God’s Chosen People: Judah Halevi’s ‘Kuzari’ and the Shī‘ī Imām Doctrine by Ehud Krinis (review)

Originally published in 2012 in Hebrew, this is a difficult and highly technical book aimed at specialists in the field of Judeo-Arabic and Islamic studies. It aims to show that Judah Halevi’s Kuzari owes much more to Shi’ite texts than has been usually accepted. There are several aspects of the book that make it important for students of religion in general and Jewish Studies in particular. It is not just that we must recognise the major influence of early Islam on rabbinical traditions – if only for polemical purposes, at a period of history when there is great tension within Islam (as well as specifically radical political ideologies within Muslim doctrines) – but also that dynamic and creative thinkers like Halevi borrow from the non-Jewish world around them in a witty and richly speculative way. We must, therefore, also recognise that we have to see the development of contemporary Jewish thought throughout the history of the Galut (exile and dispersion) as a continuing process, albeit in some ages more disruptive of previous traditions than in others. The myth of absolute interpretative and spiritual continuity in orthodox circles of Judaism is precisely that, something based more on wishful thinking (or assertion) than historical fact.

It seems, in the Kuzari, that the King can make an objective and strategic choice between the three authorities brought before him: the Pagan Philosopher representing a high form of classical monotheism; the Rabbi who stands as living proof the Law and the promise that is able to mediate between humanity and God through the Chosen People; the Christian with his supposedly historical figure of Jesus as Christ the Messiah and ultimate Prophet; and the Muslim as the final avatar of ancient Hebrew thought transmuted into a militant inheritor of ancient ideas and institutions. But the dialogic argument was created in Andalusia under Muslim domination, written in Arabic, and imbued with Shi’ite and some Ismali principles. Despite the rationalisations of the politico-military configuration of Christendom and Islam that the Kazar ruler seeks to play off one another to the best advantage of his state and people, Judah Halevi presents each of the antagonistic figures in a complexity that transcends these geopolitical considerations; and thus directs the conclusion of the argument to favour Judaism in its post-Temple rabbinical form, while the author shows how original to biblical and Talmudic tradition are some of Halevi’s ideas derived from Christian and Muslim sources.