Selected Poems (Engelse vertaling)

xxviii INTRODUCTION

Yet we must be on our guard against taking
too literally his depreciation of the medical art.
He was equally outspoken against metaphysics
in his treatise on the Philosophy of Judaism,
the Kitab al-Khazari, his one great Arabic work.
The truth is that, even more than Spinoza,
Jehudah Halevi was "God-intoxicated" or,
to use Heine's phrase, "God-kissed". God,
not the physician, was to him the Healer; God,
not human reason, was the source of truth.
The physician was but God's servant, and by
Him endowed with such gift of healing as he
possessed.

From evidence to be found in the poems, we
know that their author was bound to Spain by
the presence and love of his one daughter and her
little son, Jehudah,¹ as well as by the minor
ties of memory² and by many friendships. But
one love was to be conquered by the power of
another, and we find the poet at the age of
fifty years journeying forth on the perilous seas
to seek the still more greatly beloved land of
his fathers. Heine detected this love and this
longing, but it needs not the insight of a Heine
to perceive it—the most . casual reader of
Halevi's poems realizes that the poet's soul

¹ See latter half of poem No. 11 in the Selection.

² See No. 13 in the Selection.