The Zionism of Judah Halevi

Judah ben Shmuel Halevi (aka Judah Halevi) is one of the most famous of all jewish poets and during his life in Islamic Spain (and then Palestine) in the 11th and 12th centuries: he was one of the best known of all jewish wordsmiths. Since his reputation as a great poet has long been pushed by the Zionist movement (as well as by jewish historians more generally): I thought it appropriate to examine what we can be understand of Halevi's proto-Zionist desire to return to and live in Palestine.

The obvious place to start is Halevi's poems and to afford the reader a better opportunity to understand and judge my commentary I have elected to reproduce substantial segments of them. (1)

By way of beginning let's take Halevi's poem 'My Heart is in the East', in which we find the following stated:

'My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west -

How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me?

How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet

Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?'

This section of 'My Heart is in the East' makes clear that Halevi viewed Palestine as being occupied by Arabs (i.e., Edom) and as such it was a jewish homeland that was enslaved by (i.e., in the fetters of) Arabs. Halevi's concern here is primarily religious in that he is troubled that he might not be able to undertake all the religious rites, rituals and duties (presumably the sacrifice of the red heifer for one thing and the special halakhic levies of crops to the priestly class [Kohanim] for another) that he wishes to because Palestine is not ruled by the jews.

Halevi states this in similar fashion in his poem 'In the Paths of the Ark' when he relates:

'Until I taste the dust of its hiding place that is more sweet than honey,

And I see the habitation of that beateous one who hath forgotten her nest,

Since the doves be driven away, and ravens abide there.

Because of this my soul is sorely sick and grieved,

For through my sin the morn is turned to evening time.

Verily, my heart faints and longs for the mount of myrrh,

Even as the soul desires to find its inmost home.'

So as we retain clarity as to Halevi's meaning: it is important to note that when Halevi speaks of the doves he means the Israelites (i.e., the jews) and when he speaks of ravens he means the Arabs. (2) We can see from this quoted section of 'In the Paths of the Ark' that Halevi envisions a Palestine that is jewish-owned territory, but has been forcibly occupied by non-jews: in this case Arabs.

This causes Halevi a deep sense of religious and moral grief, which in turn he desires to help cure by travelling to Palestine himself so that at least if he has to be in 'the fetters of Edom' then he can be so in the lands of the Bible.

This is most obviously demonstrated in the first part of his poem 'On the Sea', which reads as follows:

'Until I thank Thy mercies, and I think

The waves of the sea and the wind of the west;

Let them waft me to the place of the yoke of Thy love,

And bear far from me the Arab yoke.

And how shall my desires not find fulfilment,

Seeing I trust in Thee, and Thou art pledged to me?'

In other words Halevi desires to be in what he regards as the land of his ancestors that was gifted to them and held in trust by the god he so devoutly believes in.

We see this deep religious devotion, as well as hints as to the darker side to Halevi's proto-Zionism, in his poem 'On Eagles' Wings' when we read:

'And the goal of my thoughts

To make my couch

'Mid my fathers' graves

In the demesne of the pure.'

Now with the quoted text: we can see that Halevi wants to live his life in the place that he associates with his ancestors, but we can also see anti-gentile jewish supremacist sentiment creeping in when he talks about the graves of his ancestors being the land (demesne) of the pure.

In other words the jews are the pure, Palestine is their land and as such those who are not jewish are necessarily impure and as such are lesser beings when compared to the jewish people.

This attitude becomes more obvious when we look to the poem 'Before Thee is my Whole Desire' when we read:

'Stranger and sojourner am I on the face of the earth,

While in her womb is mine appointed home.'

The stranger and sojourner is a Torah reference to those who are not Israelites (i.e., non-jews) who live among the jews.

So what Halevi is actually saying here is that the jews are a distinct and separate people from non-jews even though they live among them and just as with the strangers and sojourners of the Torah: good jews do not marry with non-jews, because to do so would be a violation of the purity of Israel and (necessarily) god's creation.

This is true even though according to Halevi the jews desire to back to their own land as apportioned to them by god in the Torah and still held in trust.

These ideas become more explicit in Halevi's poem 'Thou Who Knows Our Sorrows' when he states that:

'They ask the way to Zion – they pray toward her -

The children exiled from her border, but which have not stripped themselves of their adornment.

The beautiful adornment for which they were praised, for this they are slain and defiled -

The treasures they have inherited at Horeb, whereby they are justified and proud;

Slaves bear rule over them, but they will never cease to call Thee

Until Thou turn our captivity and comfort our waste places.'

Notice how Halevi slips between eulogizing Palestine as the ancestral homeland of the jews into an attack on non-jews as 'slaves' who unrightfully and unnaturally rule over their betters: the jews. What Halevi envisions would be the right order of things is quite clearly a return to the days of the rejection of the stranger and sojourner by the Israelites as well as the maintenance of non-jews in their proper place: as slaves to the jews.

This interpretation finds confirmation in Halevi's philosophical work 'Kitab al-Khazari' when we read his enunciation of the jewish position being that:

'Israel amidst the nations is like the heart amidst the organs of the body; it is at one and the same time the most sick and the most healthy of them.' (3)

In other words the natural order of creation according to Halevi has been inverted, because while jews are the heart of things (i.e., acting as the controlling agent in the body as the heart was viewed in the medical theories of Halevi's time) all is well, but as soon as the jews are subject to control from the other organs (non-jews) rather than controlling them: it leads to spiritual and material sickness among the nations even if the jews maintain their spiritual health by keeping their covenant with Yahweh.

We can see this jewish supremacism rationalized by Halevi in his poem 'Ode to Zion' when we read:

'Thou art the house of royalty; thou art the throne of the Lord, and how

Do slaves sit now upon thy princes' thrones?

Would might be wandering in the places where

God was revealed unto thy seers and messengers.

[...]

Over they desolation, and that weep over thy ruin, -

They that, from the pit of the captive, pant toward thee, worshipping,

Every one from his own place, toward thy gates;

The flocks of thy multitude, which were exiled and scattered

From mount to hill, but have not forgotten thy fold;

[...]

He will change. He will wholly sweep away all the realms of idols;

Thy splendor is for ever, from age to age thy crown.

They God hath desired thee for a dwelling place; and happy is the man

Whom He chooses and brings near that he may rest within thy courts.

Happy is he that waits, that comes nigh and sees the rising

Of thy light, when on him thy dawn shall break -

That he may see the welfare of thy chosen, and rejoice

In thy rejoicing, when thou turns back unto thine olden youth.'

In the above quoted text from his 'Ode to Zion': we can once again see Halevi's supremacist sentiments being given full reign when he talks of how slaves sit on the throne of princes.

The slaves in this instance are non-jews more broadly (not just Arabs) because as he said in his 'Kitab al-Khazari': jews are the heart and the controller of the body of humanity and as such the other organs [non-jews] as slaves to them.

The reference is also to the fact that jews consider gentiles, and the Arabs in particular (i.e., those descending from Hagar, the slave of Abraham, through her son Ishmael), to be descendants of slaves who once served the jews and that is slavery is the right and proper order of things.

While the jews by contrast are hailed by Halevi as the people who the omnipotent, omnipresent creator of the universe revealed himself to in the persons of the 'prophets and seers' of the Israelites.

We are then treated in the second paragraph of the quoted text to a bit of self-pity from Halevi about how the jews have been cast out of Palestine and bidden to walk the earth without having a home of their own (notice the striking similarity to today's jewish reading and interpretation of their history).

Then Halevi counsels his fellow jews to wait, because the god he so devoutly worships is coming to 'sweep away the realms of idols' (i.e., the kingdoms and countries of the non-jews) and set up the jews as his chosen people once again in the material world by placing them at the head of the world.

In essence what we are being told here by Halevi is that the jews patiently await the time when their god will enact his will onto the realms of the gentiles, destroying all other religions but Judaism and placing the jews in Palestine while ordaining them as the de facto rulers of the universe: who he will then abide with for all time in the restored temple of Solomon.

If you could think of a bloody apocalyptic vision of the future: then Halevi is portraying one that is possibly worse than anything you might think of, because he has placed the jews as the sanctimonious self-serving priests above all mankind who they will then tyrannize however they please in the name of Yahweh.

This future however certain it may be to Halevi: still requires the jews to have faith and abide by the Mitzvoth of Judaism.

This can be seen in Halevi's poem 'Sleeper with Heart Awake' when we read:

'O Sleeper, with heart awake, burning and tempest-tossed,

Go forth now and shake thyself, and walk in the light of My face.

Arise, ride on and prosper: there shall come forth a star for thee,

And he who lay down in the dungeon shall go up to the summit of Sinai.

Let not their soul exult which say: Condemned Is Zion; for lo! My hear is there, and Mine eyes are there.'

This is simply Halevi telling his fellow jews to have faith for he believes that Zion (i.e., the jews) is not condemned by Yahweh and by believing as such the jews cause the advent of their triumph to be retarded.

Indeed Halevi believed - like many religious Zionists do today - that going to live in Palestine was actually a religious commandment devolved on jews by Yahweh.

This can be seen in the 'Kitab al-Khazari' when he writes that:

'One sentence is: All roads lead up to Palestine, but none from it. Concerning a woman who refuses to go there with her husband, they decreed that she is divorced, and forfeits her marriage settlement. On the other hand, if the husband refuses to accompany his wife to Palestine, he is bound to divorce her and pay her settlement. They further say: It is better to dwell in the Holy Land, even in a town mostly inhabited by heathens, than abroad in a town chiefly peopled by Israelites; for he who dwells in the Holy Land is compared to him who has a God, whilst he who dwells abroad is compared to him who has no God.' (4)

In other words: to Judah Halevi Zionism was a necessary part of his religious belief, which would eventually herald the triumph of the jews over non-jews with the restoration of the jews to Palestine and the enslavement of the nations of the world as well as the destruction of all religions other than Judaism.

References

(1) For this I have used Nina Salaman's 1928 translation.

(2) Nina Salaman, 1928, 'Selected Poems of Jehudah Halevi', 1st Edition, Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, p. 37, n. 1

(3) Judah Halevi, Kitab al-Khazari, 2:36 (Hartwig Hirschfeld translation)

(4) Ibid., 2:22