ABSTRACT
Throughout Rabbi David Hartman's long and prolific career, he has addressed himself to clarify the theoretical and practical ramifications of a profound and recurring problem. It is the problem of how to construe the relationship between religious loyalty to the claims of Torah and tradition and the philosophic quest for an independent, rational understanding of the world and of the norms that will enable us to flourish within it. Judah Halevi's only extended discussion of immortality and the afterlife is to be found in his famous theological dialogue, The Kuzari, whose complete original title was The Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion. Most of what Halevi has to say on the subject appears in the first of the five treatises that comprise The Kuzari, although there are also important remarks that follow in the third and fifth treatises as well.
