Who was Yehuda Halevi?
Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141) is still famous as a poet and a philosopher, who flourished in Muslim and Christian Spain.
His first language was Arabic, but he wrote his poetry in Hebrew – he is one of the most famous of the great Hebrew court poets of Andalućia. As young man he wrote beautiful, sensuous poetry, but he also wrote inspiring religious poems that are used in Jewish prayer books to this day – an Andalućian John Donne, no less! His great philosophical work, The Kuzari, was written in Arabic and was deeply influenced by Islamic culture – introducing several Sufi concepts into Jewish mysticism.
Yehuda was also a skilled physician – after an apprenticeship in Córdoba he moved to Granada (partly to study poetry with the great Moses ibn Ezra), where he became a physician to the wise and learned Emir of Granada.
This world was shattered by the invasion of the Almoravids, fierce warriors from North Africa determined to reform what they regarded as the decadence of Islam in Andalućia. After many wanderings, Yehuda reached Christian Toledo, where he served as physician to King Alfonso VI of Léon-Castile – El Cid’s king.
In 1109, after a massacre of Jews in Toledo, Yehuda returned to Muslim Córdoba with his beloved wife and daughter. Yehuda became a leader of the community in Córdoba and his family flourished.
As he grew older, however, Yehuda was irresistibly drawn to the Holy City of Jerusalem and in 1140, though devastated to leave his beloved Deborah and his daughter and grandson, he sailed across the Mediterranean for Alexandria and, eventually, Jerusalem, where he died.
