Selected Poems (Engelse vertaling)

INTRODUCTION

The gift of song, cherished and tended as
it was by the Spanish Jews of the Middle Ages,
reached its highest development in the poems of
Jehudah ben Samuel Halevi, born, as is now gen-
erally accepted, in Toledo in 1086, the story of
whose life as physician, philosopher and poet
has come down to us in but slight fragments,
and ends vaguely among the mists of tradition.
In the disturbed atmosphere of the Spain of his
day, Castile lay under the comparatively mild
sway of the Catholic King Alfonso VI. Per-
secution was as yet occasional, and only burst
into flames if the favour shown to the Jews was
considered by their ill-wishers to be unduly
great. Judging from Jehudah Halevi's letters
to his friends, his life passed in serving the people
of Toledo, where many of his years were spent,
as their much sought-after and hard-worked
physician; and one suspects his profession to
have been a rather burdensome incident in
his life, while his whole heart and soul were
consumed in the pursuit, as he says, of the
"fount of living waters."

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