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The Khazar Motif in Judah Halevi's Sefer Ha-Kuzari

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The Khazar Motif in Judah Halevi's Sefer Ha-Kuzari THE KHAZAR MOTIF IN JUDAH HALEVI’S SEFER HA-KUZARI Eliezer Schweid Judah Halevi’s fascinating book, beloved of both scholars and laymen, may well have been the main source of the myth of the Jewish Khazars and its persistence from the twelfth century to the present.1 It is only natural, therefore, that a collection of articles devoted to the Khazars should include a discussion of this motif in a book popularly named for the Khazar king. However, it should be pointed out at the start that Judah Halevi himself did not intend to develop that motif. On the contrary: for his own polemical purposes, he needed a story that had already been popularized as a historical fact. Indeed, Judah Halevi’s work originally had the rather unpoetic but apt title, Kitâb al-hujja& wa’l-dalîl fi nasr& al-dîn al-dhalîl (“Book of Argu- ment and Demonstration in Aid of the Despised Faith”).2 Moreover, he openly used the conversion of the Khazar king and his people merely as a calculated literary device. Judah Halevi learned the art of the philo- sophical dialogue, creating a didactic weave of dramatic plot and philo- sophical deliberation, from Plato.3 Readers were told in advance that the “scholar” of the dialogue was a literary label for the author, and that, similarly, the King of the Khazars was essentially a literary representa- tion of the active reader whom the author aims to convince. On the other hand, in the opening passage of the literary framework, Judah Halevi states his reliance on “something I had once heard con- cerning the arguments of a Rabbi who sojourned with the King of the Khazars . about four hundred years ago.”4 He adds, moreover, further confirmation of his story, saying that, according to “historical records,” 1 On the popularity and influence ofSefer ha-Kuzari among the Jews see Yehuda Even Shmuel’s introduction to his Hebrew translation: The Kosari of R. Yehuda Halevi (Hebrew; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1972), pp. 15–26. [In what follows, quotations will be cited, with slight modifications, from the English translation of Hartwig Hirschfeld (New York: Pardes Publishing House, 1946).] 2 For the title see Even Shmuel, “General Remark on the Title of the Book” (Hebrew), ibid., p. 243. 3 The imitation of the Platonic dialogue is particularly obvious in Part III, where Judah Halevi explicitly alludes to the structure of the debate in The Republic. 4 Opening passage of Sefer ha-Kuzari, p. 31. 280 eliezer schweid the King of the Khazars had become a convert to Judaism after consult- ing with three wise men—a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew. It seems plausible that he made use of the letter from the Khazar king to R. Has- dai ibn Shaprut, which at the time made a tremendous impression on Spanish Jewish communities. However, prior to all these remarks, Judah Halevi explicitly declares that he had been inspired to write his book by a topical challenge: “I was asked to state what arguments and replies I could bring to bear against the attacks of philosophers and followers of other religions, and also against [Jewish] sectarians who attacked the rest of Israel.”5 Given this declaration, the rather casual, obscure continuation, “This reminded me of something I had once heard concerning the arguments of a Rabbi,”6 has an obvious meaning: it tells the reader that the story is a literary device. For a reason to be clarified presently, Halevi preferred to formulate his answers to the pressing questions that he had been asked, as if they were the very answers that had convinced the King of the Kha- zars to convert to Judaism some four hundred years before. Halevi goes on to tell the story of the Khazar king and his conver- sion, but in a version adapted to his own needs: The king, described as a devout adherent of the Khazar religion, has a dream in which an angel appears to him. The apparition, portrayed as the king’s reward for his religious devotion, is supposed to enhance his faith: he is told that, while his “intentions are acceptable,” his actions are not. The king has the same dream three times, indicating that it was truly a prophetic dream. Understanding that he must determine which religion teaches the true path of worship, he calls first on a philosopher and, later, on three religious scholars, one after the other.7 The literary details of the story reveal its precise, sophisticated features, cleverly designed to base the scholar’s arguments on a firm foundation of direct religious experi- ence—for without prior experience those arguments will not stand up to philosophical criticism, as I shall show below. Now why did Judah Halevi prefer the story of the Khazar king to, say, a direct confrontation between a Jewish scholar, on the one hand, and his contemporary counterparts—a philosopher, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Karaite—in order to protect his Jewish readers (he was clearly thinking 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Part I, 1–12 (pp. 31–39)..
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