Yehudah Ha-Levi
YEHUDAH HA-LEVI (c. 1075–1141), Jewish poet, theologian, and physician. Born in either Tudela or Toledo, Spain, to a wealthy and cultured family, Yehudah ben Shemuʾel ha-Levi was well educated. He studied the Bible, rabbinic literature, Arabic poetry, philosophy, and medicine. During his early travels in southern Spain he won acclaim for his poetic talent and was warmly received by many prominent Jewish families. However, in the wake of the Almoravid invasions of the area to halt the Christian reconquista, his enjoyment of courtly life was cut short. Eventually he settled in Christian-held Toledo, supporting himself as a physician and continuing to write. But he viewed with growing alarm the disruption of Jewish life throughout Andalusia. Sometime after 1125, in response to the queries of a Karaite thinker, ha-Levi began to draft a defense of Judaism, which developed into his most famous work, the Kuzari. In the summer of 1140, various personal, political, and religious considerations prompted him to depart for Palestine. Legend claims that he was killed within sight of Jerusalem, although recent studies suggest that he died en route, in Egypt.
Ha-Levi's poetry is generally regarded as the finest Hebrew verse written in the Middle Ages. Besides addressing all the traditional secular and religious themes of his day, he also developed, in his poems of Zion, an entirely new genre expressing both his own and his people's longing for renewal in their ancestral home.
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