Judah Halevi

Tonight I want to share a story with you that was written down by a Jewish poet who lived in Spain more than a thousand years ago.

The story was written in Arabic and the poet's name was Yehuda Halevi.

It goes something like this.

A long time ago, there was once a great and wise king.

The king is pleased.

Judaism wins.

The king converts to Judaism his entire kingdom, converts along with him Yehuda HaLevi, the author of the story.

He called it the Kuzari.

And what this makes me think of is a much, much later tradition, a medieval text, probably from 10th, 11th century, very debated, connected to the legend of the Khazars.

So this is probably best known from Yehuda Halevi's Khazari, which is like this half legendary kingdom, Central Asian kingdom that, according to tradition, converted to Judaism en masse.

This is what Halevi writes in his account.

Now, we don't really have reliable historical evidence about this, but we do have storytelling.

But there's a surprising amount of poetry in the Jewish tradition, from the deeply erotic Shir Hashirim, AKA Song of Songs, to the passionate religious piyutim, or liturgical poems, of the medieval mystics.

Rabbi Yehuda Halevi's Libi Bamizrach, Where My Heart Is In The East, falls somewhere on the tamer end of the spectrum.

It's a poem of passionate longing for Zion, not composed in the 20th century, but composed in Muslim Spain sometime in the 12th century during the 88-year period of crusader control over Jerusalem when Jews were barred from the city The original is in Hebrew.

Yep, contrary to popular opinion, the Hebrew language never died, but that's a story for another time.

The longing goes deeper than prayer and poetry.

Over the centuries, many Jews did return to Zion, or try to anyway.

100 years after Rabbi Yehuda Halevi wrote this poem, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, AKA Ramban, AKA Nachmanides, arrived in Jerusalem.

The crusaders had been vanquished, but the holy city was in ruins.

And sometimes with some sort of an additional element like Chazak or Chazan or Yechi and so forth.

And we have it also in the piyutim of, you know, of the Sephardi poets, the paytanim from Sepharad, Rashbag, Solomon ibn Gabirol, who uses the acrostic Shlomo or longer ones, and Yehuda Halevi and so on and so forth.

So it became really universal.

But the earliest piyutim are, as I said, anonymous.

Okay, that is common sense.

But is every Jew closer to God than any goy? What if you have a goy that's a very, very righteous goy, and you have a Jew that's parkois, ve-very bad? Does God love that inferior Jew more than he loves that holy goy? Meaning, is there an essential nafkamina in the neshamah irrespective of the particular behaviors? So if you look at Yehuda Halevi, and certainly in Hasidus and Kabbalah, which follow the Kuzari in this prat, you see this idea that a Yid is different.

A Jew is different.

Yeah, of course, Hashem doesn't want a person to be a Russia, but every single Yid is special, treasured, elevated.

And music is a vehicle for that and a very powerful vehicle for that.

Or to put it in terms of more medieval philosophy, reviewed Halevi in Kuzari.

It says that the idea of music, the beauty of music, is that it can touch on the emotions like nothing else can.

We don't

He's providing himself with his own blessing.

Whereas the Ebenezer brings from Rav Yehuda HaLevi, in contrast to that which HaKadosh Baruch Hu is cursing the sinner, he provides himself a blessing instead.

What is that blessing? Lemur saying to himself, Shalom yeholi, there shall be peace unto me.

Everything's going to be fine.

Avraham Avinu says to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, will you even destroy? David C.

Hoffman brings that this is what's found in the Septuagint, this is what's found in the Vulgate, that Sfos means to cut off.

So how does that fit into the Pasuk? So the Ibn Ezra quotes from Yehuda HaLevi that he interpreted Rava and Smea in the same sense as the Ibn Ezra did.

That the Pasuk is saying Laman Sfos because I am able to cut off and destroy that which is a curse, right? This is what we're concerned about.

It is a historically true story, but obviously the details here, I wouldn't call it historical fiction.

I would call it, it was a way for Yehuda Levi to present Jewish ideas to the people of his times.

Anyway, fine.

So the king says to the Chafim, to the rabbi, King, tell me, how do you define someone, how do you define in our times someone who's considered a chassid, a righteous person? See, part of the question is it was obvious in the times of prophecy that a prophet is a righteous person.