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Updated: May 28, 2025
At the same time, and with little consistency, Albo takes the part of Judah Halevi and Crescas, employing their arguments, without naming them, that the philosophers and the philosophizing theologians are wrong who make human immortality, perfection and happiness depend solely upon intellectual activity.
Judah Halevi has no more sympathy with them than with the philosophers. Owing to the fact that the Karaites were implicit followers of the Kalam and for other reasons, no doubt, more objective, he thinks less of them than he does of the philosophers. The only possible use, he tells us, of their methods is to afford exercise in dialectics so as to be able to answer the arguments of unbelievers.
If the believer in the Torah were obliged to hold that there is a primitive eternal matter from which the world was made, and that there were many worlds before this one, there would be no great harm, as long as he believes that this world is of recent origin and Adam was the first man. We see now the standpoint of Judah Halevi, for the "Haber" is of course his spokesman.
There are a number of resemblances between Gazali and Halevi as Kaufmann has shown, and there is no doubt that skepticism in respect of the powers of the human reason on the one hand, and a deep religious sense on the other are responsible for the point of view of Gazali as well as Halevi.
Judah Halevi, influenced by Al Gazali, had already before Maimonides protested against this intellectualistic attitude in the name of a truer though more naive understanding of the Bible and Jewish history.
And deep and wide, in lonely vigil, wrought the Regent's thought that night, till morning: of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of tendencies, histories, soils, ports, railways, possibilities, race- genius, analogies, destinies; of Rothschild and I Solomon; of Hirsch and Y'hudah Hanassi; of the Jewish Board of Guardians, Rab Asa, and the Targum on the Babylonish Talmud; of the Barbary Jews, the Samaritans, and Y'hudah Halevi; of the Colonial Bank, and the Karaite Jews....
If I had Aristotle's head I might be able to find out why my legs are inferior. And so one goes about." The reverence for Aristotle enshrined in Yiddish idiom is probably due to his being taken by the vulgar for a Jew. At any rate the theory that Aristotle's philosophy was Jewish was advanced by the mediaeval poet, Jehuda Halevi, and sustained by Maimonides.
Among the laws, too, the conventional law takes its principles, freedom and purpose, from political philosophy. Whence does divine law take its principles? The existence of God can be demonstrated philosophically from premises going back to axioms and first principles. But this is not true of Prophecy and Providence. The answer Albo gives to this question is that of Judah Halevi and Crescas.
That in the eleventh century Judah Halevi of Toledo and Nathan of Rome should have been familiar with Russian words cannot but be attributed to their contact with Russian Jews. However, in the case of these two scholars, it may possibly be ascribed to their great erudition or extensive travels.
Saadia and Ibn Zaddik show clearly that they did not understand the precise meaning of the definition. Judah Halevi is the first who understands correctly all the elements of the definition. And yet it would be decidedly mistaken to infer from this that Judah Halevi studied the Aristotelian works directly.
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