Selected Poems (Engelse vertaling)

INTRODUCTION xxiii

omit from each stanza the closing citation,
artistic coping stones though they are. One
could not discard Jehudah Halevi's biblical al-
lusions from a Zion Ode without leaving the
music incomplete or even discordant.

The poet's gift of grace, his inability to sin,
whether in verse or in prose, is shown again in
the work already mentioned, the Kitab al-Khazari.
Dr. Hirschfeld, its translator from the Arabic,
well says, this is a "book for the people". It
"contains sufficient attractive and instructive
material even for readers who would skip the
more abstruse passages". The treatise, a series
of five dialogues, is romantically framed in the
medieval story of the King of the Khazars,
the royal convert to Judaism who came under
the wings of the Shekhinah after doubt and con-
troversy. There is much in these dialogues on
technical topics; astronomy and philology, among
other serious subjects, play their part. But,
regarded as a whole, the Khazari is as much a
poem as are its author's poems themselves.
At all events, Jehudah Halevi takes the poet's
view of Judaism and of the Jews. Israel is
the heart of mankind, filling the same function
in the world at large as does the heart in the
body of man. This is Halevi's epigram
and text. Taking into account particularly