Biography
Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi (c. 4835/1075–4901/1141), the Rihal, was the greatest of the poets of Sefarad and the author of the Kuzari — two crowns, either of which would have secured his name forever. Born in northern Spain to a family of wealth and learning, he received the full education of Sefarad’s golden age — Torah, Arabic letters, medicine and philosophy — and many hold that he learned under the Rif; he was of the circle of the yeshiva of Lucena in the days of the Ri Migash, who is said to have esteemed him greatly. His genius announced itself early: the great poet Moshe ibn Ezra recognized the young man’s gift and drew him to Granada, and his reputation traveled ahead of him through every community of Spain. He earned his bread as a physician, and his closest companion in wandering was Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra, who quotes him in his commentary on the Torah.
His poetry — hundreds of compositions — entered the tefillah of klal Yisrael: Yom Shabbaton at the Shabbat table, Mi Kamocha for Shabbat Zachor, and above all the shirei Tzion, whose queen is Tzion Halo Tishali, said in the Kinot of Tisha B’Av in every kehillah of Ashkenaz to this day. “My heart is in the east, and I am at the end of the west” — his line became the eternal sentence of galut.
His sefer HaKuzari, written in Arabic and rendered into Hebrew by Yehuda ibn Tibbon, is built as the dialogue of a chacham with the king of the Khazars who seeks the true faith: a defense of emunah and mesorah against the philosophers, and a declaration of the chosenness of Yisrael, the Torah, and the Land. It became one of the foundational sefarim of Jewish machshavah, learned without pause for nearly nine centuries. And he lived his sefer’s last chapter: in 4900/1140, at the height of his fame, he left Spain to go up to Eretz Yisrael. The kehillah of Egypt received him with honor and begged him to stay; letters preserved in the Cairo Geniza trace him to the ship that sailed from Alexandria on Shavuot of 4901 — and there his traces end, in the mystery the mesorah has clothed in the story of his death at the gates of Yerushalayim, the kinah on his lips.
Where traditions differ. Sources differ on whether he was born in Tudela or Toledo. Whether he reached Eretz Yisrael is debated: Geniza letters record his passing in Egypt around Av 4901 (1141), while great scholars hold he sailed and may have reached Yerushalayim; the famous mesorah brought by Gedaliah ibn Yachya relates that he was trampled by an Arab horseman at the gates of Yerushalayim while saying his kinah Tzion Halo Tishali.
רבי יהודה בן שמואל הלוי היה רב, משורר ופילוסוף בתור הזהב של יהדות ספרד, מגדולי הכותבים היהודים בימי הביניים ובכלל.
Judah haLevi was a Sephardic Jewish poet, physician and philosopher. HaLevi is considered one of the greatest Hebrew-language poets and is celebrated for his secular and religious poems, many of which appear in present-day Jewish liturgy.
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