On the Sea

Born in northern Spain sometime before 1075, Yehuda Halevi was the preeminent Hebrew poet of twelfth-century Andalusia and author of the religious treatise The Book of the Kuzari. In 1140 he set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The poems of On the Sea, braiding scriptural quotation and a more personal voice, record the poet's perilous voyage to Alexandria, where Halevi remained for close to a year before embarking, once again, for the Syro-Palestinian coast and Jerusalem. Reports of his disappearance reached Egypt some four months later, though the date, location, and circumstances of his death remain a mystery. Introduction and notes by Gabriel Levin.