Yehuda Halevi Urges European Jews to Return to Zion
With the development of transportation routes from Europe during the crusades and the rising persecution of Jewish communities in the Diaspora, hopes of redemption stirred, and an increasing number of Jews sought to make Aliyah, or immigration and return to the Homeland.
A prominent voice calling for the Return to Zion through Aliyah was Rabbi Yehudah Halevi, a Jewish poet, physician, and philosopher, who postulated that the Redemption could be achieved only by Jews returning to their Homeland. In one of his poems, he writes:
“My heart is in the East, but I am in the West…
Zion lies beneath the fetter of Edom (Christianity), and I am in the chains of Arabia…”
He made the effort himself with like-minded friends, leaving Spain for Israel, but due to the crusades, travel to Israel was difficult, and Rabbi Yehuda died in Egypt of poor health.
In his treatise, The Kuzari, he compares the tenets of the Jewish faith with the religious outlooks of Christianity and Islam and asserts that true spiritual fulfilment is possible only in the presence of the One G-d of Israel.
One of four known surviving personal letters of Judah haLevi, all of which are written in Arabic with Hebrew script and addressed to Ḥalfon ben Nethaniel ha-Levi of Fustat.
Public Domain via WikiCommons
Overview
Yehuda Halevi was a Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher.
In his treatise known as the Kuzari, he claimed that true religious fulfillment was possible only in the presence of the G-d of Israel.
“My heart is in the East, but I am in the West…
Zion lies beneath the fetter of Edom (Christianity), and I am in the chains of Arabia…”
In the Bible
Life lessons
Humor
Advocacy
Fun fact
Antisimetism
