Yehuda ha-Levi

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Jehuda ben Samuel ha-Levi , also Juda (h) Halevi ( Arabic   Abu 'l-Hasan ibn Alawi ; born around 1074 in Tudela ; died 1141 ), was a Sephardic philosopher and is considered the most important Hebrew poet of the Middle Ages.

Jehuda ha-Levi (Fantasy sculpture in the Ralli Museum in Caesarea , Israel)

Life

In Spain

Yehuda ha-Levi came from a wealthy and learned family and received extensive training in both Hebrew and Arabic. As a young man he traveled to Andalusia and spent a few years in Granada . Here he wrote his first poems, mainly eulogies and poetic letters, as well as some wine and love poems that reflect his carefree, enjoyable life in those years. After the Almoravids took power in Spain from Morocco in the 1090s, the situation of the Jews there deteriorated and Yehuda ha-Levi left Granada. During the next 20 years he toured large parts of Spain and North Africa and met numerous Jewish and non-Jewish dignitaries. He practiced medicine in Toledo , most likely in the service of the king and his nobles. Like many Jews of the time, he was initially of the opinion that the influence of the Jewish nobles and leading parishioners who were close to the royal family would guarantee the safety of the Jewish residents under Christian rule. However, after the noble Solomon ibn Ferrisuel, who was his patron and in the service of Alfonso VI. Had reached a high rank, was killed in Toledo in 1108, Yehuda left Toledo before the death of King Alfonso (1109) and traveled on. His fame and the circle of his friends and admirers, for whom he wrote numerous poems, increased. He was in correspondence with Jewish communities in North Africa, Egypt and Narbonne . He had a long friendship with Abraham ibn Esra . Both migrated together through the cities of Islamic Spain and at least once to North Africa.

Journey to the Holy Land

His decision to immigrate to Eretz Israel was only made after long internal struggles. On the one hand he was deeply connected to Spain, the land of the “graves of his fathers”, on the other hand he had to forego the honor and high social status he had acquired in his homeland. The living conditions in the Holy Land, then under the rule of the Crusaders , would be extremely difficult for him. However, his friend Halfon ha-Levi encouraged him to take the trip. On September 8, 1140, Yehuda ha-Levi arrived in Alexandria . From here he moved on to Cairo , where he stayed with Halfon ha-Levi. His friends urged him to stay in Egypt, pointing out the importance of the land where the first prophet worked and great miracles had occurred. Eventually Yehuda ha-Levi boarded a ship in Alexandria, but its departure for the Holy Land was delayed by bad weather. The circumstances of his death are not precisely recorded. Letters from the Cairo Geniza , in which his death is mentioned, can be deduced that he died about six months after his arrival in Egypt and was also buried there. A legend, later recorded in the Romanzero by Heinrich Heine , says that he reached Jerusalem , the destination of his dreams, and was trampled on by the horse of a passing Arab rider at the moment when he was writing his elegy Zion ha-lo tischali (" Don't you ask, Zion ”[for the welfare of your prisoners]) recited.

plant

poetry

About 800 poems by Yehuda ha-Levi are known. About 180 of them are songs of praise and lament for friends, mostly in the form of Qassida . The language of the praises is rich and brilliant with numerous embellishments. The opening is usually the most artistic part of the poem, whereas the praise itself makes up the bulk of the content, but is routinely written and contains excessive exaggeration without any individual traits. The same applies to his lamentations , which are also written in the Qassida form and deal with the death of friends and acquaintances. Here, too, the beginning of the poem is stylistically unique, while the following stanzas follow classic patterns. Influences of folk songs can often be seen here, sometimes the verse form of the ballad is used, especially in the dialogue between the bereaved at the grave and the deceased.

His 80 or so love poems are addressed to a deer or a gazelle or - in the case of wedding poems - to both. Content and form correspond to the usual Arabic-Hebrew love poetry, where the longing of the lover, the cruelty of the beloved who lustfully mocks her victims, her "deadly" looks and the glow of her countenance from the darkness of a stormy night is sung about. A folk tone can be seen in the clear and simple style of wedding poems.

Yehuda ha-Levi wrote about 350 piyutim . These can be divided into two groups: on the one hand, poems for use on Jewish holidays , in which the suffering of the Jewish people in the diaspora is discussed, and eschatological images from the Book of Daniel are used to express the longing for salvation soon . On the other hand, there are poems in which personal religious experiences are processed, especially slichot (requests for forgiveness), which were included in the prayer book of Yom Kippur in Jewish communities .

Most famous among his poems, however, are the songs of Zion , Shire Zion . The originality of these 35 or so poems results from the theme, which was unusual at the time, but even more from the depth of the expression. The above-mentioned Zion ha-lo tishali has been included in the liturgy of the 9th Av by Ashkenazi congregations in memory of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple .

His Muwashschah poems, the final verses of which, the Chardjas , are written in old Spanish ( Mozarabic ) dialect, are of great importance for Hispanic and Romance studies . This earliest evidence of Romance poetry is written in the Hebrew alphabet ( Aljamiado spelling). In this respect, Jehuda ha-Levi is considered to be the first poet known by name in Spanish:

“Yehuda ha-Lewis's poetic work is extraordinarily diverse. His secular poetry includes not only hundreds of compositions in the Hebrew language, but also numerous closing verses in an early form of Old Spanish; One can rightly say that he was the first poet known by name in Spanish . His poems on love, friendship, wine and nature have preserved the freshness of immortal youth to this day. His spiritual oeuvre includes all genres of the liturgy. "

- Georg Bossong : The Sephardi: History and Culture of the Spanish Jews.

philosophy

Ha-Levi's philosophy is set out in a book written in Arabic with the Arabic title Kitab al-Ḥujjah wal-Dalil fi Nuṣr al-Din al-Dhalil (“The Book of Argument and Evidence in Defense of Despised Faith” or “The Book of Argument and Proof of the Triumph of Despised Religion ”). Ha-Levi worked on it for twenty years and finished it shortly before he left for the Holy Land.

The book was translated into Hebrew by Jehuda ibn Tibbon in the middle of the 12th century and is known in this form under the title Sefer ha-Kusari ("Book of Kusari"; in short: the "Kusari" or Kuzarī ). The book was first printed in Fano in 1506 and reissued several times. A critical edition of the Arabic and Hebrew text was published in 1887 by Hartwig Hirschfeld (1854–1934, later lecturer in Judaeo-Arabic studies at Jews' College, London). The "Kusari" has been translated into numerous languages. The German translation that is still most widely used today - from the original Arabic version - also comes from Hirschfeld (first published in Wroclaw in 1885, reprinted several times since then, most recently in 2000).

The work is polemical and directed against Christianity and Islam, but above all against the Aristotelian philosophy, which Yehuda ha-Levi respected but viewed as a threat to the Jewish faith. The title “Kusari” refers to the king of the Khazars of the same name , whose and whose settled Turkic people in southern Russia convert to Judaism form the literary framework of the work.

In a dream, the Kusari learns from an angel that God approves of his intentions but not his deeds. He then first invited an Aristotelian philosopher and then a representative of Islam, Christianity and Judaism to clarify how he should shape his life. This frame narration is used by ha-Levi to illustrate and compare the respective beliefs and beliefs.

At the same time, the representative of Judaism who is devastatingly criticizing philosophy, a rabbi, has the best arguments for his belief and against the doctrine of emanation, which ends in the lunar sphere .

The work is divided into five parts, with parts II to V mainly containing the dialogue between the king and the Jewish scholar. The fourth part contains an explanation of the divine names Elohim and Adonai : "Elohim" is a general expression for the god known to philosophy, while "Adonai", a proper name , describes the God of Israel, which is only experienced through revelation and prophecy. This chapter closes with a summary and a commentary on Sefer Jezirah , which Yehuda ha-Levi believes goes back to the Patriarch Abraham .

It has been shown that although ha-Levi was more familiar with Aristotle's work than his predecessors, he did not get his knowledge from direct reading but from Avicenna . His criticism of Aristotelianism is strongly reminiscent of The Incoherence of the Philosophers of al-Ghazali .

aftermath

The first edition of the poems of Yehuda ha-Levi was done by Samuel David Luzzatto , who published a selection in Prague in 1864. Also in the 19th century, Ludwig Philippson wrote the historical novel Jehuda Halevi, the Jewish Minister , which was also translated into Yiddish and Hebrew . The best known in this context is the poem Jehuda Ben Halevy by Heinrich Heine , who, however, mistakenly believes the medieval author to be the author of the Shabbath hymn Lecha Dodi , which in fact comes from Schlomo Alkabez . Franz Rosenzweig has translated poems by Jehuda ha-Levi into German.

Some poems were used in the liturgy of Jewish worship, for example on Shabbat .

In 1923, a Zionist Sephardic Association "Jehuda Halevi" was founded in Vienna .

See also

  • Schlemihl , another context of the figure in cultural history

Editions and translations

  • Emil Bernhard : Jehuda Halevi. A divan. Erich Reiss, Berlin 1921.
  • Chaim Brody : Dīwān of Abû-l-Hasan Yehuda ha Levi. 4 volumes. Berlin 1894–1930.
  • Franz Rosenzweig : Jehuda Halevi. Ninety-two hymns and poems. Lambert Schneider, Berlin 1926.
  • Jehuda Halevi, David Cassel (translator): The Kusari . Goldschmidt, Basel 1990 (Hebrew, German).
  • Jehuda ha-Levi: Praise and Danck song of the Jews, called Mi Kamocha. Amsterdam 1700 urn : nbn: de: gbv: 9-g-3307986

literature

See also

Web links

Wikisource: Jehuda ben Halevy , by Heinrich Heine, from: Romanzero . 1851  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph Yahalom: sofa and Odyssey. Judah Halevi and the secular peotry of medieval Spain in the light of new discoveries from Petersburg. In: MEAH. Sección hebreo. Volume 44, 1995, pp. 23-45, here: p. 31.
  2. ↑ Alma Wood Rivera: Las jarchas mozárabes: Una compilación de lecturas . Diploma thesis, Monterrey (México) 1969 - Jehuda ha-Levi's old Spanish Hargas (jarchas) on jarchas.net
  3. ^ Dámaso Alonso: Cancioncillas de amigo mozárabes. Primavera temprana de la lírica europea . In: Revista de Filología Española , 33, 1949, p. 298
  4. ↑ Georg Bossong: The Sephardi: History and Culture of the Spanish Jews . Beck 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56238-9 , ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  5. ^ Gotthard Strohmaier : Avicenna. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-41946-1 , p. 136.
  6. ^ Gotthard Strohmaier: Avicenna. 1999, p. 136.
  7. ↑ Central Council of Jews in Germany: Ethics in Judaism . Hentrich and Hentrich, Berlin 2015, p. 314
  8. ^ Amor Ayala, Stefanie von Schmädel: Identity discourses and politicization of the Sephardi in Vienna using the example of the student association "Esperanza" 1896–1924. In: Zs. Transversal , special issue Jewish Resistance in NS, Center for Jewish Studies of the Karl-Franzens-University , 11th vol. 2. Studienverlag , Graz 2010, ISSN  1607-629X , pp. 83-102, here p. 94 with annotation - there further lit., in particular a book by Schmädel. The last evidence of this association comes from 1924
personal data
SURNAME Yehuda ha-Levi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Yehuda Halevi; Judah HaLewi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish-Jewish philosopher and Sephardic poet of the Middle Ages
DATE OF BIRTH around 1075
PLACE OF BIRTH Tudela
DATE OF DEATH 1141