Faith and Sacrifice: On the Political Theology of the Kuzari, Part 1

Israel recently celebrated “Hebrew Book Week” (split over a few weeks thanks to the war with Iran), and I took the opportunity to finally pick up a discounted copy of Michael Schwartz’s new, posthumously published translation of the Kuzari, with rich footnotes and an introduction by Daniel Lasker.

I’ve been learning the sefer for over a decade, and teaching it as part of a course on medieval Jewish theology for the last 6 years. Yet, as with all rich, canonical works, it rewards rereading, and I’ve been appreciating certain passages anew as I read them in Schwartz’s translation. Here, I want to talk about one such passage (IV:16) and how it encapsulates the Kuzari’s political theology.

Political Theology, Not Political Theory

First, a word about political theology. “Political Theology” is a loaded term, often used in a variety of different ways. It goes back to the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (who said, “If God did exist, we would have to abolish him”) and was made famous by the Nazi Kronjurist Carl Schmitt., whose thought has seen a revival among both right- and left-wing intellectuals in recent decades. My use of it here draws primarily on the work of Paul Kahn (himself very influenced by Schmitt, but consciously involved in a democratic and US-centric project, as opposed to Schmitt’s Nazi project), while also being influenced by Adam Kotsko, Robert Yelle, and others.

The core of Kahn’s project is the claim that “political philosophy”—reflection on politics in a rational vein—cannot explain the way citizens in modern states actually behave. Invoking psychoanalysis, he says, “Metaphorically, when we put the modern state on the couch, we find a social organism that is simultaneously deeply in fear of its own death (the existential crisis) and in deep denial of the fact that it is willing to do anything at all to put off that death (liberal theory)” (Paul Kahn, Political Theology, 27). In order to actually understand our politics, he says, we must “develop a political theology for our time” (26).

The key bit here is the presence of death at the heart of politics, both as the threat politics seeks to ward off, and the threat it carries within it—the “anything at all” Kahn invokes. Politics, for Kahn (and Schmitt) is about existential threats and survival, and people will do anything if they think their survival is in question. (I’ve written previously about Kahn’s political theology and the theology of Amalek and about death and theology more broadly—what I called “Necrotheology”)

Political theory and philosophy, Kahn argues, see politics as tools for self-governance, but with the aim of promoting individual flourishing. The idea of the social contract says that individuals agree to submit to the authority of the state because it promises them a better life. As Kahn and others argue, however, this cannot explain why people A. submit to the justice system, even to the point of capital punishment, and B. willingly sacrifice their lives in wars for the state.

To explain this, Kahn says, we need to realize that people believe in states much the same way religious people believe in God. They have (political) faith. This isn’t to say that “politics is really a religion” or anything like that, just that people feel existentially caught up with and identified with the state such that they are willing to martyr themselves for the state (I’ve previously written about Kahn, martyrdom, and Rabbi Akiva). Citizens don’t become citizens out of rational calculus, they simply are citizens, and can’t imagine their lives without being citizens (or members of the nation, etc.). (Obviously, immigration and naturalization are different stories, Kahn is talking about the experience of citizenship.)

The two key elements of all of this are that what politics and theology have in common, for Kahn, are the marginalization of rational calculus and the foregrounding of sacrifice—exactly the focuses of our passage, Kuzari IV:16, to which I now turn.

Kuzari IV:16 – Faith and Sacrifice

I don’t read Judeo-Arabic, so for my understanding of the Kuzari I check as many translations as possible, as necessary. Rather than giving you a panoramic view of all available Hebrew and English translations, however, here are two: First, the Ibn Tibbon Hebrew, available on Sefaria and the version most in use throughout Jewish history (Sefaria also has the Even Shmuel translation, a 20^th c. Hebrew translation very popular in Israel; on the different translations, see this SeforimBlog post by Lasker).

״אָמַר הַכּוּזָרִי: כְּבָר הִתְבָּאֶר לִי הַהֶפְרֵשׁ בֵּין ׳אֱלֹהִים׳ וְ׳יָי׳ וַהֲבִינוֹתִי מַה בֵּין אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם וֵאלֹהֵי אֲרִיסְטוֹ, וְשֶׁיְיָ תִּכְסֹפְנָה לוֹ הַנְּפָשׁוֹת בְּטַעַם וּרְאִיָּה, וֵאלֹהִים יַטֶּה אֵלָיו הַקָּשָׁה. וְהַטַּעַם הַהוּא יָבִיא מִי שֶׁיַּגִּיעַ אֵלָיו שֶׁיִּמְסֹר נַפְשׁוֹ עַל אַהֲבָתוֹ וְשֶׁיָּמוּת עָלֶיהָ, וְהַהַקָּשָׁה הַזֹּאת הִיא רוֹאָה כִּי רוֹמְמוּתוֹ חוֹבָה בְּעוֹד שֶׁלֹּא תַזִּיק וְלֹא יַגִּיעַ בַּעֲבוּרָהּ צַעַר. וְאֵין לְהַאֲשִׁים אֲרִיסְטוֹ כְּשֶׁהוּא לוֹעֵג עַל מַעֲשֵׂה הַנִּימוּסִים, אַחַר שֶׁהוּא מְסֻפָּק אִם יֵדַע הָאֱלֹהִים אוֹתָם.״

And here is the Hirschfield English translation, available on both en.wikisource.org and Sefaria, and the only published English translation which translates from the original Arabic rather than from the Ibn Tibbon version.

“16. Al Khazari: Now I understand the difference between Elōhim and Adonāi, and I see how far the God of Abraham is different from that of Aristotle. Man yearns for Adonāi as a matter of love, taste, and conviction; whilst attachment to Elōhim is the result of speculation. A feeling of the former kind invites its votaries to give their life for His sake, and to prefer death to His absence. Speculation, however, makes veneration only a necessity as long as it entails no harm, but bears no pain for its sake. I would, therefore, excuse Aristotle for thinking lightly about the observation of the law, since he doubts whether God has any cognizance of it.”

The Kuzari here distinguishes between two types of theology, speculative theology and experiential theology (as the book does throughout), attaching the former as well to “the God of Aristotle” and to the name “Elohim.” Experiential theology he connects to “the God of Abraham” and to the name “YHWH” (transliterated as “Adonai” in the Hirschfield translation). Speculative theology he attaches to proofs and rational calculus, while experiential theology he attaches to faith and “love.”

What I noticed on this reading that I hadn’t noticed before is the emphasis here on sacrifice and suffering. Speculative theology, he says, will never lead a person to sacrifice for religion. It will only encourage “veneration,” but only insofar as the person never has to suffer for their religion in any way. The moment they do suffer for it, they would drop their theology and move on. Hence, he says, it is eminently rational that Aristotle dismisses the (ceremonial) law—if it isn’t rationally necessary, it isn’t worth sacrificing for.

In contrast, experiential theology is motivated by love, and the believer is willing to sacrifice themselves for their faith. They are driven by experience and deep personal connection/conviction, and are more than willing to sacrifice for the object of their faith/love. The Kuzari denies that God has a body, but affirms the importance of embodied depictions of God, in part because these will move a person in ways that abstractions like “The First Cause” and “Knowing knowing itself” simply can’t. This prophetic-experiential faith is tightly connected to suffering and sacrifice.

These two theologies also imagine God differently. The God who is loved and who appears to the prophet also gives commands and instructions, so the believer/lover cares deeply about fulfilling those instructions, even at cost to themselves. The God who is true and the truth of all things but does not appear in the life of the believer could maybe inspire faith, but the Kuzari is skeptical—this is the point of the argument from “The King of India” in the first part. The Kuzari’s god—the God of Abraham—is a God who is present to and cares for the believer, or the believer’s people, thus inspiring reverence, servitude, and even sacrifice.

In the next post, I want to expand out from this one piece to some of the Kuzari’s broader political-theological concerns, such as Jewish chosenness, exile, and political violence.