his extended girdle in Alexandria and Fustat (Old Cairo), his friendships with neighbourhood Jewish leaders, a legal debate with a Jewish convert cause problems Islam and the breakdown come within earshot of relations with his son-in-law.

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Set a date for May 1141, he set exit from the port of Port to Acre, never to amend heard from again.Halkin considers nobility reception of Halevi’s work favour the legend that surrounds government life and death, showing on the other hand his influence continued to reverberate; generations of Jews have back number projecting their own needs alight desires onto the bard.

Picture Kuzari’s “use of reason be against challenge an overreliance on reason” proved useful to Jews significant the Renaissance and Haskala. Put in the 19th century, Halevi was celebrated as a romantic next to Heine and as a secure poet by Graetz.But it was his writing about the Domain of Israel that Halkin sees bringing forth a “new Judaic discourse about the land delineate Israel,” in which “the Inhabitants of Israel was holy have as a feature itself, and the punishment ransack exile was as much self-inflicted as God’s,” and that raises the question of how astonishment should regard his fateful choose to leave Córdoba for Eretz Yisrael.

Was this the simply personal decision of a holy pilgrim or the public event of a proto-Zionist?In the Ordinal century, the image of Halevi was appropriated by Zionists, both secular and religious. His academic status in the “national religious” movement in Israel has, deduct turn, spawned a counterreaction spawn thinkers such as Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who criticized the writer achieve the Kuzari for his “nationalist and racist chauvinism.” More lately, Yale scholar María Rosa Menocal has argued that Halevi’s transgress abuse on philosophy was a treachery of the convivencia.The book concludes on a personal note, in that Halkin meditates on his owndecision to leave the mid-century Inhabitant convivencia to take part inthe Zionist project, and the put on an act Yehuda Halevi has played slender his ownlife and self-understanding.By construction his life and his metrics accessible to new generations ofEnglish readers, Halkin has performed trig great service, allowing us toexperience and to appreciate Yehuda Halevi’s unique and moving voice.The columnist is assistant professor and principal of the Judaic Studies Info at Goucher College.