The Khazars, the Jews, and Us: The Delusion of Origin and the Question of Zionism

Rereading Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari

 

How did a classic work of Jewish thought written in Arabic in the 12th century, which claims the absolute superiority of Jews and Hebrew, come to be cited by both the Israeli far right and the most radical fringes of anti-Zionism? To dispel this mystery and the misreadings of this text, David Lemler immersed himself in Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari. His interpretation reveals an unexpected utopia, that of the Jewish state of the Khazars, whose critical function could help us escape contemporary aporias.

 

 

Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari has recently gained unexpected relevance. This 12th-century work is a distant source of the most radical discourse of the Israeli far right and one of the most popular arguments of radical anti-Zionism. Heraclitus already spoke of the harmony of opposites, but this unnatural alliance is nonetheless surprising. How can this be explained?

In the context of an apology for Judaism, the Kuzari articulates a thesis unprecedented in Jewish tradition: the intrinsic superiority of Jews over non-Jews, of the Hebrew language over all other languages, and of the land of Israel over all other lands. These theses subsequently found their way into many later texts, particularly Kabbalistic ones, and form the backdrop to religious Zionism. Today, they fuel the most extreme discourse within the Jewish and Israeli worlds.

The Kuzari, a dialogue between a Jewish scholar and the king of the Khazars, is also one of the most important sources of the “Khazar hypothesis,” popularized by Shlomo Sand’s polemical book, The Invention of the Jewish People (2009). Ashkenazi Jews are said to be descendants of a people from the Caucasus who converted to Judaism between the 8th and 10th centuries. Consequently, the European Zionists who founded the State of Israel have no legitimacy in claiming any connection to the “land of our ancestors,” a fortiori in exercising sovereignty over it.

The common ground between these two extremes of Zionism and anti-Zionism is what might be called the “delusion of origin,” according to which the foundation of a collective identity is a pure ethnic affinity transmitted through genealogical ties. This delusion proves incapable of understanding either how conversion complicates Jewish identity or the status of the land of Israel in the Jewish tradition, which is a diasporic tradition. Rereading the Kuzari in all its complexity opens up political horizons beyond the simplistic and disastrous politics of identity. Halevi proposes a triangulation of exile, the State of the Jews, and the land of Israel that provides resources for a radical critique of any subjugation of the Torah to a politics of power indifferent to the ideal of justice.

The paradoxes of the Kuzari

Let us start with what I will call the “paradoxes of the Kuzari.” The rhetorical device at work in the book is indeed a paradoxical reversal. It is a matter of turning Judaism’s apparent inferiority to its advantage. The original title of the work is, in fact (in one of its versions), “The Book of Defense and Proof of the Despised Religion” (Kitāb al-radd wa-l-dalīl fī l-dīn al-dhalīl). The humiliation of the Jews, compared to the triumph of Christianity and Islam, proves the greater authenticity of Judaism, so that the king of the Khazars, in search of a way of life “approved by God,” chooses Judaism for himself and as the official religion of his kingdom.

This reversal is based on three performative contradictions, however.

1. While the book asserts that Jews are inherently superior to non-Jews and that it is therefore impossible to become Jewish, it does so by depicting a conversion to Judaism.
2. While the book asserts the superiority of the Hebrew language, it does so—as the title makes clear—in Arabic.
3. If the book asserts the intrinsic superiority of the land of Israel, it does so from a double location that is precisely outside the land of Israel: the real diaspora, Christian and Muslim Spain, where it was written, and a dreamt-of Jewish kingdom, the Khazar kingdom that Yehuda Halevi heard about, under circumstances to which I will return below, and which is a pretext for the writing of his book.

These performative contradictions testify to Halevi’s ambivalence towards the Arab-Muslim culture of his native Spain (born in Catholic Spain, he later settled in the Muslim south, which he considered intellectually superior). The prevailing interpretation of the book sees it as a reaction against the intellectualism of the Andalusian Jewish elites during the so-called “Golden Age.” Contrary to the assertion that the Torah and philosophy are compatible, which was most eloquently expressed after him by Maimonides, Halevi emphasized the irreducible heterogeneity of Judaism and philosophy. Halevi’s poetry reflects his rejection of the figure of the court Jew in the service of Spanish sovereigns, as a minister and intermediary between Jews and the authorities. Serving kings is likened to serving idols.^[1] Halevi contrasts this very real Jewish submission to “idolatrous” royal powers with a fantasized submission of an “idolatrous” king who recognizes the intellectual and political superiority of Judaism.

However, this anti-philosophism and rejection of the political and cultural submission of the Jews are expressed in an Arabic conceptual language borrowed from the dominant culture. Halevi, through his poetry and his Kuzari, can moreover be considered one of the pinnacles of the “Golden Age.” Even the excesses of his assertions of Jewish superiority can be traced back to a naturalization of ideas in vogue in his Muslim intellectual environment.

Thus, the thesis of the natural superiority of the Hebrew language, the Adamic language created by God, certainly has earlier sources in the Jewish tradition (certain passages of the Talmud and the midrash, or the Sefer Yetsirah, “Book of Creation,” at length commented on by Halevi). But it is better understood in light of the specific status of the Arabic language in the Muslim tradition. From an apologetic perspective, Halevi confers on Hebrew the status that dominant Islam attributes to Arabic. The fact that he does so in Arabic is the best proof of the imported nature of this idea.

Halevi’s poetry reflects his rejection of the figure of the court Jew in the service of Spanish sovereigns, as a minister and intermediary between Jews and the authorities. Serving kings is likened to serving idols.

Similarly, the assertion of the inherent superiority of Jews over non-Jews, making true conversion impossible, can be supported by a well-documented mistrust in certain Talmudic sources of converts, who are likened to a contagious disease.^[2] (Admittedly, these passages are always counterbalanced by others that encourage the acceptance of converts). But this assertion is better understood in light of the debates on lineage that had emerged within the multi-ethnic Muslim society of Andalusia. Since the 10th century, arguments about the superiority of Arabs had been used to justify Umayyad rule over southern Spain, while Christians who had converted to Islam emphasized the nobility of their Andalusian genealogy. The Kuzari can be seen as a Jewish naturalization of this type of argument or as an importation of a Shi’ite idea of genealogical transmission of divine election, from imam to imam since Ali, the nephew of the prophet Muhammad.^[3] The “children of Israel” genealogically inherit a divine election dating back to the patriarchs, whose lineage has the exclusive ability to receive what Halevi calls amr ilāhī (which can be translated as the “divine thing”, or the divine word or command). Foreign to this chosen lineage, converts cannot access this “divine thing.”

In light of this intellectual context, the radical theses of the Kuzari appear as a kind of satire of the dominant culture: ‘Arabic, the divine language? No, Hebrew!’ ”The Arabs and Andalusians, the chosen races? No, the Jews!” In his defense of Judaism, Halevi incorporates elements of Arab-Muslim culture into the very terms of that culture, from which he cannot intellectually emancipate himself. This is a classic mechanism of what we would today call the colonial mentality, which can only conceive of its emancipation in the terms set by the colonizer.

However, these considerations only partially account for the performative contradictions I mentioned earlier. To assert Jewish superiority and the exceptional nature of the land of Israel, why go through Khazar converts and their steppes on the shores of the Caspian Sea?

Moving beyond the exile/Jewish state dichotomy: Halevi beyond the “Khazar correspondence”

A detour to the source where Halevi first learned about the Khazar affair and the way in which he departs from it proves instructive in answering this question. The motive for the conversion of the Khazars is mentioned in a significant number of medieval texts by Muslim and Jewish authors. The reliability of these sources, which often present a legendary account, is problematic. While the very existence of the Khazars is no longer debated, the question of whether a conversion took place and, if so, in what form and to what extent remains open. In any case, Halevi, like his Spanish contemporaries, heard about the Khazars through what is known as the “Khazar correspondence.”

This is a collection of letters, probably fictitious, between Hasday Ibn Shaprut (c. 915-c. 970) and King Joseph of the Khazars. Ibn Shaprut is the quintessential Spanish court Jew whom I mentioned earlier as one of the targets of the Kuzari. A physician, diplomat, and dignitary at the court of the Umayyad caliph of Cordoba, Abd al-Raḥmān III (912-961), he was also the first to promote, as a patron, the production and dissemination of Andalusian Arab culture among Jews through poetry and science. In the letter attributed to him and addressed to King Joseph, Ibn Shaprut describes how he learned of the existence of a Jewish kingdom at the other end of the known world and asks him about the geography of his kingdom, the origin of his people and his dynasty, and how they became Jews. Joseph replied with the legendary account of the conversion of one of his ancestors three centuries earlier, responding to the call of an angel who appeared to him in a dream, as well as the religious dispute he organized between a rabbi, a priest, and a Muslim qadi, all of which are found with significant modifications in the “frame story” of the Kuzari.

It is as if, in writing the Kuzari, Halevi was merely responding to Ibn Shaprut’s exhortation at the end of his letter, which appears in the preamble to many editions of the Kuzari:

“We have lost our glory and find ourselves in exile, helpless in the face of their constant words: “Every people has a kingdom, and there is no trace of you left on earth.” When we heard about His Majesty the King, the power of his kingdom, and the number of his soldiers, we were seized with amazement and raised our heads. Our breath came back to life and our hands were filled with strength, so much so that His Majesty’s kingdom is a resounding answer to us. If only this news could spread with greater force, it would only increase our greatness.”^[4]

The Khazar affair that he discovers in this letter provides Halevi with an ideal framework for his apology for Judaism. But perhaps it was something more fundamental than the comforting story it provided to Jews that interested Halevi in this text. He drew from it the organizing principle of his work: the rhetorical reversal I mentioned earlier. For we can clearly see in this letter a change in the attitude of Ibn Shaprut, who initially presents himself as a kind of “king of the Jews”: from his position of power, he inquires about the fate of the exiled Jews through the emissaries he sends on business and diplomatic missions for the Caliph of Cordoba. Upon discovering the existence of the Khazar kingdom through two of these emissaries, he discovers himself in exile. He who believed himself so strong, so firmly established in Spain, discovers his weakness through the feeling of power that the good news of the existence of a Jewish kingdom gives him. The Jewish Khazar kingdom in exile reminds the Jews of Spain that they are never themselves except in exile. This is the first function of the decentering effect the Khazars offer.

But Halevi does not stick to the scenario of Ibn Shaprut’s “Khazar correspondence.” He is not satisfied with the exaltation of Jewish power that emerges from the previous quotation and echoes a similar exaltation of strength against the secular weakness of exile in early 20th-century political Zionism, of which the notion of “Jewish supremacy (literally ‘power,’ ‘otsmah) is the latest radicalized avatar. Faced with the power of the kingdom and the weakness of exile, Halevi adds a third term: the land of Israel, which he places on a completely different level from that of political power.

Halevi’s thesis makes it possible to dissociate Judaism from political institutions, the land of Israel from the Jewish state.

Halevi also knows that he is in exile in Spain, but his “Zionism” does not point to a lost power. Announcing his final journey to Zion, which would end in his rapid death after his arrival in the land of Israel, he describes in a famous poem (libbi be-mizrah: my heart is in the east) how this journey comes at the price of renouncing the benefits of exile:

A light thing would it seem to me to leave all the good things of Spain/

Seeing how precious in mine eyes to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary

Zionism and anarchy: reading the Kuzari with Martin Buber

This is the second function of the Khazar reference: to dissociate the land of Israel—the space where Jewish existence can fully unfold—from power, to place Judaism on a different plane from that of power relations by inventing a Jewish power that retains only the political power of Judaism.

This is where Leo Strauss, one of the greatest readers of medieval Jewish philosophy in the 20th century, goes astray in his esoteric reading of the Kuzari. Or rather, he stops halfway. In “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari” (1943)^[5], Strauss proposes reading the work contrary to its obvious meaning, not as a frontal attack on philosophy, but as a response to a central problem of political philosophy: how to compensate for the lack of foundation and the arbitrary nature of any system of law? Only the revelation of the law, which gives it superhuman authority, can guarantee the stability and indisputable character that it lacks. This, in the eyes of the Khazar king, is the political advantage of Jewish law. As an absolute law based solely on the collective experience of revelation, it is best suited to ensuring social order within his kingdom.

But Strauss forgets that Halevi takes great care to explain to the king that his conversion alone will never be enough to make him a Jew. The king converts and converts his kingdom after his Jewish interlocutor explains to him that no conversion will give him access to the “divine thing” (the famous amr ilāhī, mentioned earlier). It is therefore not strictly speaking to “Judaism” that the king converts, but to Judaism, insofar as it takes the form of a political organization within a state of which it is the religion. It is Judaism without prophecy, like the Judaism of the Second Temple period as described by rabbinic tradition: a formal, institutional religion incapable of welcoming the divine presence. Halevi’s extreme thesis on conversion must therefore be understood as a device that makes it possible to dissociate Judaism from political institutions, the land of Israel from the Jewish state.

Here we have a key to understanding the irony of the performative paradox of affirming the impossibility of conversion by staging a “political” conversion: on the one hand, Halevi maintains that no conversion of a king and his people could capture what is divine about Judaism; on the other hand, he asserts that conversion is the condition for making what is divine about Judaism thinkable, outside of any state politics.

We can therefore understand the interest that a left-wing Zionist such as Martin Buber found in the Kuzari. A year after Strauss’s text, in 1944, in the midst of war and on the eve of the creation of the State of Israel, he wrote an essay in Hebrew entitled On Zion: The History of an Idea, in which he sought, against a strictly political Zionism, to assert the special significance of the land of Israel in the Jewish tradition. At first reading, Buber’s text seems to be content with paraphrasing the Kuzari, taking up Halevi’s quasi-mystical valorization of the land of Israel. But this reference to the Kuzari becomes clearer when read in the light of Buber’s political reflections, whose Zionism incorporates the inspiration of the anarchist Gustav Landauer.

As early as 1932, in The Monarchy of God, Buber had emphasized the Hebrew Bible’s distrust of any human political institution exercising power in the name of God. Biblical theocracy is fundamentally reduced to an anarchist utopia. Out of pragmatism, Israel came to give itself kings, Saul, then the Davidic dynasty. But the kings of Israel must be judged by the lost ideal of the so-called “era of the Judges”: the absence of institutionalized power within a community nevertheless guided by the presence of a God who demands justice. Ten years later, Buber summoned Halevi in support of this political ideal, for which all institutionalized power constitutes a danger. The Khazar kingdom, which established a Jewish state outside the land of Israel, allowed Buber to conceive of the land of Israel as the site of another possible politics. The Kuzari thus serves as a basis for his own political conception of a Zionism that must lead to a different type of political community than one that takes the form of an institutional organization of power, a community assured of welcoming the “divine presence” within itself, because it has established the pursuit of justice as its guiding principle.

The Israeli far right confuses Judaism with a religion close to Judaism, invented by Halevi, the religion of the Khazars: one that instrumentalizes the Torah to rule the state, even at the expense of any concern for justice.

From this point of view, the Jewish state of the Khazars must be seen as a utopia: not just the fantasy of an exile projecting his dreams of power onto a distant kingdom, but above all an alternative place from which to criticize the real politics of the land of Israel. If, since 1948, the land of Israel has been partially confused with the Jewish state, the Khazar utopia allows the ideal of the fundamentally anarchic “monarchy of God” to be preserved as a critical counterpoint to any attempt to reduce Jewish politics to the raison d’état.

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The Israeli far right, nationalist and religious, which draws its distant roots from a simplistic reading of the Kuzari, “descends from the Khazars,” in a sense very different from that envisaged by radical anti-Zionists, who have certainly not read the Kuzari. It confuses Judaism with a religion close to Judaism, invented by Halevi, the religion of the Khazars: one that instrumentalizes the Torah to rule the state, even at the expense of any concern for justice. The Khazar argument of radical anti-Zionism certainly seems to be able to claim support from the letter of the Kuzari, assuming biologically determined fixed identities on which territorial claims are based. On this basis, it would offer a cheap solution to both the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war in Ukraine: why not move the Israelis to an Ashkenazi state created on the Russian-Ukrainian border that would serve as a buffer zone? He forgets that the Khazar utopia is first and foremost a thought experiment that allows Halevi to construct a specific relationship between the Jewish diaspora and the land of Israel, regardless of its genetic origins. As for us, perhaps we would do well to draw inspiration from the Kuzari to break out of the sterile confrontation between the diaspora and the Jewish state, between the Jew as weak and the Jew as strong, in which contemporary Jewish identity seems to be trapped. In this confrontation, each pole threatens the other with absorption: between the State of Israel’s claim to represent all Jews and the diaspora’s identification with its policies on the one hand, and radical diasporism on the other. Introducing, as Halevi does, an imaginary, utopian third place into this confrontation would make it possible to rebuild a dialectical, critical, and constructive relationship between these two poles. This third place is there, available, in the great books of the Jewish tradition such as the Kuzari, which are just waiting to be reread from exile outside the nationalist captivity in which some would like to confine them. 

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David Lemler