Season 1: Episode 20 - My Heart is in the East

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My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west. How can I find savor and food? How shall it be sweet to me? How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet Zion lies beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains? A light thing would it seem to me to leave all the good things of Spain, seeing how precious in my eyes to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary. You know, the power of poetry is that it puts the words of the story into song. And I want to harness that song in order to tell a story of the past that will leave you singing in the present, and all of us ready for a harmonious future together. Because I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 20, My Heart is in the East.

When Rabbi Yehudah Levy, the great poet laureate of medieval Spain, finally reached the walls of Jerusalem, it was just about sunset. He'd been traveling for years, some might say decades, to get to this moment. And his heart was overwhelmed with love of the city of his dreams. And he sang out his famous poem, Zion, Halo Tish Ali. Zion, will you not ask after the welfare of your prisoners? who seek your welfare and are the remnant of your flock. And Rabbi Gedalia Ibn Yacha tells us in his book, that in that very moment, as Rabbi Yehuda Alevi sang out the praises and pleaded with the city to remember her lost children, he was ridden down and killed by an Arab horseman who dashed out from the gate. And if you want to know how it is that the greatest poet of medieval Spain actually died at the foot of the wall of Jerusalem, well then we have to go back in time.

Just a little bit. Back to that golden age. Because last week we spoke about it as a passionate and even sensual engagement with God in the world. Or even as just with the world itself. And that passion is not going to fade. On the contrary, as we move forward in time, the call of the flesh is only going to grow stronger in Iberian culture. But we want to know what Rabbi Yehudah Levi was doing there, and therefore we have to add another couple of elements to our story. This week in particular we're going to need to speak about the ascendance of the rational philosophy within Iberian Jewry, and the pious pushback which resulted. The twin pursuits of poetry and philosophy continued to thrive within Am Yisrael as the 11th century came to close, and even well into the 12th, which actually leads many historians to include this period as part of the Golden Age.

But though the literary and intellectual production, or productivity I should say, of Am Yisrael, continued to grow, the cultural context in which they found themselves was undergoing an incredibly radical shift. Now we spoke about the breakup of the Caliphate of Qortuba, that independent Muslim kingdom that absorbed most of the Iberian Peninsula, into the Taifa, these small Muslim city-states which immediately began to fight with each other as they broke up. The process began with the destruction of the fabled Palace of Qodoban 1009 and really culminated in the Civil War of 1031. Now, this was actually good news for the Jews. They spread out in the service of all these new Muslim city-states. You can go back to the last episode and listen to the story of Shmuel and Nugget if you want to recall.

But in many ways, it was the beginning of the end, because at precisely this time, the northern Christian territories that had been pushed aside by the invading Muslim armies began to consolidate into increasingly powerful kingdoms. And these Christian-controlled city-states themselves started to expand slowly southward through the whole 11th century. they waded right into the wars which raged between these Muslim city-states and used that classic tactic of divide and conquer. If you're interested, by the way, in looking to some great history that lies outside of our story, you should look up El Cid, the legendary Spanish military hero who actually at this time led various armies into battle, sometimes on behalf of the Christian and sometimes on behalf of the Muslims.

Nevertheless, this southward advance is known in Spanish history as the Reconquista, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim invaders by the so-called native Christians. Now, when we get to the end of our story in Spain, at the close of the 15th century, we're going to have to discuss the nature and origins of these conflicting narratives around what exactly happened in 1492, but for now, suffice it to say that the northern Christian kingdoms saw themselves as liberating what had been Christian Visigothic lands from the infidel. If we want to say that the Grenada massacre of 1066 that we spoke about in the last episode was the death of Yosef Hadnagi, the son of Shmuel, and the destruction of most of the Jewish community of Grenada, if that signaled the end of unquestioned peace and prosperity for the Jews in Muslim al-Andalus, then the fall of the city of Toledo marks the turning point in the Christian Reconquista.

That happens in 1085. And that defeat, followed by the Norman conquest of Sicily in 1091 and the Crusaders' sack of Jerusalem in 1099 shook the confidence of the Islamic Empire to its core. I'm going to leave a full discussion of the Crusades for our jump to the European continental culture in coming episodes, but it's actually critical to understand that the Christian advance against the Muslims in Iberia is the real beginning of the Crusading energy in Europe. In fact, the whole awakening to the notion that there was such a thing as Christian Europe had its origins in the original wave of Muslim conquest, because though we spoke about the crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar by the Muslim armies in 711, I don't believe we mentioned how they were snapped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, right in the Pyrenees in the year 732.

And that cessation of conquest really is what awakened within Europe the sense that they were a Christian entity as opposed to this now raging Muslim enemy. And the consciousness of Christian Europe has been on a low boil ever since. In a sense, the Crusades are actually the first act of collective assertiveness, in that sense, like almost a foreign policy on the part of this amorphous entity that's coming to be. For now, just keep in mind that our context is the holy war against the infidel, depending on who you are, that will define who the infidel is. And though the Jews are going to prove crucial allies in the beginning, they too ultimately lie outside of the Christian community of faith and will be painted as the infidel in the end.

It's going to take another century and a half until the Muslims are pushed back into the Kingdom of Granada at the far southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. But the magnanimity toward the weak, which often accompanies undisputed power, will disappear from the Islamic Empire by the end of the 11th century. And this is where our story really begins. So Rebbe Huda Alevi may have died in the Holy Land, but he was born in the city of Toledo, a decade or so before it fell to the Christian armies. And at a young age, he headed south to Al-Andalus, to Muslim Liberia, in order to pursue his education, following the pattern of many Jews who suddenly found themselves under Christian rule, but nevertheless saw themselves still as part of Judeo-Arabic culture.

Now, borders in the pre-nation state world were always porous, and the Jews played an important role as cultural interlocutors the bridge as always between two worlds And so they went back and forth between Christian and Muslim Iberia The young Rabbi Yehuda quickly found his place in the yeshiva established by Rabbi Yitzhak al-Fasi in Lutchena, a Corban city so dominated by the Jews that it was already known in his day as the Jews' city. A word about Rabbi Al-Fasi, definitely worthwhile, who's also known as the Rif, from the initials of his name, Rav Yitzhak Al-Fasi, definitely in order. So, the Rif was the inheritor of the Torah of the Ge'onim, which he had received from his teachers, Rabbeinu Nisim and Rabbeinu Hanane.

Go back to the end of episode 17, if you want to get the story of how these rabbinic giants actually landed in North Africa. The Rif inherited the Torah, but he was far from a passive recipient. During his 40 years in Fez, Morocco, thus Al-Fasi, the Fezi, the Rift produced the first digest of the Gemara, known simply as the Halakhot, the laws. And by digest, I mean that he boiled down the entire Gemara, removing the give-and-take discussions which so characterized its logic, and all of the Agatic storytelling material, and leaving only the relevant legal decisions. What was left was actually the first practical halakhic work Under the hands of the Riff, the Gemara was no longer even nominally a conversation.

It became a manual for guiding behavior. Now, even though it maintained the structure of the Gemara, he did not break up the tractates into something else. The Riff's halachot paved the way for the great legal codes which will begin to come in the generations ahead. And this is why the Rambam, the great legal mind of the coming generation, will praise the halachot saying that it has I quote, superseded all the Gona codes, for it contains all the decisions and laws which we need in our day. This move toward framing the Torah in terms of practical accessibility and behavioral utility is going to be an incredibly important topic for us in the coming episodes. But for now, since what we're after is understanding Rabbi Yehudah Levi, look at the Riff as a bridge who brings the Torah of North Africa to Spain.

because in 1088 he was denounced by informers to the Berber government on an unknown charge and he fled across the Strait of Gibraltar ultimately finding his home in Lucena and Rabbi Yehuda Halevi was able to drink from his waters before the rift died in 1103 at the ripe old age of 90 So, after mastering the wisdom of the sages as well as drawing deeply from the waters of the Hebrew language and biblical analysis as was the custom of Torah learning in Spain Rabbi Yehuda quickly made his name known as a poet. He did that because he was befriended by the elder statesman of Hebrew poetry, Rabbi Moshe ibn Ezra, and moved to the city of Granada under his patronage, still the capital and cultural light of Muslim Spain.

You know, this could be compared to a young unknown being taken under the wing by Nathan Alterman or Robert Frost, depending on your cultural context. It was a big deal. and, therefore, the fast track into the heart of the courtier's high life of Al-Andalus. And here, Rabbi Hurd experienced the sunset magnificence of Andalusian Jewish culture. His poetry from the period tells it all. It's filled with that same sensual longing for God, wine, and flesh that we discussed at length in the last episode. But after a very few rich and decadent years of wine parties, under the stars and gardens filled with mountains, lit by torches perfumed with jasmine and Arabian scents, this world came to an end. In the wake of the fall of Toledo in 1085, the Christian armies of Alfonso VI of Castile had been advancing steadily and now threatened to overrun the Taifa kingdoms of all southern Iberia.

In response, the princes of the Taifa actually managed to unite in their will, if not in their political embodiment, and they invited the Berber king, Yosef ibn Tashrin, to cross the streets of Gibraltar with his tribesmen. Now, the Berbers, and these in particular, who are ultimately known as the Almoravids, were far more purist in their Islamic beliefs than the decadent and heterodox Andalusians. Whether it was the years of wealth and power, the multicultural nature of the society, or the inroads of philosophy on the purity of their Islamic faith, the Arabs of Al-Andalus lacked the fire to resist the infidels advancing from the north. And therefore, they imported. And indeed, these imported Berber armies managed to halt the Christian advance.

And King Yosef even hammered together the Taifa once again into a single political entity under his rule. And it appears that the Muslim populace actually welcomed him. they were tired of the heavy taxation from the princes who they saw freeing away on a hedonistic lifestyle and furthermore, the religious teachers of the day who held tremendous sway with the populace detested these princes for their almost complete indifference to Islamic law and with the arrival of the Almoravids Jewish life in Granada disintegrated rapidly Jews lost all positions of power and even lost the protected demi-status of second-class citizenship, which was meant to be given to them by Islamic law. This was not honored by these fanatics.

And Rabbi Yehuda Lebi returned north amongst the wave of Jews who now fled Islamic intolerance seeking shelter in the Christian kingdoms. In many ways, this was truly the end of a living Judeo-Arabic culture in Muslim Iberia. But the memory of what had been loss, and the harsh contrasts with the life of the exiles found in the north also laid the first seeds of the legend of the Golden Age. Nostalgia for the rich life of Al-Andalus fills in particular the poetry of Moshe ibn Ezra at this period, and he characterizes the Jewish communities of Christian Spain to which he fled north as uncouth, uncultured, and all but unintelligible. That last one is the ultimate insult for a poet. Rabbi Yehuda managed to find a new patron for himself back in his birthplace of Toledo, but the stability didn't last there either.

And when his patron was assassinated in the endless battles of court life, he began to wander from city to city, sometimes back to the Muslim South and even beyond to North Africa, perhaps further, all the while making his name through poetry and his living as a physician. It was really during this period that Rabbi Yehuda composed the majority of his almost 800 existent poems. An incredible treasure of a lifetime which earned him really the recognition even in his own generation as the poet of Am Yisrael. In these wanderings, Rabbi Yehuda witnessed the complete destruction of Jewish communities by the armies of the Reconquista coming from the north and saw further waves of exiles flowing northward even in the face of that destruction but away from fanatical El Moravids.

Between the hosts of Seir and Kedar, my host is lost, he says. Israel's host is vanished. They wage their wars, and we fall when they fall. Thus is ever was in Israel. The battles of the Reconquista and the Crusade, which spread across Europe into the east, actually awoke something else. It was the Messianic spirit once again on the rise amongst the Jews. and it actually is not going to go quiet for quite a number of centuries. Because the hope for redemption is a foundation for life in exile. Remember, exile, as I've defined it, is actually a product of the belief that I am not where I belong. And there's only so long that you can hold that sense of alienation if it's not coupled with the sense that eventually I'll get there.

But the desperate expectation that exile is imminent in its end is always a big red flashing light on the historical dashboard Because it means that day hope is being lost in the face of the intensity of suffering And when this happens, it can bring tremendous creativity, and it can bring utter disaster. Now, in a few episodes, we'll actually discuss how the Zohar, the great book of Jewish mysticism, comes to light specifically in this context of darkness and messianic longing. but for now, in the story of Rebu Yehuda Levi he himself not only observed this welling of messianic longing but he participated in it he even predicted the appearance of the Messiah in the year 1130 it hasn't happened if you didn't notice actually, his prediction appears in a short poem written after Alfonso VII king of Castile took the title Emperor of all Spain because it looked like the battle between Edom Christianity and Ishmael, the Arabs might finally be decided, but of course it was not.

And so, as is true up until this very day, all of these messianic predictions came to naught. In addition to imbibing this messianic wave while he was crisscrossing Christian and Muslim Spain, Rabbi Yehuda also began to sense a new danger arising that was a real threat to the safety of Am Yisrael. This was no longer the hedonism of his youth, which certainly hadn't gone away, and as I said, in many ways, is going to intensify, or even the physical threat of the warring armies that he saw driving the Jews from place to place. What he saw was philosophy. In particular, Aristotelian philosophy, which was a rising tide amongst the Muslim and Jewish courtiers of his day. Now, the Neoplatonic philosophy, which we spoke about in the previous episode, and which had dominated Jewish and Muslim thought in the 11th century had been focused upwards, so to speak, toward an ideal world of forms which were themselves emanations of the One.

And it was founded on the belief that moral and intellectual perfection could lead to an ecstatic union with this One, with the source of life, if you recall Ibn Gabirol's poetry. and as such, it was a philosophical stance relatively easily reconciled with the traditional perspective of the Torah. But Aristotle is another matter altogether. The specific points of Aristotelian philosophy that pose the challenge of the Jewish understanding of reality are not so critical for this discussion. But what is important is to understand that philosophy to Aristotle means science. It means an approach to the world which starts from the facts given by experience and not from theories about existence. It's the empirical outlook.

And, once that's accepted, all philosophical speculation must proceed without regard to any religious doctrine, but rather based on arguments and logical principles which have been laid down by Aristotle and subsequently purified by the philosophers. That's it. That's all that's legitimate. Only after the content of faith and reason are delineated independently, only then can they be compared, and it's not a given that they can be harmonized. Because in Aristotle's world, everything fits and everything has a reason. If it can't be explained by natural law and logical argument, it is not correct. Now, none of these principles are in and of themselves necessarily a threat or contradict the life of the Torah.

However, by making philosophical analysis the standard of measure for truth, the Aristotelian perspective began to erode the traditional practices which held the Jews fast to the Torah and was really the glue of their communal structure. Because, face it, the commandments often defy logic. In fact, according to some opinions, intentionally so, in order that we do them purely for the sake of God and not because of our understanding. But the philosophical stance doesn't abide action that can't be justified according to reason. And you know what? It's always hard to be a Jew. And at this point in medieval Spanish history, it's getting harder every day. And now, the intellectual elite of Am Yisrael is being bombarded by a powerful challenge to the rationality of their actions, and furthermore, is being given a strong justification for abandoning the commandment because they will not lead to the truth.

it's worth remembering that the first entry of Aristotle into the Jewish story was actually way back when he appeared in the land of Israel in the 4th century before the common era remember, he was the tutor of Alexander the Great go back and listen to episode 4 if you want to understand how old this challenge is meanwhile, you also want to know how is it that his ideas are suddenly beginning to undermine the foundations of traditional faith in 12th century medieval Spain Well, the answer is actually relatively simple. During late antiquity and into the early Christian era, Latin replaced Greek as the primary scholarly language in Christian Europe. And as a result of this and other cultural shifts, the works of Aristotle, which were of course originally written in Greek, were all but absent from Western culture until the 12th century.

They began to make their way back largely through the medium of translations made by early Muslim philosophers, like Avicenna and Averroes and we'll discuss a bit of that in the coming episode when we talk about the great school of translators in Toledo. Also important to remember that this attempt to reconcile rational philosophy with the revealed Torah is nothing new for us. We spoke at length about Rav Sa'ad-Gowen's belief this was not only possible but was actually a positive religious obligation. And Rabbi Yehud Ha'ad-Led himself had a rationalist youth in addition to his mild bout of hedonism. And of course, most importantly, Rav Moshe ben Maimon, the Rambam, is still on our horizon. We'll discuss him in due course.

But for now, know that there is a storm beginning to brew over philosophy. And when it breaks, Jews will burn the books of the Rambam, they'll wage bitter excommunication battles, and it may even have a role in the coming wave's mass conversion. For the sake of our story, suffices to say that Rabbi Yehuda's heart turned against the emptiness of philosophy just as his stomach had turned against the decadent life of court tears. And being the creative soul that he was, the result was his greatest work of literature, the Kuzari. The Kuzari is an incredible treatment of the depths of the Torah. And it's important to our story because its perspective is from inside out. Unlike his later contemporary, the Rambam, Rabbi Yehudah Levi is not interested in demonstrating the ability of the Torah to stand up to philosophical critique or improving its merits through comparative religion.

He tells the reader, if you want to understand the Torah, you have to come inside and live it. And not just the reader, but the king. Because the work is divided into five ma'amarim, basically essays on the fundamental aspects of Torah and a criticism of philosophical perspective, but is presented in the form of a dialogue between the pagan king of the Khazars and a Jew who has been invited to instruct him in the principles of the Jewish religion. This literary frame is actually in many ways more important for our story than the content of their discussion. I hope you recall, back in episode 18, Chazday ibn Shaprut, that oh so important unofficial vizier to Abed Arachman III, the first caliph of Cordoba, sent a letter to the king of the Khazars, that semi-legendary in his time kingdom which had converted to Judaism somewhere to the east and sometime in the early Middle Ages.

For Chazdai as we spoke about the existence of an independent Jewish kingdom was part and parcel of the Messianic dream And we actually know now that this kingdom truly existed But Rabbi Yudah Halevi used the story of the conversion of the king as the literary frame for his exposition of the depths of the Torah. It says in the introduction, To him, said the king, came a dream, and it appeared as if an angel addressed him saying, thy way of thinking is indeed pleasing to the creator, but not thy way of acting. Yet he was so zealous in the performance of the Kesar religion that he devoted himself with a perfect heart to the service of the temple and sacrifices he doubled down on his idolatry. And notwithstanding, goes on the book, the angel came again at night and repeated, thy way of thinking is pleasing to God, but not thy way of acting.

and so the king wakes and he realizes he's got a problem his intentions are good but he doesn't know how to realize them in action his first choice is to turn to a philosopher of course, in order to determine the true path of action desirable to God and the answer of the philosopher really says it all there is no favor or dislike in God because he is above desire and intention. As he goes on in reply to the king's desire to have a religion which can guide his actions, the philosopher actually tells him simply to choose whichever he likes or make one of himself based on the principles of philosophy. But specificity of action does not matter to God. The king actually rejects the philosopher on the ground that his speculations haven't led him to prophecy.

to any relationship with the living God, but rather to ideas about the divine. And what the king is after is actions which will lead him to a relationship. So he goes on to summon a priest and an imam, this is like the earliest multicultural joke, both of whom offer the stories of the Torah as the bedrock proof that God does indeed communicate with and therefore care about humanity. So then, even though the king had rejected out of hand even discussing it with the Jews, because they were a lowly and despised and scattered people, he has to take the next logical step and he goes to the source. Enter the rabbi. Now the rabbi opens by telling the king that just as science is the sum of all the elements of truth discovered by successive generations, so too religious training should be based on accumulated traditions.

In other words, history is the key factor in the development of a human culture of truth. He goes on to say that the Jews are the only depositories of a written history of the development of the human race from the beginning of the world, and therefore the superiority of their tradition cannot be denied. Now the work progresses as a dialogue between the king and the rabbi. He gets most of the book. And Rabbi Yehuda, of course, through this dialogue, unfolds a vision. and it's a vision in which Am Yisrael is the heart that pumps the divine life throughout all creation. That image, the image of Am Yisrael, is the heart of creation. Together with the assertion that the Torah can only be truly understood from within, are precisely why the voices of Jewish particularism and exceptionalism claim Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi and the Kuzari as their guiding light, as really the crown jewel of Jewish thought.

this is not the time or place to dive into the struggle around particularism and universalism in the Torah and the role which the historical manifestation of the Jewish people plays in creation I will say this though the Zohar teaches that the soul comes into the world to reconcile the tension between Prat and Klav, between the particular and the universal and our master and teacher Rabbi Avram Yitzchak Cohen Cook says that when the third temple is built, let it be soon, let it be now it will be a harmonization of these polar principles. A harmonization. You can't have one without the other. Because Rabbi Yehuda portrays Israel as the heart of creation. But don't forget that a heart disconnected from the body isn't life.

It's pathology. So the Kuzari is a rich and vast treatment of the principles of the Torah and I commend it to you all as a critical read. But for our story, we need to take away three principles, and they really come through the literary frame. First, the whole essence of the king's dream. The voice he hears telling him that his way of thinking is pleasing to the creator, but not his way of acting. This tells us that actions matter. And if you never listen to another word I say, please hear this. Your actions matter to God and humanity. In this, Rabbi Yehudah is aiming a direct blow at the philosophy he sees weakening the hands of his people in their commitment to the sanctity and specificity of action.

He wants to strengthen Am Yisrael. Second, in the great struggle of revealed religion, history is the proof that the Jews are right. Now, this seems to be a pretty absurd assertion for a man who was wandering exiled between two warring religious empires of the world, and furthermore, whose people hadn't been exiled from their own homeland at this point for over a thousand years. But remember, his message is to the Jews who will read this work in his own time, and in the generations to come. And really that message is, don't give up. Don't give up. remember that the story of the past is exactly what will set us on the road to the future of which we dream exile is a process of purification not a result of abandonment the third and final element actually comes in the closing moments of the work and that is that salvation lies in the east because at the end of their dialogue the rabbi announces his intention to part with the king and undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem the king protests that after a thousand years of destruction, the Spirit of God is gone from that land, and nothing awaits the rabbi but desolation.

Stay here with me, he says. I've built you a kingdom that you can help me rule. And the rabbi replies by quoting Tehillim, the book of Psalms. Atatakum terachem tzion, you will rise. You'll have mercy on Zion, for there's a time to favor it, for the appointed season has arrived, for your servants desired its stones and favored its dust. this means he says that Jerusalem can only be rebuilt when Israel yearns for it to such an extent that they embrace her stones and dust and thus the book comes to an end and so ultimately does the life of Rabbi Yehudah Halevi he turned his back on the fame and comfort still available to a poet and thinker of his caliber and journeyed on to Jerusalem and though he may have died clinging to the dust and stones right outside her wall with a love song on his lips.

He returned to Zion because he knew that his actions mattered. He saw that history was with him and that salvation lies in the East. I just want to thank a few people. First of all, I want to thank all the wonderful people who give their hard-earned money to make this podcast happen. You know, if you want to join them, you can go right now to www.patreon.com and you can find the MFoyer page and just hit donate for a per-podcast vote of support. I also want to thank the folks at the Land of Israel Network for giving me an incredible platform to reach so many people. I want to thank pardes.org.il for giving me the opportunity to touch the hearts and minds of so many wonderful Jews. I want to thank Sulam Yaakov, because it's my home, and I want to thank you for listening.

I'm Rav Mike Feuer, and this is The Jewish Story.