Book places Halevi and his poetry in context

Yehuda Halevi by Hillel Halkin, Nextbook/Schocken, New York;  ISBN 978-0-8052-4206-5, ©2010, $25.00, p. 353.

Fred Reiss, Ed.D

By Fred Reiss, Ed.D

WINCHESTER, California– Give me the names of three medieval Jewish poets …  Okay, I’ll take just two … Can you name just one? If you’re like most people, all you heard was the sound of silence. Our children learn to write Haiku in elementary school and to rhyme in iambic pentameter in high school. Where are we taught about the Spanish meter, adopted by the Hispano-Jewish poets, called marnin? Or, the shirey yedidut (friendship poems) and the muwashach (girdle or necklace song), poetic styles?

Hillel Halkin’s latest book, a biography of Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141), supplies us with the answers.

Jews settled in Spain by the beginning of the fourth century, where they lived through sometimes hospitable, often tenuous lives under the Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, Christians, and Muslims, until their expulsion in August 1492.

Halkin opens his book at the end of the eleventh century. Halevi is a young man, an aspiring poet in Spain’s Hebrew Golden Age of Poetry. It is a time in which renowned poets such as Samuel Hanagid and Moses Ibn Ezra flourished. Spanish Jews lived under the umbrella of convivencia—a time of relative harmony—between the Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Big cities partitioned themselves into de facto neighborhoods and occasionally the convivencia gave way to fanaticism, leading to pogrom-like massacres of Jews. All in all, Jews and Judaism flourished during the life time of Yehuda Halevi.

Halkin follows Halevi’s career with wonderful translations of his poetry, which Halevi wrote in both Arabic and Hebrew. Halkin often places the poetry into historical context and the psychological perspective of the poet. Halevi’s monumental work, Hakuzari, is an imaginative dialogue among the spiritual leaders of the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religions with the King of the Kazars, who later converted his nation to Judaism.

Through Hakuzari, Halkin provides his readers with an understanding of Halevi’s demons, as Halevi struggles with the decision to visit Jerusalem, and make aliya—permanent settlement—in what was called at that time Palestine. Halkin believes Halevi to be a proto-Zionist and the spiritual father of the Zionist movement. Halkin concludes with an extensive discussion of the theories of Halevi’s travels in Palestine, which remain shrouded in mystery. Some even say he never arrives in the Holy Land.

Hillel Halkin’s Yehuda Halevi is a thoughtful addition to our understanding of Halevi and his poetry, as well as medieval Spanish Jewry in general. Indeed, this reviewer is moved to conclude by emulating one of Halevi’s poetic styles:

Reading this book is quite sublime

You’ll find that it’s no waste of time.

The prose is beyond the routine.

And you won’t even need the caffeine.

Whatever your pleasure

It’s a book that you’ll treasure.

Forget to mow or shovel the snow

The words come like lava flow.

No matter your hue, or the location of your pew

Learn to do something new.

Perhaps reading a scroll, or a book, or a tome

No need to wander from home.

Put in the labor

This is no time to waiver.

This sefer goes far beyond rhyme

Now go and expand your mind!

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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of  Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and Reclaiming the Messiah.