Rabbi Solomon ibn Gabirol רבי שלמה אבן גבירול

Málaga bore him, Zaragoza raised him; he lost father and mother early and lived under patrons with whom he quarrelled. He lived a little over thirty years. His poems say so outright: he knows his own worth, knows he is not liked, and hides neither.

Keter Malchut. A long poem that moves from the order of the universe to the confession of a man. It is still read on Yom Kippur in many communities, whole or in part. Besides it, hundreds of piyutim that entered Sephardi and Ashkenazi prayer books; Shachar avakeshcha is sung by people who have never heard his name.

Fons Vitae. A philosophical book written in Arabic and translated into Latin as Fons Vitae. It contains not one verse of Scripture and not one reference to the sages—and so Christian Europe for four hundred years took its author for an Arab or a Christian named Avicebron. Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did Solomon Munk, comparing the Latin with the Hebrew extracts of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, show that Avicebron and Ibn Gabirol are one man.

How to regard him. As a poet, without reservation: he stands at the very head of the line in which Judah Halevi stands. As a philosopher, with caution—and the caution is not ours: Jewish tradition barely took up his philosophy, while it took up Keter Malchut entire. The difference is instructive.