יהודה הלוי
Yehuda Halevi (c. 1075–1141)
Spanish Golden Age poet-physician-philosopher — the Songs of Zion and the Kuzari — whose death on his final journey to Jerusalem is preserved as beloved legend.
Yehuda Halevi was the greatest Hebrew poet of the Spanish Golden Age: more than 800 poems survive, including the Songs of Zion ("My heart is in the East, though I am at the end of the West"). A physician by profession, he wrote the Kuzari — a philosophical dialogue in Arabic — defending the Jewish tradition.
Late in life he set out for the Land of Israel; tradition holds that he reached Jerusalem and died there in 1141 — the account of his death at Zion’s gates is legend rather than documented fact, and is presented here as such. His career spans the dossier’s Geonic/Islamic Golden Age into the medieval European centuries.
IN THE ATLAS
Connections
Languages
Sources & review
- Yehuda Halevi profile
- Yehuda Halevi biography