People are EVEN MORE WRONG about the Kuzari

"The Kuzari Proof" continues to be a bad reading of the text

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been busier than usual. During February, that was because of a course I was teaching for Drisha on medieval Jewish theology. During one of the classes, I came to realize that people who talk about “The Kuzari Proof” and the like are even more wrong than I had previously thought.

I’ve written here before about how the one line from the Kuzari upon which people build their “Kuzari Proofs” isn’t any sort of proof at all, it is simply an assertion of the validity of trust and tradition as sources of knowledge:

See this post:

And this one:

In the course of talking about the text with the attendees of the Drisha course, we realized that the way people use this text is even more wrong and mistaken than I had previously thought. If the argument is that the Kuzari is presenting what he takes to be a logical, object proof of the veracity of the Sinaitic revelation, one which should convince any honest person, then this argument simply cannot be squared with the text.

To understand why, all we need to do is see how what the Kuzari says immediately afterward:

…I answered thee as was fitting, and is fitting for the whole of Israel who knew these things, first from personal experience, and afterwards through uninterrupted tradition, which is equal to the former.

26. Al Khazari: If this be so, then your belief is confined to yourselves?

27. The Rabbi: Yes; but any Gentile who joins us unconditionally shares our good fortune, without, however, being quite equal to us. If the Law were binding on us only because God created us, the white and the black man would be equal, since He created them all. But the Law was given to us because He led us out of Egypt, and remained attached to us, because we are the pick of mankind.

28. Al Khazari: Jew, I see thee quite altered, and thy words are poor after having been so pleasant.

29. The Rabbi: Poor or pleasant, give me thy attention, and let me express myself more fully.

30. Al Khazari: Say what thou wilt.

The two lines cited here from the end of paragraph 25 are the entirety of what constitutes “The Kuzari Proof” in the text itself. This is immediately followed up by the Khazar king asking if this means that only Jews can have this received belief, to which the rabbi answers yes!

If the Kuzari is meant to be presenting a proof that should be compelling to all people, then why would it only be limited to the Jews? Everyone who hears it should acknowledge its correctness and convert. The fact that the rabbi presents this tradition as necessarily only compelling to those who belong to the people means he cannot be presenting (or even attempting to present) some sort of universally valid argument.

Not only is this how the rabbi presents it within the dialogue, but this is implicitly affirmed by the way R. Yehuda Halevi, author of the Kuzari, directs the flow of the dialogue itself. If, again, those two lines were somehow meant to be presenting some sort of winning proof, then the dialogue should basically have stopped there for the king to convert. Maximally, the king and the rabbi should have traded rejoinders, carefully refining the argument until the king felt compelled to accept it. But that isn’t what happens.

Instead, the king immediately registers a concern which rather than rebutting, the rabbi affirms, leading to an even stronger critique by the king: “Jew, I see thee quite altered, and thy words are poor after having been so pleasant”! The king has not only not been convinced by this argument, he has been repelled by it.

From here, the dialogue pivots to the rabbis argument for the inherent difference or even superiority of the Jews (only they can get prophecy, and in this the Jews are as different from all other people as human animals are from all other animals; but note that this is also a difference without distinction in an era when he thinks prophecy no longer takes place), and they never come back to the point that Jews believe because it was passed down to them via tradition. This is simply in no way ever presented as a definitive reason for someone to feel compelled to believe in Judaism.

It continues to amaze me how many people attribute this claim to the Kuzari without it being at all locatable in the text. I should probably try and track down how that got started at some point. If any readers know the history and would like to enlighten me, please do let me know.