Judah ha-Levi

Born in either Toledo or Tudela, in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), Judah ha-Levi later moved to Granada, where he became a physician and leading poet. For the better part of his life, ha-Levi was a highly successful member of the elite class of Andalusi Jewish courtier-rabbis, composing poems of unusual power and lyricism, and maintaining relationships with prominent figures of his day. He later wrote, in Arabic, a theological defense of Judaism known in Hebrew as the Kuzari. This work was completed around 1135, although there may have been a first draft already in 1125. It took the form of an imagined dialogue between the king of the Khazars, a historical figure known to have converted to Judaism, and another figure, a stand-in for Judah ha-Levi himself. At a certain point, ha-Levi repudiated certain aspects of his Jewish courtly life and decided, perhaps as an act of piety, to travel to Palestine. He made the voyage in the very last year of his life, and spent most of that year in Egypt, but he seems to have devised a first plan to do so a decade earlier. It is possible that he reached Palestine. In the early summer of 1141, his ship left Egypt, and the voyage would have been only about a week or so. By the late summer, however, he was dead.