Yehuda Halevi (c. 1075–1141)

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. ◈ Liberties Journal · 2025

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.