Comparing God In Mideast And Rumi's Hebrew Poetry

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Sacred love poems of the Mideast have been known to strategically present spiritual guidance and love towards God. Jalal-ad Din Rumi and Judah Halevi are both poets of the Mideast that address God in their writing as a divine creature that provides guidance. Even though both poets come from different religious backgrounds, Rumi focusing on Islam and Halevi on Jewish faith, both the poets illustrate a love toward God in their respective pieces. This can be further seen in Rumi’s, “The Wine Everlasting”, and one of Halevi’s Hebrew poems (15). Although Rumi and Halevi similarly portray the communities’ efforts to be closer with God and their love for him, Rumi’s poem is more focused on facts and reasoning whereas Halevi’s poem centralizes on blind …show more content…

Rumi states, “while they soul is drunk with mere date wine, thy spirit hath not tasted the genuine grapes. For the token of thy having seen that divine Light is this, to withdraw thyself from the house of pride,” (Rumi). Rumi suggests that in order to become closer with God and see the divine light, one much taste the genuine grapes, a divine drink, and withdraw himself from his prideful, ego-self. That is when man will become genuinely humble. He will be full of wisdom and will be more connected with the earth. This process of letting go of one’s self or the undoing of individuality in order to recognize god is called Fana. Likewise, Rumi also states, “When those Egyptian women sacrificed their reason … They were filled with wisdom of the world without end,” (Rumi). Rumi further presents an example of Fana, where these Egyptian women sacrifice their reasoning and doubt to devote themselves to God’s love and beauty. After they gave up any doubt, they were full of wisdom and were able to become closer with God. The Egyptian women gave up there will and ego-self, in blind devotion to God, similar to Halevi’s Hebrew poem (15). Both these specific poems address a blind faith and devotion to God; however, the second half of, “The Wine Everlasting”, Rumi places authority on sight and reasoning unlike Halevi’s Hebrew poem which is entirely based on blind faith and no

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