Reader's Guide
For much of Hillel Halkin’s biography of 12th-century Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi, Halkin’s aims seem fairly straightforward: to reveal the life, celebrate the work, and ponder the philosophy of the poet laureate of the Jewish people. Nearly three-quarters of the way through, however, Halkin remarkable book opens up further as he explores what Halevi’s thoughts on Judaism should mean to us today—and what they have meant to him. The following questions are designed to help guide a discussion into the issues raised by Halkin’s book.
A Golden Age | Halevi’s Songs | The Kuzari| Zionism Before Zionism | The Romance of Halevi
A Golden Age
“It’s paradise with all these trees,
The starlight on the myrtle berries.
The blend of spices in the breeze
Is God’s and no apothecary’s.” –Yehuda Halevi
“The culture of tolerance stretched only so far.” –Hillel Halkin
Halkin argues that the so-called convivencia—the Golden Age of Muslim Spain, in which adherents of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all lived together in something described as ecumenical peace—is largely a fiction. Instead, Halkin says, Christians and Muslims fought brutal war over territory; Jews were at the whim of whichever rule or whichever city had the most benign uses for them at any given moment. What has your sense of the convivencia been? What were you taught to think of the period in the Jews’ history that gave the world Halevi, Maimonides, and many other great thinkers?
Halkin believes that the more starry-eyed depiction of convivencia “was mobilized by Arab and pro-Arab intellectuals as supposed proof of Muslim civilization’s liberal attitude toward Otherness.” Are modern historians being fair in making that analogy? Is Halkin being fair in criticizing them for it?
And, finally, what do you think? In contemporary times, is there cause to believe that Islamic-influenced governments can admit some compromise with non-Muslim elements in their societies? What can the Jewish experience in 12th-century Spain tell us about today’s world? Consider Iran, but also consider Turkey.
Halevi’s songs
“Always I think of you—and though your king’s away,
And snakes and scorpions scuttle where once grew
Your balm of Gilead, your stones and earth
Would taste, when kissed, like honey in my mouth.” –Yehuda Halevi
“May His great name be praised by all that lives from His breath!” –Yehuda Halevi
In many ways, Halkin notes, 12th-century Hebrew poetry adopted the conventions of contemporaneous Arabic verse. Do Jewish writers in America similarly use many different forms? In what way have they, in turn, put a Jewish spin on what is considered “mainstream”? Is it possible Halevi, in taking in Arabic forms and making them “Jewish,” may in turn have influenced contemporary Arab literature?
Halevi wrote several odes to Zion, to which he would eventually attempt to travel. But some—including the great 19th-century German (and Jewish) poet Heinrich Heine—saw Halevi’s Zion poems as really about love. Has any place ever moved you to emotions similar to those conjured by someone you love?
At least one of Halevi’s poems—“Tsiyyon halo tish’ali bishlom asiraykh,” or, “Zion! Do you wonder how and where your captives”—is now a part of Ashkenazic liturgy. Can you imagine a contemporary poet successfully writing actual prayers? What might be the effect on religious life of secular writers being able to compose holy liturgy? Might equivalents be prayers that various poets have written specifically for Presidential Inaugurations? Compare Halevi’s prayer (p. 123) with Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”. Consider also Naphtali Herz Imber’s “Tikvateynu,” which was adopted, as “Hatikvah,” as the Israeli national anthem.
The Kuzari
“[The Jews] are the only proof that God has given a law to mankind.”–Yehuda Halevi, The Kuzari
“Every one of the 613 commandments serves to inculcate some truth, to remove some erroneous opinion, to establish proper relations to society, to diminish evil, to train in good manners, or to warn against bad habits.” -Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed
Halkin devotes a whole chapter to The Kuzari, Halevi’s great work of Jewish theology. He establishes a dichotomy between Halevi, who felt that Judaism was superior to and could admit no compromise with theology, and Maimonides, who aimed to reconcile the two. Who gets the better of that argument? Are you a Halevian or a Maimonidean?
Although The Kuzari is about a man—a king, in fact—converting to Judaism, it also unmistakably argues that those born Jewish are in some way superior to converts. While today we find it difficult to buy Halevi’s crude biological justification for this belief, it nonetheless raises the question: is there a fundamental difference between the Judaism of the born Jew and the Judaism of the convert?
The notion that Jews were not simply chosen but possessed superior souls helped sustain Halevi, who was living as a second-class citizen under Muslim rule. How does such a belief strike you? Is it possible to believe in Jewish Chosenness without believing that Jews are morally and spiritually superior?
Halkin reads The Kuzari as an argument that a Jew’s place—literally, not only metaphorically—is in the land of Israel. Do you agree with Halkin’s interpretation? How does it jibe with Halkin’s own life, in which he made aliyah?
Zionism Before Zionism
“My heart in the East
But the rest of me far in the West—
How can I savor this life, even taste what I eat? …
Yet gladly I’d leave
All the best of grand Spain
For one glimpse of Jerusalem’s dust.” –Yehuda Halevi
“My greatest hope is to head east as soon as I can, if only Providence will assist me.” –Yehuda Halevi, to Halfon ben Natanel.
The great (and final) journey in Halevi’s life was his trip to the Promised Land. Halkin writes that, for Halevi, this was more than a personal decision: rather, he felt that all Jews were required to try to head there. Do you agree with Halkin’s political reading of Halevi’s poetry—and Halevi’s life?
Halkin notes that in Halevi’s time, Jews—particularly Jews residing in the region—would make pilgrimages to the Holy Land, but not aliyah. Halevi, by contrast, departed Spain with the intention of living out the rest of his days in Palestine. Have you traveled to Israel? When you’ve been, does it feel more like a pilgrimage—a brief stop to pay respect—or aliyah–the beginning of a life-long commitment?
Halkin, who was brought up religious but was on the verge of essentially giving up his Judaism altogether, instead made aliyah, believing, “if [you] are serious about being Jewish, the only honest place to be it in was Israel.” Do you agree?
The Romance of Halevi
“Wander-life, you are an old friend—” –Yehuda Halevi
“Hard for the heart made vagrant are the memories
Of your ambrosia on my lips—but could I mix
My exhalations with their perfumed essence,
I would have a way to kiss you always.” –Yehuda Halevi
For Halkin, Halevi is one of the great romantic figures of Judaism. Why is this so? Can you think of any others who are comparable? Is a romantic soul such as Halevi’s an anomaly in Jewish history?
Can you identify with Halevi’s tireless wanderlust?
Halkin writes that Halevi’s greatest poem, “Why, my darling, have you barred all news” is “convincingly real”—in a manner unlike any of his other poems, it seems as though it simply must come out of his own experience. Do you agree? Can one tell about the provenance of a poem from the poem itself?
