Judah Halevi

Judah Halevi (Spain, c. 1075-1141), Hebrew poet and Jewish philosopher. His Book of the Kuzari, a fictional dialogue between a king and a Jew (based on the historical conversion to Judaism of the king of the Khazars), presents a critique of the dominant Aristotelian philosophy of the day, especially the theory of emanation. The critique is philosophical: Aristotle is wrong because he failed to demonstrate what he claimed, not because he contradicts Scripture. Metaphysical speculation is uncertain, whereas historical fact is undeniable. If, as rationalist philosophers suggest, prophecy is an intellectual process, one would expect to find prophets among all nations, in all places, and at all times. For Halevi, the fact is that only the prophets of Israel are universally acknowledged to be true prophets (i.e., also by Christianity and Islam). Halevi therefore proposes that the Jewish people, in addition to universal human reason, are endowed with a particular biological “divine faculty” (amr ilahi) enabling them, under certain conditions (in the ideal median clime of the Land of Israel, and when activated by the “divine actions” of the sacrificial cult), to prophesy.