This past summer I began leading a class on the Kuzari at Sephardic
Bikur Holim, Seattle. It was such a joy studying
this beautiful work with such an amazing group of people. On the Shabbat of Parashat Noach the class went
on hiatus and will resume, God willing, March 15th. We read and discussed the first 67
sub-sections of the first (of 5) sections of the Kuzari.
Over the next few months I will try and post as regularly as
possible. I will keep the posts short
and to the point. My goal is to create a
forum for discussion. In the first few
posts I will simply review what we have already learned. I will try and end each post with a question
(or questions) that I hope will get the discussion started.
And so, let us start at the beginning.
The Kuzari begins with a dream. The King of the Khazars (the Kuzari) had a
dream in which an angel informed him that his intention was good but his deeds
were not desirous to God. The Kuzari feels
driven to fulfill the demand placed on him by his dream. First he seeks the council of a
philosopher. However, he is not terribly
pleased with what he hears.
The world, as construed by the philosophers, cannot countenance
a God with desires. To have desire is to
be lacking and God, the most perfect being of all, can have no lack. To make matters worse there is no way that
God could care about the Kuzari and his particular predicament. God, being perfect, is not subject to
change. The Kuzari is one particular
individual who is constantly undergoing changes and transformations. If God were to know the Kuzari His knowledge would
change and, hence, He himself would be changing.
The Kuzari is not satisfied with the philosopher for one
simple reason—his idealistic world view contradicts his actual experience. As much as the philosopher might not be able
to construe God as having desires or knowledge of particulars and fit such a
God into his logical system, the Kuzari knows what he experienced: he had the
dream.
Though the path of the philosopher is rejected there is a
tremendous amount to be gained from Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi’s presentation. The philosopher helps us understand the
intellectual milieu of the Kuzari. Just
as we, as modern Jews, might struggle against scientism (the view that everything
can be known through the scientific method and only that which can be known
through the scientific method exists) Yehuda HaLevi had to struggle against
(let me coin a term): philosophism (the belief that everything can be known
through the philosophical method and only that which can be understood through
the philosophical method exists).
Question for discussion: in what ways might philosophy be valuable? In what ways might philosophy be dangerous?
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